CD Traveller » Passenger Focus

National Train Day

Editor — Sat, 07 May 2011 09:39:56 +0000

SouthWest Train

Yes its National Train Day today, but not here. This is an American day to celebrate the benefits of the train. An annual event, this year it coincides with the 40th anniversary of Amtrak, the provider of long distance train travel in the US. In 2010 185 different events took place in the US to celebrate the day. And what do we do?
So the Americans celebrate their railways but do we? We rely on trains more than Americans do yet most of the stories we get are complaints about service, punctuality, pricing and cleanliness. We envy the speed of bullet trains in Japan and want high speed rail connections between our cities so that we have alternatives to air but then wage war when the track is due to be laid. No mainline train company celebrates their anniversary probably because most haven’t been around that long and the government fiddles with the franchises. Not many train companies are lamented, the Wrexham and Shropshire apart, when they cease to exist eg National Express East Coast and Connex South Eastern
We celebrate steam. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway Company has its 175th anniversary at the moment and Newtown station in Wales is about to have their 150th anniversary. But, on-a-day-to-day basis we don’t laud the rail service we have. Should we? Do we take it for granted? Does any other country have a National Train Day?
The answer to the last question seems to be no. No other country apart from the US has such a day. As to whether we take our rail service for granted, we probably do. Its only when someone suggests a closure of a line or a service is withdrawn that we notice it. Up until a few years ago we had no Sunday service on our line. Now although some would say we still don’t since it seems forever closed at weekends due to engineering works, when it does run it is used since we have no Sunday bus service either. But when trains don’t run they are missed
So I think it a rather laudable idea and one we might copy over here. Passenger Focus could use it, for example, to hand out awards to the train operator with the best customer satisfaction scores in the country over a 12 month period. Operators could use it to give guided tours over their facilities so we could understand better how complex running a railway has become. It might go a little away to giving some pride back to our railways and to remind us what we have.

Trains versus Planes

adrian — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:00:15 +0000

Some days ago I wrote that I couldn’t remember the last time we had such a good weather forecast for an Easter holiday. It has turned out that this has been the warmest Easter since 1949. So many of us have been out and about making the most of it. Car mostly, but for longer journeys the train has been the answer. The number of people heading out of Paddington on Thursday night to the west country or out of Kings Cross or Euston to the north gave witness to that but was this the best way to go?
Last week Oliver Smith in the Daily Telegraph ran a story about how the fares on half of our most popular routes were cheaper by air than they were by train. It pointed out that this was despite massive increases in APD and fuel increases to boot. On April 8th they rang around to check fares for travel three days later and then two and a half months later on June 27th. They used the National Rail website for train fares and Skyscanner for air. The differences were surprising. Compare two routes, London to Glasgow and Bristol to Glasgow. For the fare in three days’ time to Glasgow by rail was £82 by plane from London and £100 from Bristol. The train equivalents were £114.70 and £146.40. For travel on 27th June the air fare from London was £30 and from Bristol, £57. But by train, the price was £66 from London and £98.50 from Bristol. I would have expected that the train fare would have been cheaper some 10 weeks away but on these routes, air still won. Why? After all, we as the state subsidise the railways and don’t subsidise air travel (except on certain “social routes” such as in the highlands of Scotland and the air route from North to South Wales.)
Usually, in studies like this, fares for travel the day after or close to that are always pricier and the further away you can book the cheaper they become. But to find a disparity like this makes a number of questions come to mind which neither the spokespeople from Passenger Focus nor Which? Travel addressed. If rail is more expensive should we hand the running of the railways to Michael O’Leary who runs Ryanair or Carolyn McCall who runs easyJet in order to cut prices or at least remove the £3.7 billion subsidy we give just to Network rail? Should major stations be expanded into huge retail centres so that retail sales can subsidise the cost of the stations and the rail infrastructure? Is competition an issue? Getting to Glasgow from London means using Virgin Trains or a slower East Coast train service via Edinburgh. From Bristol, its Cross Country and Virgin. But from Bristol the only direct air service is easyJet. From London you have BA, easyjet and bmi. So it appears competition, at least on the Bristol route, is not an issue? easyJet still offers a better price despite having a monopoly service.
The question remains. Why, given its subsidy, is rail often more expensive than air when we want to travel?

