Many commuters in London and the South East may currently feel like their train journeys are ruining their lives. Continuing disruption, a temporary emergency (reduced) timetable, sinkholes and heatwaves all contributed to a summer of discontent. Add in the public relationship breakdown between industry and unions, and it’s no wonder that trust has been eroded. So what can be done?
Passengers will welcome the recent appointment of a ‘hit squad’ – we hope to see it produce an honest, realistic plan that leads to a return of reliable services. Importantly, this must be done in public. There is already an ‘improvement plan’ for the sector, but we passengers have no way of knowing how the railway is performing against it. This openness is a key factor in rebuilding trust. Back in 2014 we explored passengers’ relationship with the rail industry. Given the billions being invested in the network, passengers’ perception of the industry was already unflattering.
There are three elements to a good relationship: service (getting the day-to-day performance right, providing helpful staff and value for money tickets); relationship (clear, accurate, timely information provided proactively to passengers); and judgement (being seen to show good leadership). So how is the railway performing on these other aspects while performance is poor?
Social media provides a constant stream of timely feedback that could be put to good use. To capture this data in a useful way, we asked passengers of Southern and the wider Thameslink network to use our travel diary app. Because this prompts users to record their experience every journey, we get a sense of their overall experience rather than just the times they are annoyed enough to vent on social media. It also helped us to show to the operators the ‘human’ side of disruption - the impact in real life of cumulative shorter delays or poor information.
Some of the comments included:
“Having only one service an hour into Brighton available makes the commute to work rather stressful - missing the train by a few minutes makes me over 60 minutes late to my client in Hove.”
“One impact of the new timetable is that I have stopped making many trips for leisure purposes. I know that I’m not alone in this. That might not seem as critical as journeys to work, but this must hit businesses in the leisure and tourism sector.”
“Due to the special timetable with no London Bridge trains from my station, Thameslink trains are too crowded to board. Again made the three-mile trip to Morden by bike, then took the Tube.”
Almost immediately we made two ‘wins’ for passengers from this anecdotal feedback: we told Govia Thameslink Railway that passengers were being sold tickets for services that weren’t running, so it was able to address the information given; and people were reporting Passenger Assist services not being ready or not turning up at all, so it put effort into sorting that out quickly.
While there is still no offer on the table for better compensation recognising the impact of sub-30 minute delays, we were pleased to see the operator offering enhanced compensation and actively encouraging passengers to claim for delays. It has reported a significant increase in Delay Repay claims, which we welcome.
We want to see the railway get back to ‘business as usual’ as soon as possible. But in the meantime, we also want to see:
- A one-off gesture to recognise the extreme problems faced up to now, such as a lump sum of compensation.
- Improved compensation from now on - preferably this would mean the immediate implementation of the Government’s welcome commitment to lower the Delay Repay threshold to 15 minutes.
- A fares freeze for season ticket renewals.
