I must say I travelled extensily around south wales by train for a couple days last week and all the trains I travelled on ran like clockwork.
I do take your point for the main part burners, and I would be the first one to err on the side of safety procedures, but having a husband who has to get up at 04.50 every morning to be sure of getting to work before 8am (living only 50 miles from London) and having him walk in the door no earlier than 19.30 if he leaves the office before 17.00, when we live no more than 2 mins walk from a main line station, is no joke day in and day out. That's not counting the days when he gets in at about 21.00!
I'm sorry, but I feel, strongly, that unless you pay the season ticket price and do the journey day in and day out, you really have no idea of the hell that the daily commute can be.
On the bright side, by comparison, traffic jams on the M25/M4, no longer hold the same horrors that they used to!
We've discussed this before, and I said my bit - but the train journey at the moment in this heat has to be experienced to be believed - there're rules that wont let cattle travel like this (quite rightly so)
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In the interests of impartialilty and fairness....
I recently travelled by West Coast Main Line from Preston to Euston and back and the journey both ways (apart from the family from hell on the way back) was a pleasure. Both trains got to their destinations early and there was a plentiful supply of food and drink available.
Going back ten years or so, I used to travel regularly by train to university open days and interviews and even then I had no trouble with delays etc.
For heaven's sake, I don't even have any trouble with Connex (yet!).
Perhaps I'm just lucky!
Cheers
Rob
"Lord of Lard"
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I am amused by your comment that even ten years ago you didn't have problems. In my experience the west coast line was excellent at that time and has deteriorated considerably in recent years. I used to live in merseyside and regularly commuted to london. The fastest express journey time was 2hrs 30mins and the slowest 2hrs 36 and these were run with excellent punctuality (Check what it is now). The last time I went to Liverpool (admttedly on a saturday) from Watford the train went via Wolverhampton and Birmingham and managed to take almost 4hrs. I certainly am no fan of this government who have have achieved precisely nothing in terms of any transport advance but I find it hilarious when the tories snipe at the railways. Do they really think we have forgotten who rushed through parliament the extremely badly thought through legislation to privatise BR just before they lost power?
SR
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Yeh I can appreciate using the trains for commuting can be a nightmare, I commuted in the late eighties and eventually I had to make alternative arrangements because it became a joke.
Unfortunatly I think we now have goverment who have given the railways up as a bad job, The SRA should be hitting the rail companies and network rail hard if they dont sort their act out and looking at ways to improve rail services, but for some of the latest franchasis available the main aim seems to be to save as much money as possible and reduce services. The Chairman Richard Bowkers latest idea Substitute buses, nice one.
Arriva seem to have recently got the new Welsh franchise on basically maintaining the existing service, presumably some of the other bidders probably wanted to reduce services.
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Try again...
>>Arriva seem to have recently got the new Welsh franchise.
Oh dear. If I'm remembering correctly, Arriva had the Miseryrail (sorry, Merseyrail) franchise taken off them as the service that they provided fell far short of that which was expected.
Good luck to all you poor commuters in Wales...
Cheers
Rob
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The thing you have to remember about the various franchises is that there isn't really much difference who actually runs it, the staff on the ground and most of the management remain the same. When one TOC leaves and another takes over there just isn't the scope for wholesale replacement of staff, and if you have the same staff you are likely to get the same operating methods employed.
Arriva inherited two very badly run and underfunded TOCs from MTL, Merseyrail and Northern Spirit. Merseyrail needed a lot of investment that wasn't available immediately and Merseytravel were intent on taking it over themselves so weren't too keen on aiding Arriva. Whether it being run by the PTE is a good thing or not is another question. Northern Spirit however, especially the Transpennine Express side has been transformed under Arriva with more services, better punctuality and longer trains. Arriva have good cause to be upset at losing TPX and the Welsh population have few worries that Arriva will not at least match the standards that the Nat Ex group had on W&B.
The one thing to be worried about really is that one of the few remaining non-bus TOCs (GB Railways) which also happens to have one of the best reputations is in the process of being taken over by First Group. Not that First Group are the worst of the TOC-owning bus companies, but none of them have the reputation of the likes of Sea Containers and GB Railways.
