Trains

Posted on 2002/06/17 11:17:27 (June 2002) by john.

In this country, appalling and intolerable.

Yesterday I spent about five hours on a train journey that should have taken less than three. In fact, even the scheduled time seems far too long in the first place considering the distance travelled. The first leg, which should have taken about 30 minutes went to nearly two hours. The second leg was then made in part on an extremely uncomfortable and overcrowded coach. Then for the final part, back onto an overcrowded and delayed train. This appalling service would, for a return ticket, have cost me 45 pounds, were I not in possession of a young person's card, which brought it down to 28 pounds.

The performance of the British rail system is, quite frankly, piss poor. I am ashamed to be British because of it, given the extortionate prices, terrible level of customer service, dreadful reliability and unacceptable delays, not to mention the appalling safety record. Next time there's an announcement about a delayed or cancelled train, here's a few tips to the train operators.

1) No robotic voices please. Oddly we aren't that impressed when a computer program apologises to us.

2) Sort your excuses out, for god sake. I'm sick and tired of hearing a train is delayed "because of an earlier delay". This basically boils down to, there are delays because of delays. This is just awful.

3) Take some responsibility for once in a while please. If you chose to work for a given company, you represent that company in the eyes of the customer. Sure, you shouldn't have to tolerate aggressive and threatening customers, but on the other hand, when faced with a reasonable complaint, shrugging your shoulders and saying it isn't your problem just isn't good enough. If you're not cut out for customer relations, then go and get another job.

4) Let's have the real reasons for the appalling service we're receiving. For example: "We apologise for the delay to this service, this is due to a thoughtless, retarded, money grabbing conservative government in the 1980s and 90s, privatising whatever they could get their hands on, without a care in the world about the utter shambles of a rail network it would create (because they certainly wouldn't travel by train anyway), just so long as they could line the pockets of their self centred wealth obsessed executive chums at the golf club. This was then worsened by a (supposedly) labour government who simply could not be bothered to do anything to improve it. We shan't insult your intelligence by pretending we care either, because we're making profit regardless, whether your service is good, bad, or ends up killing you."

You know, I find my self really frustrated by this. I really believed in public trainsport, from an environmental, economic and just plain common sense point of view. My opinions on those benefits are very strong, and yet even I feel myself going off the idea now. What hope for the rest of the population?

Needless to say, the trains are infinitely better in Japan.

I think you're spot on with this one, John. British Rail used to be the envy of the world. Even Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe in WW2 noted during the Battle of Britain that he was irritated that RAF pilots shot down over home territory could be back to their unit within 5 hours because of the excellent train service.

It was industry that the workers were proud of. They did a good job because they knew they were doing a service for their country, not just doing a job to bring in money for as little effort as possible. I know some people who work on the trains and they're fed up with the lack of funding... it all comes down to funding. This lack of pride links quite nicely with your point (3). Surely the staff should be bending over backward to find out what is going on!

Nationalise the bloody service and then put 1p on income tax to improve the bloody thing. I too believe in public transport and also believe that it can be done very well, if treated completely. The years of neglect is taking its toll.

On a slightly different topic, your point 1 'No robotic voices please' is very true. It is sad that a company puts so little value in its customers that it uses a recoded message to apologise for a poor service. Imagine if all services did this. You'd phone up the Fire Brigade on 999 and you'd get a message "I sorry for the delay....". It sounds like something out of the film Airplane! A human touch is much more pacifying. I remember sitting on the tube, in a tunnel on the Northern Line one day and the driver coming over the tannoy to say something along the lines of:

"You're not going to believe this but there is a sheep on the line ahead. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. If we find out how it got there, we'll let you know because I know you'll be as fascinated as I am."

And suddenly, no-one cared about the delay. The human touch works a treat.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2002/06/27 14:20:52.

I concur, Rob. I think the tube is possibly the last bastion of anything that is good about public transport in this country (although the privitisation vultures are circling). Sure, it has it's problems, but give it it's due - it's the oldest underground train service in the world, and is still going strong. What keeps it going is, in part, really good staff. I remember fondly one journey into work on the tube where the automatic announcement system was broken (or perhaps turned off), prompting the train driver to adlib marvellously. He kept referring to the passengers as "boys and girls", replaced banal words like "alighting" with "hopping off", and gave a chirpy and informal commentary about the area around every station we went past. Everyone in my carriage (and I guess the rest of the train) was smiling at each other. It sounds daft, but I felt good all day about that.

In contrast, on an (overground) train this morning, near the end of the journey the conductor was apologising for the delay. Although I'm fairly sure it was a real person, he'd obviously got so tired of having to do it all the time he actually sounded like a robot. I'm not exaggerating, either.

Posted by john at 2002/06/27 15:51:25.

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