Taking the Piss
Posted: Tue 21 June, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »Just as an aside, this is the post I was writing, and lost earlier. A re-write, not a recovery
Do you ever wonder whether certain other people are actually on the same level of sanity as yourself? Today’s story about the potential for a “congestion charge” for rush-hour rail travel created this kind of doubt in my mind.
The real questioning came about when it was revealed that it was that Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) who were banging on about this. They’re obviously not aware that “peak” travel is already a shitload more expensive than travelling later in the day. And that’s the policy of every train company. If I were to decide to work in London, and had to commute from Bracknell to be in London before 9am, a daily Travelcard would cost me £22.60. If I can go in later, leaving Bracknell after 9.30am, that Travelcard will only cost me £13.30.
So the “rush-hour” congestion charge already exists. It’s just the train companies working to screw even more money out of people – and mainly out of business people and workers, who are the ones they’re forever saying are the “bread and butter” of the trainlines, which is why maintenance work is done on bank holidays and weekends, so that these super-important “bread and butter” passengers aren’t inconvenienced. Great, they’re just ripped off more and more each year.
The final insult came in the quote (and I’m going to paraphrase it a bit)
In the next 10 years the objective will be to run as many trains as we sensibly can, and as long trains as we can, to carry the maximum capacity.
…
The strategy document – entitled Looking Forward: Contribution to Railway Strategy – also said scrapping under-used trains and stations could help operators handle growth.
Now, let me get this right. Effectively, what they’re saying is “the trains are going to get busier. Therefore, what we’ll do is reduce the number of trains and stations, so that all these extra people will be crammed on the over-used trains at a smaller number of stations. Hey, what’s convenience, when we can ram ’em in like sardines?”
How about,
a) lengthen platforms
b) increase carriage length
c) put in car parks at underused stations and then say………….woohoooo look heres a station with parking
d) ask passengers what they want instead of being an ignorant set of fucktards
e) invest millions in opening old rail lines
f) make public transport bloody cheap…….like the METRO area of west yorkshire and dare I say it………………..SHEFFIELD (that bastard Blunkett again) where buses were made so cheap it wasn’t worth using ur car.
I would rather pay 1p extra on income tax and have a decent passenger transport system…………..but that won’t happen, bcos Blair was given his mandate *cough to govern by a minority and he doesnt need to listen anymore.
Yeah I heard about this yesterday – the annoying thing is that my local rail company HAS been improving things. They’ve scheduled more trains at peak times, and made them 6 instead of 3 carriages. They publish a monthly newsletter which you can pick up on the train and have already, in the first 6 months of the tenure, held three public meetings to listen to passengers.
On the other hand the price of the tickets has gone up again – as Andy says, I’d happily pay an extra 1p, hell I’d pay 5p!, if it gave us a decent transport system.
I’m glad you posted this. I thought I was going mad. In the late 90s I regularly did London-Southend or London-Slough in the mornings, and back in the evenings, and they were astonishingly cheap compared to if they’d been the other way round. Or try getting an Inter-city train that arrives before 11 am. It has *always* been the way, and I have always accepted it as rational.
What stupid arses, shutting lesser used stations and lines. Don’t they understand the concept of a network? I don’t like travelling to my Mother’s in Sale because she is just too far from a (tram) station to make it a viable walk with weekend bag, whereas I will happily go to my sister’s in Atherton because there’s a good service from the InterCity at Wigan and she’s near the station. Except on Sundays. So I’m reluctant to use that if I have to return on a Sunday. So the quality of the suburban service is directly affecting my choices to use the InterCity.
I’m flying up to Manchester in a couple of weeks. The train will take over 3 hours London-Manchester. Probably the journey will take just as long by plane, but I absolutely refuse to sit on a non-smoking train for three hours. When my sister and niece did it in March, there were no toilets in Standard Class, not nice when you have a toilet-requiring condition and a six-year-old. We got to Euston well early, they could have got the earlier train except they had one of those cheap tickets that allows no flexibility, or they could have used the facilities at Euston. There were no announcements about this at Euston, which I think is utterly disgusting and, together with a story about people being held on a Virgin train for five hours a mile from Longsight depot has rather clinched it with me for Virgin. I’m going to fly in future, or get the GNER to Wakefield and change.