Hammering the Traveller

adrian — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 09:32:05 +0000

Early January means one thing to many travellers. The time of increased rail fares. This year the average increase is 5.8% which is well above the rate of inflation. But that disguises a range of price rises varying from the high to the outrageous for this year train companies can decide which fares go up or not. The government rule is that prices go up by the retail price index plus 1% apart from two lines, Southeastern and West Yorkshire where it is RPI plus 3%.
Passenger Focus, the consumer watchdog covering the railways has pointed out that a Norwich to London anytime return goes up by 14% and Canterbury to London goes by nearly 13%. But Travelmole, the online travel trade e-letter has found that a London monthly fare from Hornsey to Stevenage has gone up by 46.2% from £194.40 to £284.20 which may only be about £90 but is it over £1,000 extra a year to find.
Why should we face inflation leaping prices when many of us won’t receive pay rises this year? It is because of two features say the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC). The first is that the government wants the general taxpayer to provide a smaller subsidy so that travellers pay a truer price for their journey and secondly because of a need to invest in new trains and better infrastructure. We’ve heard this poppycock for years and many would question what improvements there have been particularly given the service levels over the recent month due to the snow. What new trains and carriages? What electrification? What improved maintenance rosters so that I still have trains at the weekend? Passenger Focus says that half the people surveyed said that they didn’t consider rail travel as value for money.
To be fair though, when I checked just now, my regular single Leeds to London fare, booked in advance is still the same £30 that it has been for the last couple of months. But not all of us can plan like this.
We are told more people are travelling by train than ever before yet is it because they want to or they have to? Commuters into the major cities have little option having just one train operating company to use. They can use a car but parking, the time it takes to travel a few miles and fuel prices make that an expensive operation. What happened to getting cars of the road and promoting public transport as a green alternative? What happened to cutting down on congestion. Yes these are old arguments, well rehearsed and trotted out over the years but still relevant. There were two fairly lame interviews this morning, one on Sky with Christian Wolmar, the rail expert and the other on BBC Breakfast with Ashwan Kumar of Passenger Focus and Michael Roberts of ATOC which used some of the arguments but provided no new ideas or advice to travellers.
Railways are used for holidays, day trips, short breaks and are an important feature of tourism. Make them unviable and numbers will drop and there will be the clamour to close lines and save money. That leads to revenue and visitor decline in parts of the country where economic regeneration is needed.
So here are some alternative suggestions which may be new but probably aren’t.
1 Every railway franchise area should have at least two train operating companies working the lines. Competition could help
2 If that idea is unacceptable break the day into 24 one hour units and let train companies bid for which hours of the day they want to operate trains in. They cannot be awarded two consecutive hour long periods so that the fares from 7-8am should be different from 8-9am which would allow commuters and travellers to decide which company they travel with.
3 Treat stations like airports. Rail companies bid for slots and if A gets the 8am from Manchester to Newcastle, there would be nothing (other than platform availability) to stop B running an 8.05 on the same route.
4 Nationalise the whole rail network and treat it as infrastructure for economic regeneration and use some of the sums wasted at the old regional development agencies as investment. Market the rail network abroad as a viable linked-up alternative for getting around with more 7 day passes, 14 day passes and books of £10 vouchers which only cost £7.50 each and which could be used to buy tickets.
5 Use underused stations like Bradford Forster Square, Harrogate, Gloucester and Perth so that there can be alternative services like the Cheltenham-Maesteg one
5 Stop buck passing between government and the rail operating companies.

