Awaiting the 0830 Salisbury to Southampton service yesterday (13/08/07) my eye fell upon the front page story of The Times which reported the threatened legal action by First Group against the rail watchdog London TravelWatch. This is the story as reported by the BBC and here are some letters written in response to The Times and published on their online ‘paper’.
TravelWatch have issued a response to the article in The Times in which they say that after a series of talks FGW have agreed to withdraw the threat.
It makes me feel uneasy to think that a company who are clearly profiting greatly from providing a public service feel it perfectly reasonable to make the threat of legal action against the ‘watchdog’ that monitors service and performance on behalf of its customers (passengers). While I do not in any way advocate the incorrect pedaling of ‘facts’ I cannot help but think that this was a muscle-flexing exercise rather than one aiming to reveal the truth.
The daily experiences of those who used services on the First Great Western network in and outside London clearly demonstrate general levels of disappointment at the service provided. It is not possible to measure this ‘accurately’. It is much easier to get worked up about a delay or cancellation than an entire journey that runs on time, makes connections and is on a train with ample capacity for people and luggage, that is clean, not too hot and stuffy and with seats, aisles and windows that are clean and in a good state of repair (and perhaps even with a buffet cart that doesn’t aim to sell you Stella or Coke for breakfast).
All too often the indicators used in creating statistics which measure ‘service’ do not take into account the whole experience of the passenger from buying tickets to arriving at the destination (“that’s a different company, not our responsibility”). Of course reliability and punctuality are fundamental but on whose terms are these measured? At the moment passengers cannot claim any recompense for a delay of less than one hour. Therefore is a service reliable if it gets you to your destination anything up to 60 minutes later than you planned?
Yet we are in a position where we are squeezed into a corner, stuck with arguing about the technicalities of Service Level Commitments, themselves set by people who are unlikely to use the service, nor have made an effort to get to know the communication needs of difference places – or rather they have in terms of consulting with ‘partners’ and ‘stakeholders’ but little is actually acted upon, giving the illusion that views have been taken on board hiding the real desire for providing a minimum service (cheapest) for maximum profit.
Those who set the commitment (government) and those who are charged with providing it (train operators) too frequently pass the buck from one to another when problems are raised with little recourse to users. In addition, those independent bodies such as local authorities and watchdogs claim they have little influence or power to make a difference. So where are the facts in all this? What is the truth of it all and will we ever be in a position to raise criticism, and have it received without it being either stonewalled or countered with legal threats?