simoncox.com train times

This weekends rail crash has brought a bit of sobriety back to this blog and I do appreciate that there are people in mourning over lost ones.

At times like this I have contemplated what would happen if the trains that I commute in derailed. There have been a couple of spots in recent years where the track has been so poorly maintained that passenger have been thrown about the carriage. One was at Forest Hill on the fast up line and the second and much more serious one was between New Cross and London Bridge right opposite the reclamation heat plant. Both were around for several months it really did feel like the carriage was about to derail. The consequences on such a packed train would be horrendous. After the Clapham Junction rail crash I understood that the inquest advised that overcrowding must stop.

On the other hand though I am wondering if anyone has talked to Peugeot about the car on the Ufton Nervat level crossing... Lets hope it wasn’t a new car ad shoot that had gone horribly wrong.

Looks like rail commuters have a lot to gripe about following the introduction of new timetables yesterday. Many services have been re-timed so that the journey takes longer. The cynic’s amongst us will assume that is so the rail companies can meet their time targets easier. Some services have been cut and some added so the daily commuting pattern is disrupted. Apparently the timetable out of Waterloo has not been changed for about 40 years! The changes will seriously upset some people’s lives.

Huge shake-up for rail commuters - BBC
Big changes for rail passengers - BBC

Railways in Crisis - BBC special

Apparently all the train companies that have services arriving in London have reported improvements in their arrival times. Bah. I heard this on the local news last night and it means nothing. 1 train getting in on time means an improvement and that could be down to pure luck.

Meanwhile I have to apologise to the young lady reading her book in the doorway to South Croydon Station this morning keeping out of the rain. Unfortunately I was thinking of a great many interesting things and forgot to lower my brolly which hit the door frame showering her with the vast quantity of water that I had accumulated on the walk there. I received an exclamation of "thanks..." which snapped me out of my reverie and elicited an apology from me before I walked onto the platform with a large grin. (Teehee.)

So a tube driver goes through seven red signals in a row. That in my books is endangering the passengers lives he was put in charge of and the lives of the passengers in the preceding train.
So what do London Underground do? Demote him. Well thats not good enough. This man is still able to put passengers lives ay risk.

And what do the Union do? Well what would you do? Go on strike of course.

As I am sure all tube passengers would agree with me this state of affairs is appalling. Tube driver Unions use safety as an issue every single time they don't get their demands and this time they are backing someone who has put lives at risk.

Some tube drivers are decent people doing a hard job and others should not be allowed near a train, even to write down its number.

Thursday was "Meet the Managers" morning at London Bridge. I had forgotten until I saw thier temporary stand on the concourse. The managers are always recogniseable by thier long charcoal coats that passengers only ever see on days like this or on TV when they are apologising for something.

I met a nice chap who had no idea why the 08:31 from South Croydon had been 8 minutes late two days running as he catches the train from Hove to Victoria. I didn't appreciate the 'I'm a commuter too' attitude! The chap that could give me the answer was engaged with some commuters already so they took my e-mail address and said the would write to me...

I saw the poster just before Christmas at the bottom of the escalators from the Jubilee line at London Bridge. They are shutting the escalators up to the London Bridge mainline station until May. I didn't have time to get a leaflet to find out why they are doing this and I suspect that most commuters have ignored the posters because it's difficult to stop and read them when you are in a moving crowd.

This is potentially going to add five to ten minutes to my journey each way which means up to 26 hours of my life lost to an extra bit of commuting. How sad am I for working that out. The thing that bothers me about this is that most people will try and use the Northern line entrance because it is closer than the Borough entrance. The Northen line entrance is usually crowded because the station staff often have to close the barriers while the platforms clear. With the extra numbers of Jubilee Line commuters trying to use this entrance it could become a massive bottle neck.

Let's see what happens tommorow.

Well the initial threat of the Jubilee line escalators at London Bridge being switched off till May has not quite turned out as expected - which for once is a good thing. One escalator of the six (two flights of three) is boxed off and being attended too. To cope with the passenger movements the staff have introduced a one way system - up only in the morning rush hour and down only in the evening. If you are travelling in the 'wrong' direction you will have to use the Northern Line entrance/exit or the entrance/exit into Borough High Street.

For once the disruption has been minimal and its working out just fine.