Quangos and the Holidaymaker

Editor — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:57:01 +0000

CD-Traveller (25 Sept. 2010) referred to a list of quangos that the government was planning to close, merge or retain. Yesterday the “official” list was published. Going through the list of hundreds affecting the holidaymaker and the traveller, we are not sure that we’ll notice much difference.
Starting with Consumer Focus, the body that handles general customer complaints, this will be abolished but its role will be taken over by the Citizens Advice Bureau which most of us are familiar with anyway. Visit Britain and Visit England will remain as will English Heritage and Historic Royal Palaces. A number of museums that I never knew were quangos survive as they are and this extensive list is British Museum, Horniman, Jeffrye, Imperial War, Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, National Gallery, National Maritime Museum, National Museum of Science and Industry, National Museums Liverpool, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Royal Armouries, Sir John Soane’s Tate, Victoria & Albert and finally the Wallace Collection. The Churches Conservation Trust survives as does the Heritage Lottery Fund. (to which attractions and sites can apply for money)
British Waterways which has a brief looking after canals and rivers, over 2,000 miles of them, will be revamped as a charity similar to the National Trust so anglers, narrow boat holidaymakers and others won’t probably notice a great change. In Norfolk, the Broads Authority survives as do all the national parks’ authorities and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) which is responsible for the ATOL bonding scheme survives so that means, we take it that the body which looks after complaints about airlines/airports, Air Transport Users Council, (AUC) will also survive intact since it comes under their wing.
Passenger Focus is the consumer body for rail and bus issues and they survive but they will be “substantially reformed” to focus on the key role of protecting passengers. We suspect it will take a while before we know what that means.

The Role of the Passenger

adrian — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:23:10 +0000

What is the role of the passenger in any industrial dispute?

To listen to argument after argument knowing that they can have little influence? To tolerate politicians with fairly well known attitudes who spoke them before the dispute and who will speak the same afterwards? To know that each side will say they regret the disruption that it will cause passengers but that there was no other way? To realise that they will be the ones inconvenienced but who can have no say or sway in the decision of either side?

Is short, then the passenger has to grin and bear it.

In any dispute there are 3 partners, the company, the employees and the customers. The company and the employees will discuss and negotiate. The only time the customers become involved is when decisions have been made. The right they then have is to buy the product or not. They have no role in whether the product is available or not. Once the product is available they are represented by consumer rights’ organisations. In the case of airlines, that is the Air Transport Users Council (AUC). In the case of railways (since we seem to have a strike by signalmen which will disrupt train services) there is {Passenger Focus. Their role is to almost arbitrate over any relevant problem after it has occurred and which cannot be resolved directly between the customer and the company. They don’t get involved beforehand so the only news on the AUC website home page is the fact that a strike is occurring, the same on the Passenger Focus home page. Even if they were aware of passengers’ feelings they could not or did not make representations to either party in advance of the strike.

Should they have made their/our views known to the company and the union? Should passengers/customers have a right in law to be consulted prior to a strike since we are the ones to be inconvenienced? And if we are to be represented, how? Do bodies like the AUC or Passenger Focus represent us? Should they canvas views in advance? Should there be passenger panels with each airline as happens in the rail industry? Won’t passengers always object to anything that disrupts their holidays/travel despite the reasons either side might have that leads to industrial action?

We can influence companies like airlines by not using them (unless they have a monopoly on a route) but how do we influence unions to take notice of us?

I see no easy answer. Any thoughts?

Railways and Customer Satisfaction

adrian — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:51:59 +0000

It is unusual that customer satisfaction gets mentioned by a government. It merits interest especially if it looks as though there is genuine interest rather than lip service in what passengers think.

Lord Bradshaw who worked for various parts of British Rail in his career asked whether additional measures of customer satisfaction would be added to the requirements when companies bid for new rail franchises.

Since 1999 passengers have been asked twice a year on behalf of the rail consumer watchdog, Passenger Focus, a series of questions including being asked to rate satisfaction with a number of elements of the service provided. Called the National Passenger Survey, they ask about 25,000 passengers twice a year what they think of the services provided by the different rail companies. The survey results for last autumn are due to be published in early February and, as previously, we will let you know the results.

Anyway back to the plot. It appears additional targets on satisfaction were included in the September 2009 renewal franchise to Southern Railway. And Lord Adonis has said that these wider, exacting targets will be included in all future franchise targets.

It is quite difficult to measure satisfaction. The week that you ask people shouldn’t be one where there is snow creating major delays otherwise satisfaction levels slump and you are not being fair to the railway company. Equally, you don’t want it be just in quiet times so Passenger Focus tries to do it throughout the day to try and achieve fairness.

But remember the National Passenger Survey is not the be all end all. Each franchised railway company has a passenger panel that you can try and join as well.

And when you get approached over the next few months to fill in the Spring 2010 survey do just that. Because what Passenger Focus can’t measure is what you think of the rail service if you don’t tell them

Passenger Focus

Editor — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:39:20 +0000

From the website

What is Passenger Focus?
We are the independent passenger watchdog. Our mission is to get the best deal for passengers.

