h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Boring waffle about commuting woes, nothing interesting to see here!

The new timetable is out, the much vaunted west coast mainline improvements done, more trains and faster touted by the various companies.

Morning stuff hasn't changed much, train goes 3 mins earlier and gets there a bit earlier too. Not a problem.

Ah, but there used to be a connection they didn;t tell you about which meant you could hop trains at wolverhampton onto the London train and get in 5 mins earlier to bham - not that big a deal but 5 mins is the sort of delay you can expect. So getting in 5 mins earlier ensures I could get the connection to work and be in before 10. That London train no longer exists.

Going back in the evening though is bit more of a change. I used to get 3 trains per hour - at 20 past, 20 to and about 10 to. Now I get still get 3 but they're at half past, 3mins to and 1 min past. So no chance of legging it from the 3mins to platform to the 1min past platform if it is late or overcrowded. So basically 2 trains per hour.

Gee thanks!

Not only that but the main one I used to get was the London to Manchester Virgin Pendolino - big train with lots of carriages and you could get a seat even when it was rammed. Pendolinos have 6 standard carriages and 3 1st class (why I don;t know, they never fillmore than 1 of them).

Now that train is a Voyager (the irony of which does not escape me) which has 3 standard and 1 1st class. And half one of the standard is a shop. And they have less seats per carriage than the Pendolino. And they are gettin gold and shabby and dirty. And the loos smell awful, even in the winter.

So from this much vaunted new timetable I end up with less trains, and they're smaller. And guess what, they're full to brimming as 6 carriages worth of people try and cram into 2.5

Gee, thanks again.

Oh and the fares are going up in the new year.

Doesn't surprise me - they've split the routes up so the virgin trains do London - Manchester (eg) as they did before but miss out all the smaller towns like mine. They then give those smaller town routes to other operators (including the enigmatically named 'crosscountry'). The primary drive is profit, not customer satisfaction, so it is better to have a small overcrowded train than a big half full one.

Bob only knows what it is going to be like during the next big event at the NEC - mayhem and chaos I expect.

Why can't they actually get a decent timetable? What would hurt so much in asking the people who use the trains what they want?

Oh, and either having a big stick to beat the companies with till they up customer service (trains should not have people standing - it means you got it wrong!) or renationalise the flaming lot and run it for the benefit of the residents of this country rather than the stock market.

Seeing as the banking industry, soon the car industry and lord knows what else is getting nationalised due to credit crunchiness, you never know, you may not have to wait as long as you think...

seems to be the one thing that won't be - too much vested interest in forcing it to work even though it doesn't.

OTOH I saw a bit of black and white footage that must have been from the 40s or 50s taken at a big London station interviewing the passengers. And guess what? They complained about ticket prices going up without the service improving, late trains, lack of information about the trains, random stops in the middle of nowhere and the poor condition of the trains.

There is nothing new under the sun!

Why didn’t governments of the past predict congestion, and oil peak etc? Why did they rip out all the branch lines?

I mean, if dear old Mr Beaching hadn’t de-commissioned all of the branch lines in my area I could have toddled down the hill from home, leapt onto a train, trundled over the border into Wales and then got off again at the college farm and crossed a couple of fields into work.

Never mind, they do make lovely footpaths I suppose.

you'll be wanting to vote LibDem then and get the branch lines reopened


They do make good walks. Old railway tracks and canal paths were staple day out fodder for me and my sisters as kids. We must have walked a heck of a distance.

The only bad thing I can remember about it is the day (aged about 6 or 7) that I learned it was important for boys to be aware of the way the wind is blowing when pee'ing into a bank of nettles.

Surely it’d cost too much to do that now? Coupled with the fact that the old Ross station is now covered in tarmac and a supermarket, and bits of the line are now in AOONB sites.

I dunno, people'll find any excuse to not vote LibDem

On our line they're promising all sorts of improvements - more trains, longer trains, cleaner trains. I think for most commuters it's a case of 'the chocolate ration is being increased from 4g to 3g'.

