What constitutes a “good service”?

[The exile]

Question prompted by this combination of screenshots. Not displaying on that screen are the cancellations of the 15.10 and 16.10 to Temple Meads and the 15.41 to Cardiff.

At least from the perspective of Bath Spa (I doubt it is unique) this has gone beyond “minor disruption”, let alone “a good service”. I’m sure that every delay/ cancellation is justified but how can anyone in authority at GWR have the gall to describe this as a “good service”?

(My own definition of that would be all trains in the next three hours running and expected within 5 minutes of right time - anything less than that is “minor disruption’ at best)

 

[yorkie]

Question prompted by this combination of screenshots. Not displaying on that screen are the cancellations of the 15.10 and 16.10 to Temple Meads and the 15.41 to Cardiff.

At least from the perspective of Bath Spa (I doubt it is unique) this has gone beyond “minor disruption”, let alone “a good service”. I’m sure that every delay/ cancellation is justified but how can anyone in authority at GWR have the gall to describe this as a “good service”?

(My own definition of that would be all trains in the next three hours running and expected within 5 minutes of right time - anything less than that is “minor disruption’ at best)

Given how vast the GWR network is, then I would say that three cancellations across the entire network could be considered "good", but it is subjective.

However, it's quite possible that from the perspective of one particular passenger, the cancellations directly affect them, which is not good from their point of view.

Therefore, I'm not convinced there is much value of using such a term to summarise the service across such a vast network.

 

[43066]

This has been discussed previously (possibly in the context of TfL services). “Good” basically just means “normal” service, in this context. As a user, it tells me that most services are running on time.

(My own definition of that would be all trains in the next three hours running and expected within 5 minutes of right time - anything less than that is “minor disruption’ at best)

This would likely mean you’d almost always have to display “minor disruption”, which isn’t particularly useful.

 

[The exile]

Given how vast the GWR network is, then I would say that three cancellations across the entire network could be considered "good", but it is subjective.

However, it's quite possible that from the perspective of one particular passenger, the cancellations directly affect them, which is not good from their point of view.

Therefore, I'm not convinced there is much value of using such a term to summarise the service across such a vast network.

When “they” decide that there is disruption on a particular line then it is highlighted there - therefore “there is a good service across our network” should mean exactly that - “unless you happen to be travelling between two of or largest stations outside London”.

 

[Purple Train]

Given how vast the GWR network is, then I would say that three cancellations across the entire network could be considered "good", but it is subjective.

However, it's quite possible that from the perspective of one particular passenger, the cancellations directly affect them, which is not good from their point of view.

Therefore, I'm not convinced there is much value of using such a term to summarise the service across such a vast network.

Agreed, and I'd go further than this and say that it's not helpful for anything more than a cursory glance at a high-frequency, turn-up-and-go metro system (i.e. the Tube). To give an example: I live at one end of the Elizabeth Line. If there's disruption elsewhere on the system - for argument's sake, at Whitechapel - it takes an hour for the disruption to ripple out to my end, during which a disruption message would be displayed even though a prospective passenger from Slough to Langley or wherever would be unaffected, and then it would take at least half an hour post-problem to get a train just to serve my local station again, and we get a "good service" about an hour or two after the rest of the network, this meaning that someone can expect a "good service" and be confronted with a lottery!

And this is just an uncomplicated system with nothing more than a long end-to-end travel time, let alone the entire GWR network!

 

[43066]

Agreed, and I'd go further than this and say that it's not helpful for anything more than a cursory glance at a high-frequency, turn-up-and-go metro system (i.e. the Tube).

A cursory glance is exactly what this information is intended for.

 

[The exile]

A cursory glance is exactly what this information is intended for.

So “good service” has to mean “you don’t need to investigate further - your train is running and near enough on time”. Since it clearly doesn’t, it is at best pointless; at worst deliberate deception.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jul 2025 ==

This would likely mean you’d almost always have to display “minor disruption”, which isn’t particularly useful.

