Railway services 'reforms'

[kernelbogey]

[...]I'm not so sure how good or bad a thing the closing of certain ticket offices might be. because I don't know what proportion of train customers purchase their travel tickets online nowadays. Most people purchase their air tickets that way, so I'd not be so surprised if they do so for train journeys as well. If this is the case and makes for less need for actual ticket offices, I'd say there's an argument for closing some. Much depends however, on the extent of their use; there's obviously no sense in closing a heavily used ticket office.

There is a clear move to reduce the number of booking clerks available to give advice and sell tickets in favour of self-service machines. The latter can also be used to print out tickets purchased on line. It's all part of the relentless trend (cf supermarkets) to reduce staff numbers and shift the work related to charging to the consumer.

But as others have said, there are strong arguments for simplifying the fare structure. This would also make self-service machines more consumer-friendly.

[Ferretfancy]

Can anybody explain to me why Virgin West Coast and others trundle empty First Class coaches up and down the country while the rest of the train is Full? Even if some standard class passengers ( Sorry! Customers! ) buy upgrades, it must still be uneconomic. Make all travel standard class.

[ahinton]

Can anybody explain to me why Virgin West Coast and others trundle empty First Class coaches up and down the country while the rest of the train is Full? Even if some standard class passengers ( Sorry! Customers! ) buy upgrades, it must still be uneconomic. Make all travel standard class.

Passenger v. Customer (I've dealt with this elsewhere): if someone asks for an upgrade during a train journey, he/she is a passenger at that point by virtue of travelling, whether or not he/she is a costomer by reason of having paid for the travel ticket (in which the traveller is the customer) or had somoene else pay for it (in which case the payer is the customer); if they pay for that upgrade, they are a then and thereby a customer as well as a passenger irrespective of who paid for the original ticket that the passenger has chosen to upgrade.

[kernelbogey]

Heard on a South-West Trains train to London: 'For the benefit of passengers, the buffet will be closing in ten minutes'.

(Happily they no longer use this 'benefit' mantra at the beginning of all announcements!)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Can anybody explain to me why Virgin West Coast and others trundle empty First Class coaches up and down the country while the rest of the train is Full? Even if some standard class passengers ( Sorry! Customers! ) buy upgrades, it must still be uneconomic. Make all travel standard class.

I do not have a problem with train companies offering first class travel, but the number of coaches for first class should be balanced against the demand as far as possible. In general I think it is.

[amateur51]

You've got to hand it to them: they do like a challenge!

These are the Tories who privatised the rail service into its current shambles, isn't it Are they going to apologise first? Or reflect on this experience and the public's wariness about their plans to privatise the NHS?

Are they buffalo!

[Ferretfancy]

These are the Tories who privatised the rail service into its current shambles, isn't it Are they going to apologise first? Or reflect on this experience and the public's wariness about their plans to privatise the NHS?

Are they buffalo!

I was that nice John Major wasn't it? "Oh Yes!"

[Petrushka]

I wonder how many contributors to this thread have frequently travelled by rail over, say, the past 10/20 years?

I have commuted to work by train for much of my working life and can honestly report that in terms of punctuality I find things have vastly improved in recent years. This doesn't just relate to my local line but also where I have used the network in other parts of the country. Where there are real problems, in my view, is with a) the fares structure and b) overcrowding.

It has become a national sport to joke about our railways mainly done, I've noticed, by those who never use it, read exaggerated stories in the paper when things go awry or have a political point to make. In my view the service has greatly improved in the past few years and, believe me, back in 1992 it really was a shambles and it badly needed sorting out.

[cloughie]

I wonder how many contributors to this thread have frequently travelled by rail over, say, the past 10/20 years?

I have commuted to work by train for much of my working life and can honestly report that in terms of punctuality I find things have vastly improved in recent years. This doesn't just relate to my local line but also where I have used the network in other parts of the country. Where there are real problems, in my view, is with a) the fares structure and b) overcrowding.

It has become a national sport to joke about our railways mainly done, I've noticed, by those who never use it, read exaggerated stories in the paper when things go awry or have a political point to make. In my view the service has greatly improved in the past few years and, believe me, back in 1992 it really was a shambles and it badly needed sorting out.

