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Sydney’s Inner West light rail service likely won’t be operating for weeks.Credit:Louise Kennerley

Transport for NSW chief operations officer Howard Collins said many of the cracks had only been discovered after the floor of the vehicles was removed during the inspections.

“It’s pretty extensive,it’s pretty much across the fleet,” he said. “The trams we have inspected so far have all shown various degrees of cracking.”

Mr Collins said it was not yet known how long the trams would be sidelined for,with more than 50 buses replacing the light rail to service the network.

“They’ve got a lot of work to do,and they are literally looking at every tram now going through each one of them,stripping out the floors,” he said.

Mr Collins said most of the cracking had been discovered near what he described as the wheel-arch of the trams.

The trams that service the CBD light rail are at this stage not compatible with the Inner West line because they have a different wheel profile and are far longer.

Mr Collins said many bus services that had been used to transport international arrivals to hotel quarantine would soon be diverted to servicing the Inner West line as quarantine rules are eased in NSW from Monday.

“We’re working through seeing if we can modify and add additional Opalised bus services to strengthen the routes which that people are switching to,” Mr Collins said.

Opposition transport spokeswoman Jo Haylen said the government needed to consider procuring trams from Australia given the latest issues with the Spanish-built fleet in Sydney.

“This is a damning indictment of the government’s poor purchasing decisions on transport infrastructure,” Ms Haylen said.

“Sydneysiders are just beginning to return to work. This is when they need the public transport network the most and they have been badly let down.”

The cracks were found during a routine maintenance inspection,according to a memo issued to staff last week. The service was originally set to be offline until Monday.

Mr Collins said most of the trams would likely be inspected by Tuesday,and the private provider Transdev would then have a clearer picture as to when the service could resume.

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