At least it would be honest - and no less useful than claiming it is good.

Currently showing “a good service” again. To misquote Kwikfit “Sorry, Yate”

 

[43066]

So “good service” has to mean “you don’t need to investigate further - your train is running and near enough on time”. Since it clearly doesn’t, it is at best pointless; at worst deliberate deception.

It simply means the majority of trains are on time, and therefore the majority of passengers won’t need to investigate further. It isn’t intended to deceive anybody since, as you yourself have demonstrated, running information showing disruption is publicly available.

At least it would be honest - and no less useful than claiming it is good.

If the majority of trains are running on time and an overall good service is running it is useful for people to know that, and perfectly honest to state it. The alternatives are permanently stating “minor disruption” or presumably no summary at all.

I think you may be overthinking this somewhat.

 

[ivorytoast28]

Great Western Railway always have it listed as a good service while the north downs line has 2/3rds of trains cancelled at short notice without any reason given

I always assume that message means "most of our trains are leaving Paddington on time" with no relevance to anyone on regional routes

 

[bramling]

A cursory glance is exactly what this information is intended for.

It works just about okay on shorter distance metro-type services, but is bordering on useless for anything else.

For example, yesterday GN was disrupted (how unusual!). However my particular train home had done King’s Cross to Kings Lynn and back to King’s Cross on its previous workings, and being ex depot for these trips it managed by good fortune to be in the right places at the right times to avoid most of the disruption, helped by a booked longer-than-minimum dwell at Cambridge on the way up to London. So I got home on time yesterday, whereas many people didn’t.

What the railway really needs to do is be able to better communicate what the impact is likely to be on specific services. If observers can look at resources like RTTT and OTT maps then it shouldn’t be difficult for the industry to be able to put out more useful comms. But we could be having this same conversation in 30 years time and things will be exactly the same as now, just with more dullard managements having copied stuff from elsewhere like the whole “Good service” thing.

 

[Horizon22]

This has been discussed previously (possibly in the context of TfL services). “Good” basically just means “normal” service, in this context. As a user, it tells me that most services are running on time.

The context behind TfL statuses is generally as follows:

Good: Generally as timetabled, trains broadly running well
Minor: You are likely to have a longer wait than normal, but remain on your current route/line.
Severe: You will have a extended wait for your service and may need to change to reach destination, alternative routes are advised
(Part)Suspended: Your route is not available. Use alternative routes and expect an extended journey.

 

[Kite159]

No trains between Bath & Trowbridge/Westbury/Salisbury for 90 minutes before sending a 2 coach unit which left a lot of folk behind at Bath...

Only to get terminated at Westbury (vice Salisbury). From a look at the departure screen at Westbury they have given up the ghost on running things towards Warminster but don't worry the website is claiming a good service

(Photo shows departure screen, seems they are simply deleting cancelled trains rather than showing as cancelled, screenshot is for Warminster from Tiger)

 

[3141]

"Good service" is probably an OK term when applied to a London Underground line, if most trains are running to time and there are no or very few extended intervals. And if there is an extended interval, it's only a few minutes extra.

But it's not an appropriate term to apply to a large and diverse network like GWR. Even if trains are running to time, or nearly so, on most routes, a missing train on a particular route that normally has two trains an hour is a serious matter for those who are waiting for a train on that line, and two missing trains in succession could be a disaster. This sounds like a case where someone with very little brain is posting generalisations on the website without appreciating the real meaning of what they are saying.

 

[The exile]

This sounds like a case where someone with very little brain is posting generalisations on the website without appreciating the real meaning of what they are saying.

It would be interesting to hear an explanation of the usefulness of this feature from whoever is responsible at GWR. Won't happen - because it has none. As it is, seeing "there is a good service on our network" when at a randomly selected station 7 out of 8 trains in a 2 hour period have been cancelled is just making GWR a laughing stock.

 

[Starmill]

If the majority of trains are running on time and an overall good service is running it is useful for people to know that, and perfectly honest to state it. The alternatives are permanently stating “minor disruption” or presumably no summary at all.

