Friday 16th Febraury
First Great Western got my weekend off to a great start tonight with an horrendously overcrowded 17:22 service from Bristol Temple Meads. It was only 2 carriages and I spent the journey on one leg in a very warm corridor. Thankfully someone volunteered to sit on the toilet to give us a little bit more room. Poor chap had to keep opening the toilet door to find out where we were.
Completely unacceptable service from First Great Western. What a contrast there is between the First Great western services and those from South West trains. FGW have overcrowded trains consisting of a motley collection of filthly(inside and out) and creaky carriages. The South West trains service is like an upmarket airline. Shiny new, clean carriages, lovely seats. If only they had been given the franchise.
Completely unacceptable service from First Great Western. What a contrast there is between the First Great western services and those from South West trains. FGW have overcrowded trains consisting of a motley collection of filthly(inside and out) and creaky carriages. The South West trains service is like an upmarket airline. Shiny new, clean carriages, lovely seats. If only they had been given the franchise.
posted by www.loial.co.uk at 11:58 AM
9 Comments:
Would make no difference which company provided the service FGW , SWT, National Express etc. The spec. was fixed by the Department for Transport. All the apologies etc would make no difference.FGW had to give up units to Arriva, and others to One East Anglia. No choice in this. It is a fact that in exchange Arriva provided some units that had over 400 faults on them that needed fixing. That is under investigation by the DfT.
Keep up the pressure, but keep it focused! Tom Harris is the minister who is in charge and he is quite happy for you to put ALL the blame on the TOC's whilst he pleases his boss Gordon Brown.
That's interesting, because just this week I have a recieved a letter from the DfT saying that they did NOT stipulate the number of carriages with which to run the Greater Western Franchise. Is this a lie?
Oh and the 18:22 was no better. I came in on it ontime (i.e. 5 minutes early due to timetable padding) from Cardiff, but it left about 5 minutes late, and with people left on the platform at Bristol. When I eventually got off at Bath Spa it was gonna be leaving later still, because it took everyone ages to clamber over people to get off.
If the trains have more carriages not only will people be more comfortable, but they will also travel on time more often as it'll be easy to get on and off.
And just in case FGW havn't noticed. These services to the South Coast are always busier on Friday evenings with weekend travellers. Extra Carriages on a Friday might be sensible.
billyo.
technically it isn't a lie, but to all practical purposes it is a lie.
FGW could add more coaches if they wanted without permission from the DfT.
BUT... FGW are a commercial company who exist to make a profit - they will only add coaches if they have a commercial case for doing so (they don't and the DfT knows full well that they don't) or if the DfT forces them to add the coaches as a part of their franchise specification.
The DfT isn't stopping you or I from building a high speed magnetic leviation line between Bristol and Aberdeen in a technical sense we are free to do it, but in reality we are not free to do it because we don't have the money.
The whole franchise system is a scheme to privatise the blame for the crap service we get.
I don't think it matters if the fault lies with FGW or DfT. As passengers our contract is with FGW and so they are the ones who need to be complained to and compaigned against.
I wouldn't feel sorry for them, FGW is big enough and ugly enough to look after itself and noone forced it to take the franchise and no one is stopping them handling the keys back to DFT if they can't stand the heat.
So, the DfT did not fix the spec for the franchise.
So, FGW could add extra carriages.
So we must blame FGW for cramped conditions and late trains.
The DfT can be blamed however for a) giving the franchise to FGW, b) not taking action against FGW for running a shoddy service and c)for not protecting customers from outrageous fare rises.
The DfT is supposed to regulate certain fares, allowing only an inflation+1% rise on certain fares. These fares are supposed to include; routes into busy commuter areas, long distance saver tickets, areas where one company has a public transport monopoly and weekly season tickets.
Now, given that Bristol is a major commuter centre, that First Group run ALL public transport in Bath and that weekly season tickets and Saver Return tickets have both risen by nearly 13%. The DfT has failed to protect fares in the area on all counts. That is reason to complain to the DfT.
Billyo.
I wasn't saying that we should not blame the DfT. I was just disagreeing with the implication of the first post which implied that we shouldn't (also) be focussing our attention on FGW. My contract as a passenger is with FGW and I have no intention of letting them off the hook because the internal organisation of our railway means that most of the blame falls to DfT.
More comments here.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=142.0
If you have a complaint about First Great Western, please visit http://www.railvoice.co.uk You can then post complete details of your complaint and it will be forwarded to FGW.
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