'one' hell of a commute

Seth is a queasy rider...

This one is a bit of a rant, so if you like to be cheered up, look elsewhere.

Greetings to any of you punters who have to use a private train operator to get to work, and particularly anyone unfortunate enough to be using the daftly titled 'one' Railway from Essex into Liverpool Street. This line has never been quite right since the Hatfield Rail Crash of autumn 2000 led to the imposition of a vast number of speed restrictions on the rail network, some of which are still in place. Nonetheless, over the last 5 years there has been some general improvement in punctuality. However, over the last 6 weeks or so, this process has gone into reverse - sometimes literally.

A typical example: my favourite train, which is meant to arrive at my home station at 7.59, is almost always late arriving, and usually becomes yet later as it heads towards Liverpool Street. Yesterday, it arrived 45 minutes late due to the combination of 'slippery rails' (???) and 'a points failure outside Liverpool Street.' At least this time they bothered to come up with an excuse. Most of the time you don't even get one. The on-board train announcer (pre-recorded) sounds like Jonathan Ross on downers and the platform announcer (again pre-recorded) sounds like Patricia Hewitt. The train company shows a complete failure to acknowledge that there is even a problem, and have not even bothered to reply to two emails from the head of the local rail users' group asking for an explanation for the delays. And why should they? They are raking it in running a completely unaccountable privatised monopoly service. Last month it was announced that fares will rise again this year by 4.3%, but the rail operator will easily increase the number of tickets they sell nonetheless as the Essex population is expanding at a steady rate with no extra increase in transport capacity. Last week's Eddington Review recommended investment to clear 'pinch points' and bottlenecks and that's fair enough, as there are many of those, but in the long run large-scale investment in extra track capacity will be needed to avoid the situation some lines are already at (e.g. SWT into Waterloo) where commuters are jammed in like some kind of battery animal.

There's not enough space in one blog post to go into the intricate details of what needs to be done but I will return to it in future. In the meantime, any frustrated fellow commuters should have a look at the Traindelays website, which gives details of delays that have occured - which operator, start and destination stations, and the length of delay. If you're a season ticket holder you can use this information to make a compensation claim. If you're feeling particularly wicked you can of course make claims for journeys you haven't even been on - for example, if you were working at home that day, or travelling on a different time train. The operator aren't gonna know that, are they? You could always give that extra money to charity - or donate it to a party which might build a better transport system. None of the main parties has a clue, so it's gonna take a f***ing revolution to sort this one out, and at least this is an issue that really gets people going.

Last week's edition of the Essex Chronicle (not the best newspaper ever but better than the gauntlet of freesheets I have to run every time I walk to Liverpool Street in the evenings... but that's tomorrow's post, probably) mentioned that commuters were planning a "fare strike", which sounds great until you realise that most of these people are season ticket holders who have paid their fares in advance. Hello, people? The monopoly capitalist scum have seen you coming and they have already cleared your pockets out. Come back when you've got a truckload of AK47s and we'll discuss 'one''s terms for surrender. You don't need to actually fire the goddamn thing, just look like you mean business when you stroll into the 'one' offices in Oliver's Yard, EC1, threaten the director a bit and I think you'll find those trains will start to improve. Much more effective than trying to assault the station staff who don't have any control over the train company anyway, and are under pressure themselves... I also found this blog for the inside view from the ticket collectors.

Anyway that's enough railing for now.