You mean after 13 years of Tory neglect and underinvestment!

[amateur51]

You mean after 13 years of Tory neglect and underinvestment!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Although I detest and despise the present coalition of hyenas and sheep, I'm not sure that you can blame any political party more than any other for the neglect of the railways. True, Beeching was appointed by the Tories, but when Labour came to power, they carried on with most of the Beeching cuts and added a few more of their own. Electrification schemes were nearly all authorised by Conservative governments. After John Major's privatisation, Labour allowed Railtrack to let the grass grow (literally) and for the privatised company not to maintain safety, and we all know what happened next.
However, these latest proposals are simply crackers, including the idea of trains without guards. Would you want to travel on such a train?

[JFLL]

.... the idea of trains without guards. Would you want to travel on such a train?

No, but on the Docklands Light Railway in London there aren't even any drivers. Very spooky sitting at the front of the front coach looking ahead. You keep wanting to reach for the brake.

[Simon B]

I wonder how many contributors to this thread have frequently travelled by rail over, say, the past 10/20 years?

I have commuted to work by train for much of my working life and can honestly report that in terms of punctuality I find things have vastly improved in recent years.
...

I haven't contributed to this thread until now, but like Petrushka I have frequently travelled by rail for work and otherwise in the UK over a long period - from the 80s to the present. I've travelled the length of every major route, a good chunk of the (sub)urban networks in most major conurbations and quite a lot of the remainder.

I can only concur with his basic point. There is plenty to find unsatisfactory about the present system - e.g. the cost of certain journeys at certain times. However, on the whole, the service is inordinately better than it was 15-25 years ago.

The probability of actually getting to your destination at even a vague approximation to the expected time (if at all) has increased vastly. The attitude and professionalism of the customer-facing staff has changed very much for the better, no longer giving the impression of some sort of 1970s throwback in which the railway would work just fine if it wasn't for all those annoying people cluttering up their trains. The infamous food is now mostly edible - if still worthy of infamy on cost grounds. Some, but only some, of the trains give the impression of not having been designed by a committee and being on the verge of falling to bits.

The fare structure seems no more or less byzantine to me now than it did back in the day. Rather, its complexities are laid bare for the inquisitive to probe for themselves rather than apparently residing in higher dimensions of existence accessible only to travel centre staff armed with telephone-directory sized copies of "The Manual".

There's nothing new in there being anomalies that can be exploited by splitting journeys or employing more bizarre strategies to reduce the cost of certain journeys. I recall 20-odd years ago employing arcane journey-splitting combinations of peak-valid weekly season tickets, off-peak-only day tickets and off-peak all-zone London travelcards to significantly reduce the cost of occasional weeks of long distance commutes to London below any obvious option like a simple weekly season ticket.

At the times I was eligible for one there was (and may still be) a PhD for the taking by someone in working out optimisation algorithms for the best course of action for holders of Young-Persons-Railcards (not valid against the cost of season tickets or journeys before 10am which cost less than a certain amount) who want to make regular mid-length journeys which straddle the 10am boundary. And so it goes on...

If I started listing all the things (besides the literally prohibitive cost of walkup tickets on many journeys) that I do have a problem with I'd be here all night. But, I really do think there should be a corollary to Godwin's law that says that in any discussion about Britain's railways, anyone who tries to assert that it was all better in the days of BR should be deemed to have automatically lost the argument by default. They're either a) making it all up or b) have an agenda which is about ideology rather than getting the damn things to run on time.

[Petrushka]

Excellent post, Simon B. I've been travelling reguarly on the railways since college days in 1970. The worst period was undoubtedly in the early 1990's when the persistent delays, cancellations and breakdowns revealed a network close to collapse. All that has changed for the better and my daily commute is now pretty well hassle-free. Well done to East Midlands Trains! I shall once again be making my annual trip to the Cheltenham Festival next week - by train of course! It's a pleasant hour and a half direct from Derby via Birmingham New Street.

[teamsaint]

the service ought to be good.......subsidies are as high as ever, and fares are skyrocketing.

As I said, a day and a half's wages on minimum wage for a day return from salisbury to london.