Even with the network back in action, Thursday's journey home was less pleasant than usual. Credit:Joe Armao, Fairfax Media. Ms Allan told ABC radio: "The government has already made its view crystal clear. We expect a higher performance standard on the next round of contracts. "We have written those requirements into the tender documents. "There are mechanisms under the current contract that allow PTV to put a penalty on the operator," she said. "But we want to go about strengthening the performance so these sorts of issues do not happen." The Minister also hit out at ridesharing app Uber for slapping surge pricing of more than three times the normal fares on commuters caught up in the disruption.

"I think their behaviour exposed their approach to the way they treat people who use their services," she said. "Taking advantage of people in a difficult circumstance is not a way to run the business." Metro Trains chief executive Mike Houghton said the train operator would be refunding passengers affected by last night's outage. "We are exploring options on how to best do that and will confirm details later today," he said. There was not a repeat of Thursday's disruption on the metropolitan train network on Friday morning, with the overwhelming majority of services running on time.

Mr Houghton assured commuters the computer system issue that caused the total shutdown of Melbourne's train network had been fixed. "I can assure customers our system is back up and running," he said. He said Metro was conducting a full investigation into the outage and that its technicians were still establishing the cause of the fault. There was "no chance" the meltdown was the result of Metro's computers being hacked, he said. Many readers have emailed Fairfax Media calling for their train fares on Thursday to be refunded or for Metro to provide Melburnians with a day of free train travel. Readers who were forced to catch a taxi home also demanded recompense for their taxi fares.

Brad Hanson wrote: "I was trapped in town and fluked getting a cab so that I could go home, grab my car and come back to pick up my fiancee. Are Metro going to give me my $40 back? Someone in Metro IT should be packing up their desk today." And Diane Brennan said she racked up a $20 taxi fare for the final leg of her two-hour trip home. "And I was one of the lucky ones who made it to a bus to get me most of the way home," she said.