I think you may be overthinking this somewhat.

Is the alternative not doing what essentially all other operators do and show headlines route by route? A screenshot of the SWR website doing exactly that is attached.

 

[Horizon22]

Is the alternative not doing what essentially all other operators do and show headlines route by route? A screenshot of the SWR website doing exactly that is attached.

I was going to say, many operators have split their route up and can divide status up accordingly. I think even GWR can to some extent.

 

[Jimini]

There was nothing on NRE yesterday to suggest any issues on XC on the Manchester <> Bournemouth axis. I found that somewhat strange at the time.

My 100% delay repay claim (120+ minute delay) would rather indicate some fairly significant issues. Fair play to XC for running what they could, but there really wasn't much of a heads up for the regular traveler. Luckily I'd spotted what was going on and at least made life as easy as possible for me. And I went to M&S and stocked up on a buffet of sorts to see me through the delays

 

[43066]

The context behind TfL statuses is generally as follows:

Good: Generally as timetabled, trains broadly running well
Minor: You are likely to have a longer wait than normal, but remain on your current route/line.
Severe: You will have a extended wait for your service and may need to change to reach destination, alternative routes are advised
(Part)Suspended: Your route is not available. Use alternative routes and expect an extended journey.

Exactly as I thought, thanks.

Is the alternative not doing what essentially all other
operators do and show headlines route by route? A screenshot of the SWR website doing exactly that is attached.

I was going to say, many operators have split their route up and can divide status up accordingly. I think even GWR can to some extent.

I’d have no objection to that if it can be done easily and I agree it’s potentially more useful. Presumably some routes are easier to divide up than others.

It’ll only ever be an overview, though, not an authoritative statement that every train on the route is running precisely on time.

 

[HighlandStorm]

Well according to ScotRail tonight departing Queen Street on time and arriving in Fort William 124 minutes late - 6 hours on a 156 that was likely rammed on hottest day of the year as only single 156 to Fort William counts as:

Still an hour away from Mallaig !

 

[Starmill]

The LNR board changed the Marston Vale line from saying "good service" to saying "no problems reported" on Sundays.

There's no service on Sundays. The sensible thing to do would be to just hide it completely every Sunday, or show it as "service closed". Technically the new description is at least correct even if it is of no practical use because it can never say anything else.

 

[sir_gummerz]

Question prompted by this combination of screenshots. Not displaying on that screen are the cancellations of the 15.10 and 16.10 to Temple Meads and the 15.41 to Cardiff.

At least from the perspective of Bath Spa (I doubt it is unique) this has gone beyond “minor disruption”, let alone “a good service”. I’m sure that every delay/ cancellation is justified but how can anyone in authority at GWR have the gall to describe this as a “good service”?

(My own definition of that would be all trains in the next three hours running and expected within 5 minutes of right time - anything less than that is “minor disruption’ at best)

All it means is that someone in GWR control has declared a CSL2 (customer service level 2) incident, at yellow, red, or black levels. (Minor, major, do not travel) This is an alert that then cascades though many different systems apps and websites, to appear as a service alert. They are usualy due to a single notable incident (fatality, signaling issues ect) , or a widespread issue affecting trains ( severe wether, significant staff or unit shortage) . If a few trains are late or cancelled due to unrelated reasons, it doesn't get shown. When you see a service update, it will ususly be for a defined incident or event. Not one train had a fault, another had a medical, another had no driver, and you happen to be at the point where those delays converge.

With a network the size of GWR, it isn't really practical to provide alerts like this, it needs separating into lines or regions, as there will almost allways be some cancellations at any given time

Looks like a case of poor luck, where several trains from different places have become delayed in separate issues, and they happen to be meeting at bath at the same time.

In addition to this, gwr has allways been quite shy of going into csl2 over crew shortages, even if its having a widespread impact.

