Without wishing to sound vitriolic or in any way vindictive here, there is a very old saying that I'm sure you are familiar with Mr Howie: "Eat sh*t. Fifty million flies can't be wrong!" In other words, the numbers mean nothing in so far as quality of service can be measured. Many of the poor souls travelling by train these days are a captive audience with little or no reasonable alternative.rjhowie wrote:...outstanding feature is the hard truth fact that more people still use rail than BR days...
For all of the complaints that B.R. got there were never as many, nor for so long, regarding such an appalling lack of service altogether. Timetables mean nothing to these so-called privateers - as the recent debacle of wholesale timetable(?) changes shows. They've had TWO YEARS OF PLANNING invested in these smart-arse changes (plans that all 3 Rail Unions told them from day one WOULD NOT WORK!) and all they've come up with is the biggest cock up in railway history. Trains are cancelled as flippantly as one might discard a sweet wrapper into a litter bin (though sadly it seems most people prefer to discard their litter straight onto the pavement these days.) Trains vanish overnight from so-called "ammended timetables" so that they're further ammended - but passengers only find out when they get to the station in the morning whilst trying to get to work. One Southern region lady passenger said in the press this morning that her local station had 12 trains an hour to London in the rush hour. She got to the station this morning to find out that 6 of them have completely vanished from the timetable altogether - and that's before any cancellations come into play. Another gentleman reported that he'd been sacked due to his continued lateness whilst others complained that they, too, were facing disciplinary procedures at work for appalling timekeeping. B.R. never achieved anything like the poor standard of timekeeping achieved by these private companies. They got people to work on time more times than not, which is more than can be said for today's lot.
The key factors in going forward have to be common sense and a clamp down on the massive amounts of corruption. As neither will likely come into play in the foreseeable future we may as well all just resign ourselves to being ripped off - or buy a bike.
Cheers
Dave