We are an independent public body set up by the Government to protect the interests of passengers.

For more information: http://www.passengerfocus.org.uk/

Trains Become No-Frills?

adrian — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:22:00 +0000

I write this as I travel on the National Express early morning service to Leeds. It’s not very busy in my coach despite the fact that all but 8 seats have little cards indicating they are reserved for parts or all of the journey.
National Express have announced that, as from this weekend, they are going to charge a fiver return if you want to make sure you have a seat. Passenger Focus ha provided a quote saying this is not right and two union leaders have joined in the chorus of disapproval. Bob Crow from RMT calls it bleeding passenger dry and Gerry Doherty from TSSA says that the charge is mugging passengers. Norman Baker, the Liberal MP says that seat shouldn’t be a luxury and the Yorkshire Post is running this story on it’s front page with quotes from other M.P’s.
Now we have just left Stevenage and none of the reserved empty seats were taken. And that is my point. As this train gets fuller, there may well be people standing at the end of the carriage. Why shouldn’t they have a seat? Some passengers check whether anyone is using the seat on that sector of the journey and occupy it. Others look and see the reservations and move on.
National Express claims this is attempt to discourage people from reserving seats on a number of trains. Critics, as I have said, see it as a money making exercise. It won’t apply to all seats. Season ticket holders and advance purchase tickets will be unaffected.
If it counts out unnecessary empty seats, well and good. If it is just a ploy to make more money, we’ll soon know.

Rail Passenger Satisfaction

adrian — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:46:00 +0000

The results of the autumn 2008 survey by Passenger Focus are out this morning. To remind you, Passenger Focus is the body that monitors the rights of train passengers and each half year it interviews 25,000 passengers with paper based surveys at railway stations and on trains across the country.
Overall satisfaction is up across the three nations (higher in Scotland & Wales than England) but “value for money” still lags behind and this was done before the quite large hike in passenger fares in January. The survey for this half might show a further decline due to those increases and the tightening of people’s purses. Or will it?
Part of the problem with customer satisfaction is understanding the survey and how to interpret it. For example anyone answering that “value for money” question in January just after the rises is more likely to be unhappy. As you move in time further away from that price rise the impact is lessened because people have got use to paying the fare. So should you look at January passengers differently from those trabvelling in June?
Secondly if your train is overcrowded and your standing you satisfaction levels will be lower. Since there are fewer rail travellers at the moment (at least on all the long distance trains I’ve been on since the beginning of the year) satisfaction levels will rise because there are more available seats. The more empty seats the higher the satisfaction levels.
Anyway enough carping. It’s good news that we travellers seem to be more satisfied with the services we receive. So congratulations to Heathrow Express, c2c, Chiltern, Scotrail and Merseyrail who all achieved higher than 90% satisfaction.
The next target? To reach some of the figures achieved by the airlines

Rail Fares up & the Merry-go-Round goes on

adrian — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:17:00 +0000

For a lot of people today is the first day back at work and here in the south east, the snow may not help despite the fact that we have no more than a couple of centimetres of the stuff.
What will annoy people is the annual party every year when rail prices increase. I thought Anthony Smith of Passenger Focus made a good point when he said that supermarkets are cutting prices, airlines are cutting prices yet rail companies are raising them.
This year, lots of forecasters are saying that Britons will holiday at home. Not everyone wants to take the car and the train is the obvious alternative, even more so for days out. Even with family passes, youth passes, day returns and all the other available discount schemes, it still is expensive and out of kilter with other forms of transport. Let’s say I fancied going from London to Canterbury to see the cathedral for the day. A cheap day return has gone up by 6.3%. But if I wanted to go to Bristol the day return fare hasn’t gone up at all.
Soon I have to go to Glasgow. Does the train company really believe I am going to pay £271 for an open ticket or even £108.80 for a day return? Not on your life. I’ll fly because it will be cheaper.
The regulator approved these prices. The government set the price rise formula for the regulator to use. Passenger Focus objects as it does every year and ATOC (Association of Train Operating Companies)justifies it as it does every year saying that the government has said that the subsidy should drop by 40% by 2014.
But this year we have a bonus. We will have an extra 265,000 trains to go on. Shame we won’t be able to afford them for our holidays. Looks like the car again!