'THE GOVERNMENT'S ABSOLUTELY AWARE ... - Rail Professional

LETTERS
No room for manoeuvre
The high level of complaints about
poor service provision by South
West Trains over the last few
months culminated in a huge online
Q&A session on 12 February when
the SWT managing director Stewart
Palmer answered over 700
questions, mostly from passengers
on the Portsmouth and Reading
lines.
He also received a petition with
over 1,000 signatures from
disgruntled passengers. In an open
letter to its customers, Stewart
summarised SWT’s response to
these important issues and I would
like to offer some thoughts from the
passenger viewpoint.
Stewart made a point about the
current overcrowding being the
result of an increase of 40 per cent
in passenger numbers over the last
10 years. However, when you look
at the impact of this you find an
inner suburban problem, not one
anywhere near Portsmouth or
Reading.
Longer distance travellers are
suffering much reduced quality of
service due to lack of capacity in
and around the capital. As the SWT
fleet manager has mentioned
recently, there is a requirement for a
purpose-built, high-acceleration,
inner suburban train to deal with
this problem, together with
extended platforms and improved
signalling. Passengers do not accept
that their inter-city trains should
perform this function as it does
now.
Stewart quoted from the new
franchise, saying: ‘The Department
for Transport in its invitation to
tender for the new South Western
franchise made it very clear that it
was asking all bidders to cater for
significant further growth without
the provision of additional
infrastructure.’
How can SWT square this circle?
It is obvious that by accepting this
as a pre-condition to the franchise it
accepts that customer service must
fall and fares must rise significantly.
Even so, there is an increasing
realisation amongst informed
observers that SWT were perhaps in
no position to fight this, however
unrealistic it appeared.
The real fight is now for the
future development and financing
of Britain’s rail system. The rail
companies, passenger groups,
unions and staff throughout the
industry should now work together
to reject Treasury dictat that can
only result in a steady increase in
overcrowding, increasing fares and
stress for the hard pressed
passenger.
And perhaps a more strident
rebellion by those caught in the
crush on Britain’s trains.
Mike Johnson
Wokingham
Berkshire
Ian J Turnbull,
Alderley Edge, Cheshire
Toilet conundrum
You report on the National Passenger
Survey in the March issue and highlight
the fact that 75 per cent of Merseyrail
passengers find our on-train toilets
unsatisfactory.
It would have been far more
newsworthy to report that 10 per cent
think they are ‘satisfactory or good’
and another 15 per cent think they are
neither one nor the other.
Why is this more newsworthy? We
don’t actually have any toilets on our
trains at all as our average journey
length is just 6.5 miles!
Rudi Boersma
Media & corporate affairs
Merseyrail
And another thing…
Some time has elapsed since the
publication of my ‘Emperor’s new
clothes’ letter in Rail Professional, but
still the railway companies blunder on
with cramped uncomfortable seats on
ever shorter trains.
Only now there are less seats per
passenger and the passengers are
beginning to get rather fed up. FGW is
coming under fire, commuters on the
Portsmouth Line are already fed up
with their ‘new’ suburban trains and
standards have not increased on routes
such as the franchise formerly known
as Thameslink.
Passenger unhappiness has existed
for some time and the railway
continues to, for the most part, ignore
it. But now it is becoming more vocal
as the numbers continue to swell.This
is obvious.
And yet like the emperor with his
new clothes, the railway industry has
still to accept that in the eyes of
most passengers, their ‘service’ is
unravelling through threadbare to
nakedness!
Marie Brume
Schoolteacher, former long distance
rail user and new motorist!
Manchester
Germany beat us to it
I have just read the February edition of
Rail Professional. Much of interest as
usual, but one point. In the news section
in the story ‘Coming soon to a tunnel
near you’, you mention the ads in
Heathrow’s tunnels as being the first of
their kind in Europe.
Not so, there is a system operating in
a section of tunnel of the Munich S-bahn
network which shows an older lady
apparently running alongside the train.
Exactly what she was advertising I
cannot remember, but the system is in
place, working, and quite entertaining!
Neil Kendall
Route freight manager
Network Rail
APRIL 2007 : RAIL PROFESSIONAL
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