11.5 minutes late is not good news for anybody especially us the commuters. What worries me is that we are becoming complacent to this awful service because we have no real alternative (well I don't). Apparently it will be August 2006 before Network Rail achieves the 86.1 percent of trains running on time that was last achieved before October 2000. there were lots of promises from Network Rail when it was initially set up. After a huge amount of Government money pumped into it all we have seen is deaths in horrific rail crashes and increasingly later running trains. Chairman of Network Rail Ian McAllister has stated that they are 'raising the bar on train punctuality' - I ask why were they allowed to lower it in the first place.

Cynical I may be but I have suffered, like all other rail commuters, years of neglect in the system and I will not now stand for the fake PR that's going to happen over the next couple of years on how they are improving the situation. Getting it back to where it was five years ago is not an improvement.

I cannot believe what I am reading about the tube driver union Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT). They are in talks with London Underground about safety of their drivers following the bombings and may ballot their members for strike action rewarding this matter.

RMT - you utter bastards.

Yes the drivers will be concerned but what about us passengers? What about us ordinary Londoners travelling around that are getting blown to itsy bitsy little bits. So what do the Union want - reinforced bomb proof 'I'm alright jack' steel driving cabs with bomb proof window? What about us? What do we get? At this point in time the RMT are a bunch of contemptible bastards. If you are a member I urge you to cancel your membership and join a different Union.

More on this at the BBCi.

This morning free Metro paper carried the headline "Why you can't sit down on the train".
Apparently in the last 10 years we have had a passenger increase of 40% but only a 20% increase in services. However it has been apparent to me that to make 20% more train services Connex (the previous company that ran the services from South London) and Southern have done this without increasing the amount of stock - and to do this they have shorterned trains - thereby increasing passenger discomfort and more importantly putting our lives at greater risk.

The artical mentions that passenger Groups say some peak services operate at 50% above permitted levels of overcrowding. Who officially measures this? And what are the permitted levels?

Apparently we are reaching "third world levels" so expect passengers on the roofs soon.

The Rail Passengers Council are holding a public meeting:

The Health and Safety Commission’s (HSC) Railway Industry Advisory Committee (RIAC) will host its fifth public meeting on Wednesday 2 November at 6.30pm, at the Health & Safety Executive's London Headquarters, Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge, London, SE1 9HS. The event is free and doors will open at 6pm.

In todays Metro on page 14 there is a small piece titled "How to beat the pain of train travel". Basically a researcher, Jonathon Houdmont, is suggesting that the rail companies market rail travel in the same way that cut price airlines market their flights. Let me quote from the article:

Although overcrowding contributes to stress, it is also caused by commuters feeling out of control, said the institute of Work, Health and Organisations at Nottingham University. So if passengers - like those on cheap airlines - are told it's going to be busy but they will arrive on time, they are more likely to tolerate the conditions, added the report.

Erm - not me mate. The conditions I travel to work in are worse than is legally allowed to transport livestock to the slaughterhouse. If you tell me its going to be busy I'm going to say "no shit Sherlock!" and I am going to be rather upset that you think I am stupid. You want to lower my expectations then you lower the price of my ticket. Full bloody stop.

The cheap airlines offer an alternative and you get a cheaper price. I have an alternative for getting to work - the bus. It's a lot cheaper and would take me 2 hours to get to work as opposed to the 50 minutes it takes on the train and tube. I can't drive (the equivalent of a personal jet) so that not an option and cycling (the equivalent of a hang-glider) is too dangerous and will take as long as the bus. So I am already on the premium method of transport available to me. If BA announced to its passengers that the plane is very busy so they were going to make you stand all the way - you might get a tad upset but you would not lower your expectations as you paid for a safe seated journey.

Houdmont goes onto state:

You are stuck on a crowded train and you have been seriously delayed. You are late for work, your tired and in a bad mood. It means you may be less likely to perform well at work and, if this is happening to enough people, it has implications for the economy.

Well Houdmont - you cannot prop an economy up by hoodwinking the workers into thinking that their journey is tolerable. It don't wash. We don't fly bucket class 10 times a week - we do that twice a year perhaps and there is a big reward at the end of the flight not just a daily grind.

Perhaps the researchers in the green pastures of Nottingham should try commuting into London for a few weeks.
Who are these idiot researchers anyway?

(Actually Jonathon Houdmont is a Research Fellow - I think he's a silly fellow myself.)