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Well As someone who lives near the main transpennine route and evens uses it ocasionaly you must tell me about this wonderful new arriva transpennine service because I havent seen it.
As far as I'm aware its pretty much the same as run by BR ten years ago, My last trip a few months involved standing in the middle of the carriage with the 2 coach unit carrying as many standing passengers as there were seated. The regulars said it was the same every weekend.
I'm not sure that the so called reputation of GNER is particularly well deserved, Yes they might have better puntuality than virgin but they inherited a modern east coast line with a modern fleet of trains, whereas virgin inherited clapped out trains and a clapped out west coast line. Virgin are putting massive investment into new trains what are GNER doing well they are finally refurbising there trains some 12 years after introduction BR used refubish there inter city stock afer about 8 years. Other than that they have leased 3 surplus eurostars hardly pushing the boat out.
I would agree that its a pitty that GB railways are being taken over as the rest of them leave a lot to be desired.
The transpennine route has long since deserved something better than the nasty little 158 units which currently work this route, lets hope firstgroup can deliver.
What Arriva are offering with the Wales and Borders isnt going to do much to get people out of thier cars.
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Just to correct a common myth, the Virgin publicity machine is very good at telling people that they are 'putting massive investment' into new trains. Completely untrue. The leasing company is buying the trains, Virgin is merely paying a monthly leasing charge.
Most of the current trains that Virgin runs are around 25 years old (Mk3), and were fully refurbished shortly before privatisation. I suspect that the maintenance has been cut back because they know that new trains are on the horizon - hence the reason why the air con often fails.
The Preston to London standard fare was around £175 two years ago, for that I did not even get a cup of tea (although at these fares standard class was always empty so getting a seat was no problem). I then had to pay a fiver to get out of the carpark. At that time Virgin seemed to run the service for their own convenience, trains were quite often cancelled or (very often), terminated short of their destination. I have not been on one since and not even new trains will persuade me. They need to get their customer focus right first.
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(Apologies to the moderators as this really is getting OT now, and would suggest that maybe uk.railway is a better place to discuss it although be prepared to be given direct, accurate and rail-biassed facts and opinions there)
I used the TPX services regularly from 1994 to 1998 when I use at uni in Liverpool to travel back to Durham. I quickly learned to travel as late as possible to get trains quiet enough for a seat. On one occasion about 3 trains were cancelled in succession so I was only just getting on a train in Liverpool when I should have been arriving at Durham. This was in the MTL days. Now, Arriva have obtained more units from Scotrail to alleviate capacity problems as well as resolved a very tricky pay dispute and do genuinely do as good as job as can be expected on the TPx route. Unfortunately, the local services aren't quite so good, but the circumstances mean there is only so much they can do.
The main trouble with franchises such as Arriva, CT, fNW etc are that the actual franchise ended a few years back but the SRA keep extending the management contracts (in some cases) or franchise by 12 months at a time. No business can justify massive investment when they don't know if they'll still be in a position to reap the rewards of that investment when it pays off. Further, for those that are on management contracts (Arriva and fNW) they simply can't invest any more than the SRA will let them - they effectively can only run the trains - any expenditure is down to the SRA. What many people don't realise is that a large number of TOCs are actually in this position - effectively owned by the SRA but for convenience the existing management are kept on to run them. Even the two Virgin franchises are run in this manner!
Firstgroup *should* be able to improve the TPx routes, but the only reason they can do more than Arriva is that they are being allowed to invest in new stock and given a period long enough to make that investment potentially pay off.
As for GNER, there are other factors to take in to account. They can't run many more trains than they do at the moment due to various capacity problems on the ECML that are a result of the 'on the cheap' way it was electrified due to treasury intervention. I doubt many motorways are build with a single lane each way because it would cost a bit more to build a wider bridge, but without thinking I can come up with two railway locations where the equivalent of this has happened, with the consequent operational problems.
GNER did have an advantage to start with, but they took advantage of it. The only arguable thing is that they could have started the stock refurb sooner, but then you also need to continue running a service while taking stock out for refurb so it's not a simple matter to arrange. Again, investment in new stock is hindered by the fact that rather than given then a decent extension to the franchise, the regulator only gave them another year.
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>>would suggest that maybe uk.railway is a better place to discuss it
I couldn't agree more.
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