More trains but stopping at less stations.

Cleaner??? Yeah, right!

Thing that gets me is that a few times I have seen various train company officials comment on criticism that 'well everyone else thinks it is ok. They must do, the number of passengers is going up significantly!'

Yeah, cos there's nowt else over the last year that could have caused more people onto the trains, it must be the excellent service they are offering!

oh joy of joys, I suspected something like this might be in the offing but to see it as a comment piece in t'grauniad by someone who knows a bit more about such things than me is not entirely heartening.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/21/railtravel-economy-credit-crunch

Basically pointing out that with economy woes, potentially declining passenger numbers that the assumed growth of 8%-10% in rail business ain't gonna happen and rail companies could end up going bust, walking away or being taken over. And may well end up in a defacto renationalisation (as with the banks) since the Trains Must Run (tm).

Actually, the last bit is the silver lining. But before we get there there could be all sorts of hassle.

p.s. one interesting view from the writer:
"n the early days of franchising in the late 1990s, many companies signed deals on the basis of making drastic cuts to costs but found that British Rail had been more efficient than they realised."
Didn't know that.

I don't think the problem with the old BR was costs, was it? It was the fact that they ran the railways for the benefit of the employees rather than the customers.

RF

maybe so (and if so then exactly how privatisation was supposed to change this I'm not sure - it certainly hasn't) but there was certainly a pov around at the time used for justification that it was squandering money and just too darned expensive. Seems maybe it wasn't quite as inefficient as people thought.

*points smugly at post 2*

>>I don't think the problem with the old BR was costs, was it? It was the fact that they ran the railways for the benefit of the employees rather than the customers.

There was also the small matter of underinvestment. In the various social economies of Europe, rail transporttation was - and is - regarded as a Public Good and financed accordingly. The result is that their rail systems are still so good that you can rely on them for business travel.

You know what I'd be doing if I were Chancellor at the moment? (And thank **** I'm not! ). Never mind redistributing wealth from taxpayers to bank directors. I'd take the Keynseian approach and build a Maglev link from Glasgow to Manchester to London to Dover. And a second Channel Tunnel. Think what that kind of thing would do to the future economy!

(Plus a ****-off big tidal generator in the Pentland Firth.)

slaps orcus for being smug

Have to admit I agree on the public transport as public good thing, always have.
Struck me again this morning as we pulled into the station 6mins later after 2 unscheduled stops and nary a word from any staff (even though they were in the carriages and not hiding in their little office) that we just accept it as normal. The train was late. OK, happens. Nothings perfect. Etc. As luck would have it my connecting train was also late so I made the connection.

Ruddy pathetic it is. Why even bother to publish a timetable if we know it isn;t going to be kept to? Why be precise in the timings (departs 08:43, arrives 09:19) why not just round it all off and say there will be 3 trains an hour between here and there and they'll be roughly 20mins apart?

Don't forget...they treat their staff as badly as they do their customers.

Oh I know, but I also know that, for London Midland at least, it is policy to not inform the passengers of short delays and for longer delays to not inform until they have had clearance to move again. Their excuse is that it reduces customer reaction as they get the excuse and then the train moves. I don;t like being treated like an idiot - I want to know why the train is not moving and if the reason is given then I'm happy to wait. It is sitting there not moving with no announcement that infuriates me.

Blimey Ictoan you don't want to erode it like that. That's what buses do, and they can't even stick to that!

I once got stuck on the old 1 hour long tube train journey from Heathrow (or was it Gatwick... I forget) to London.

After sitting stationary for about half an hour they announced that we weren't moving because the whole Circle line was suspended due to "police attending a train" on the circle line.

Now that was some information but not nearly enough gossip!
I never did find out what happened but it sounded extremely interesting.

On the London Underground, an excuse that is frequently given is "due to a person under a train". This elicits sympathy and understanding from the travelling public.

My belief in this excuse was somewhat undermined when I got off at a station after hearing this excuse, and was again apologised to for the delay "due to signalling problems in the Whitechapel area".

RF