 

[The exile]

It simply means the majority of trains are on time, and therefore the majority of passengers won’t need to investigate further. It isn’t intended to deceive anybody since, as you yourself have demonstrated, running information showing disruption is publicly available.



If the majority of trains are running on time and an overall good service is running it is useful for people to know that, and perfectly honest to state it. The alternatives are permanently stating “minor disruption” or presumably no summary at all.

I think you may be overthinking this somewhat.

But how does a message saying “there is a good service” help anyone if you have to bore down a level to find out whether the service from you particular station has been considered poor enough to disturb the “everything’s fine” propaganda or not? The only point in saying “there’s a good service” at whatever level of detail is to say “you don’t need to investigate further”. As it stands, the blanket nature of the GWR message means that if it says there is disruption I might be told where it is, but if it says “good service” I still have to investigate further because, as yesterday’s examples prove, it is a meaningless message that may well lull the passenger into a false sense of security.

 

[flitwickbeds]

But how does a message saying “there is a good service” help anyone if you have to bore down a level to find out whether the service from you particular station has been considered poor enough to disturb the “everything’s fine” propaganda or not? The only point in saying “there’s a good service” at whatever level of detail is to say “you don’t need to investigate further”. As it stands, the blanket nature of the GWR message means that if it says there is disruption I might be told where it is, but if it says “good service” I still have to investigate further because, as yesterday’s examples prove, it is a meaningless message that may well lull the passenger into a false sense of security.

If they didn't have an "overall global" status indicator you'd have to drill down anyway.

Having this global indicator is, I think, the source of your frustration, and it doesn't make much sense on GWR’s part either for the reasons you point out about who decides the threshold of a good service.

Someone above suggested that if any train across the entire network was more than 5 minutes late at any station for the next 3 hours, it wouldn't be a good service. In the context I'm most familiar with, Thameslink, that is an extremely poor way of dealing with it. If a train from Cambridge to Kings Cross is going to be 6 minutes late in 2 hours' time, but literally every other Thameslink service is running and on time, why would I want to see 'some delays and cancellations' (or whatever terminology you consider to be the step down from 'good service') when I'm planning a trip from Flitwick to St Pancras? If the global indicator suggested there wasn't a good service, I would have to drill down anyway to then discover my line is fine.

Also, looking at the screenshot of the SWR line drill-down, that's not particularly useful either. I've never travelled on SWR before and I'm going from Station A to Station B. Are both of those stations in the same group? Are they in the Mainline or Portsmouth Direct group? I have no idea which one is relevant to my journey.

 

[Bald Rick]

The context behind TfL statuses is generally as follows:

Good: Generally as timetabled, trains broadly running well
Minor: You are likely to have a longer wait than normal, but remain on your current route/line.
Severe: You will have a extended wait for your service and may need to change to reach destination, alternative routes are advised
(Part)Suspended: Your route is not available. Use alternative routes and expect an extended journey.

And specifically for TFL, the definition of Good / Minor / Severe etc is strictly defined, and AIUI compliance is audited

 

[43066]

But how does a message saying “there is a good service” help anyone if you have to bore down a level to find out whether the service from you particular station has been considered poor enough to disturb the “everything’s fine” propaganda or not? The only point in saying “there’s a good service” at whatever level of detail is to say “you don’t need to investigate further”. As it stands, the blanket nature of the GWR message means that if it says there is disruption I might be told where it is, but if it says “good service” I still have to investigate further because, as yesterday’s examples prove, it is a meaningless message that may well lull the passenger into a false sense of security.

Explained above really - if good service is running it means there is a high chance your service is running well. If there’s disruption indicated that’s a cue to dig further. I use the TfL and Thameslink/SE sites regularly and find this approach useful (accepting that the same info may be broken down by route usefully). If it just said “minor disruption” whenever there were a few delayed services etc. it would be useless basically.

It’s hardly accurate to describe it as “propoganda” when they literally publish live running info for every service. There’s also absolutely nothing to stop people from searching for their individual service, irrespective of what the summary says.

