So May 22nd was a bit like all the other South
West Trains delay-filled days. I shouldn’t overdramatize, it’s only 20% of my
journeys that are delayed (by 5mins+ or cancelled). So only every 3 days (!)
Like so many of you, I was standing there in the melee at
Waterloo. Wasn’t it horrible? I don’t know what is worse the delay itself or
that horribly oppressive feeling of being squished up against a ga zillion
people all waiting for that glorious nugget of information about which platform
to rush to in one big swirling mass. One tweeter described it as being like 28
Days Later. Probably a little rash, but you get the idea.
The longer these delays persist, the less apathetic people
seem to be getting and that’s a good thing. South West Trains don’t deserve a
deafening silence, they deserve to spend some of their £50 million profit (in
2011) on sorting out their service. And yes, before you even think it, I do
realise they can’t be held responsible for suicidal people (or as @SW_Trains
decided to call them “A suicidal female”). But they can be held responsible for
sorting the ensuing mess out efficiently and politely. There were mentions of
abusive staff, or staff who had no idea what was going on… What’s the point of
bigging up in the news sites that you’ve ‘drafted in extra staff to help with
the issues of commuters’, if they’re just going to stand there and stare
blankly as if caught in a train-induced trance? Give them the correct info, or
don’t feed them to the wolves. It’s not entirely fair on them.
What seemed to have got lost yesterday was that
approximately 10 minutes before the “Suicidal Female” (their words, not mine)
there were announcements about signalling problems at Vauxhall. I’m presuming
they magically disappeared?! According to all the news reports, you’d think
they had never existed. Why do ITV, The Evening Standard, The local rags bother
to report something if they’re not going to report the actual story?
If these delays continue to be every 3 days (my own personal
experience) then why the HELL should I pay for the pleasure? Why should you? As
you’ll see from my previous blogs, it’s so completely impossible to get a
proper refund anyway.
Most maddening of all is the feeling of complete
helplessness. Nothing any of us can do seems to change anything in regards
their service levels. The only bright spot being their twitter feed reports
delays efficiently and (mostly) accurately.
I want to help bring about change to this complete monopoly
on my journey, I just don’t know how.
The thing I find most scary is how after an incident they don't manage the flow of passengers onto the trains. I know we all just want to get on with getting home etc but they way passengers are allowed to over crowd onto carriages is frightening. It would only take a small incident, sudden stop etc and all hell would break lose. It's like they just want to get people off the platform with total disregard for safety.
ReplyDeleteWell this is it, all it would take is for one packed train to break down for a prolonged period of time and something would go seriously wrong
ReplyDelete