Australia’s busiest rail network will open its gates for fare-free travel to make up for commuter headaches when an overhead wire failure caused days-long delays.

On Monday, travel will be free on all Sydney trains, Airport Link, and Metro services on the Opal network.

Opal gates and readers will be turned off and passengers will not need to tap on and off.

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The free travel will not extend to buses, ferries and light rail, regional train services or coach ticketing, which will charge fares as normal.

The NSW government announced the changes on Saturday to placate frustrated commuters after a “nowhere-near-good-enough” power outage caused carnage to the network on Tuesday.

A live wire suspended above train tracks near Strathfield station at Homebush hit a passing train, triggering a power outage and creating chaos for hundreds of thousands of travellers.

Commuters queued at stations across Sydney on Wednesday morning, waiting for a trickle of replacement buses, themselves hampered by increased traffic clogging the city’s roads.

Repairs to the overhead wiring were completed on Wednesday, but Premier Chris Minns acknowledged the reliability of Sydney Trains had “not been up to the mark”.

Transport Minister John Graham said more than a million people would benefit from the free travel but he didn’t expect it would make up for last week’s inconvenience.

“We acknowledge that it strained the patience of an entire city,” he said in a statement on Saturday.

“We want them to know the NSW government also expects better of the system, and we are working to improve reliability and maintenance.”

A “short and sharp” independent review is also set to assess maintenance, punctuality and customer communications across the network.