 

[Horizon22]

Someone above suggested that if any train across the entire network was more than 5 minutes late at any station for the next 3 hours, it wouldn't be a good service. In the context I'm most familiar with, Thameslink, that is an extremely poor way of dealing with it. If a train from Cambridge to Kings Cross is going to be 6 minutes late in 2 hours' time, but literally every other Thameslink service is running and on time, why would I want to see 'some delays and cancellations' (or whatever terminology you consider to be the step down from 'good service') when I'm planning a trip from Flitwick to St Pancras? If the global indicator suggested there wasn't a good service, I would have to drill down anyway to then discover my line is fine.

I also agree that is a terrible metric.
Somewhere like Reading would never be in “Good Service”!

Frequency and “gaps” is a major part of TfL’s service status - if every train is 20 minutes late and there’s few service interventions, it doesn’t matter.

Where you have 1 or 2tph an hour without any real alternatives besides “drive” and there’s a delay of even 30 minutes, you’d be best of just waiting.

It’s much easier to determine these statuses for metro, high-frequency routes.

 

[OscarH]

Explained above really - if good service is running it means there is a high chance your service is running well. If there’s disruption indicated that’s a cue to dig further. I use the TfL and Thameslink/SE sites regularly and find this approach useful (accepting that the same info may be broken down by route usefully). If it just said “minor disruption” whenever there were a few delayed services etc. it would be useless basically.

It’s hardly accurate to describe it as “propoganda” when they literally publish live running info for every service. There’s also absolutely nothing to stop people from searching for their individual service, irrespective of what the summary says.

I generally agree that the suggested metrics are too strict, and generally the current metrics are decent

However, the network status on a TOC like GWR is worthless and should not exist - it absolutely needs to be segmented like the SWR example. Disruption in one place is very likely to not affect another place, which makes the status impossible to be useful, it will almost certainly be wrong for someone.

It's hard to split the network perfectly into sections, I get that , but rough sections would still be vastly more useful.

Even on Thameslink it's isn't perfect, though more applicable than GWR, less so now but they frequently used to just bin half the Horsham-Peterboroughs all day, but generally the rest of the network was running fine - that was quite important for people on the line where it's the only service, but probably wouldn't warrant notice for other people.

 

[43055]

The LNR board changed the Marston Vale line from saying "good service" to saying "no problems reported" on Sundays.

There's no service on Sundays. The sensible thing to do would be to just hide it completely every Sunday, or show it as "service closed". Technically the new description is at least correct even if it is of no practical use because it can never say anything else.

EMR does it a bit better by having the routes with no service in black with 'No trains scheduled' for example on the Peterborough - Lincoln - Doncaster route today.

 

[Starmill]

Looks like a case of poor luck, where several trains from different places have become delayed in separate issues, and they happen to be meeting at bath at the same time.

This is certainly true, but also there is an overarching issue in among others of a shortage of train crew in various places. Obviously for the most part that has affected Sundays but clearly Saturday isn't free of it.

 

[Vexed]

There was nothing on NRE yesterday to suggest any issues on XC on the Manchester <> Bournemouth axis. I found that somewhat strange at the time.

My 100% delay repay claim (120+ minute delay) would rather indicate some fairly significant issues. Fair play to XC for running what they could, but there really wasn't much of a heads up for the regular traveler. Luckily I'd spotted what was going on and at least made life as easy as possible for me. And I went to M&S and stocked up on a buffet of sorts to see me through the delays

Would it have been covered by disruption between Bournemouth and Southampton Central? I'm struggling to remember if that notice only mentioned SWR but I'm pretty sure it was up at some point. It's not particularly helpful for people up north to have to check for disruption half way down the country of course!

I was on 1M58 from Southampton to Manchester which got in annoyingly 56 minutes late. And when I arrived there was a platform alteration for an XC arrival (arrivals can get announced as alterations? Learn something new every day!) from Bristol that was 2 hours late.

So XC was definitely having major issues.