Train operators seem to revel in making life difficult
Train travel is becoming more of a hassle almost daily and much of it is down to the way that the train operators delight in making life more difficult for their passengers. I was a consultant on the recent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary Train journeys from hell which was screened on March 21st but initially I was reluctant to appear on it because the title, which had been set in ...
TfL wants cake and eat it
The business plan for Transport for London due to be approved tomorrow is a brilliant piece of magic. It manages to combine £7.6bn worth of savings together with what it says is the greatest programme of investment in 80 years. Bits of this are true - there is a great amount of investment coming through, with Crossrail, the Tube upgrades and bits of nonsense, some enjoyable, like the cable car ...
Greenest is difficult to understand
In what conceivable way can the Budget be deemed to be Green? While motorists have seen costs rise recently, they are still doing jolly well compared with other transport users. I bumped into Lord Adonis a couple of days ago and he was moaning about the fact that bus useage had gone done by a third in ten years in Birmingham and yet National Express had pushed up fares by ...
Rail 666: New trains are based on old thinking
Nothing is ever simple on the railways. In most other industries, the requirement for new equipment, leads, in a straightforward manner, to a specification of what is needed and the placing of an order. This never happens in the railways because technical decisions soon become embroiled in wider political issues that raise financial problems that rebound back on technical questions. The cycle gets more and more vicious and no one, ...
ORR gets it wrong again
As expected, the Office of Rail Regulation has decided to drop its prosecution against Jarvis over the Potters Bar accident. Network Rail, which has pleaded guilty, is left to take the rap, even though it was its predecessor, Railtrack which was responsible at the time of the accident in 2002.
In a way, this is entirely sensible. Jarvis went bust and only its administrators remain. However, ORR knew this when it ...
Customer focus – oh yeah
This is a rant, but only in the rail industry could you get a helpline that, well, can't help you. I lost my senior railcard when my wallet was stolen and tried to replace it a week ago but it was not sent. So I rang up the helpline number for senior railcards listed on the website and when I started explaining what happened, the lady said I would have ...
