Am I expecting too much? (Information on planned engineering works)

[AdamWW]

The line between Cardiff Queen Street and Coryton has been closed for engineering works since Saturday and is due to reopen on Wednesday.

The posters at stations and the notice a few days ago on Twitter just said that it was closed on Saturday (there's no Sunday service). The information is on the TfW web site, albeit not on the "South Wales Metro: Changes to train services" page where the naive might expect it. (Instead it's under "Service status - planned improvement works").

Despite being asked yesterday on Twitter as to why journey planners weren't showing trains for today and tomorrow, and a response that the line is actually shut until Wednesday, it took until about 2:30 (pm) today before TfW posted a notification on Twitter that the line is closed.

Meanwhile, the service status is shown as "good" on their web site and there is no disruption shown on Journeycheck - presumably because the planned timetable of No Trains is running just fine. Likewise anyone signed up to disruption notifications will no doubt have received nothing.

(There are no rail replacement buses; one is supposed to use Cardiff Bus though it seems that they didn't actually arrange ticket acceptance as promised).

I realise that Twitter isn't all there is to customer communication, but in the absence of information easily found elsewhere and having already given out misleading information on Twitter, am I being unreasonable in thinking that they should have given updated information somewhat sooner?

 

[izvor]

I don't think so, this all sounds pretty abysmal. And no one has rushed to defend it, so far…

Down here I notice the vast difference between Southern (GTR) and Southeastern on this. The former rely on complicated diagrams of the whole network, which are not (imho) customer-friendly: I find them very difficult to interpret, and I am a regular rail user. They have improved slightly recently, but are still a mess. Online they direct you to NRE, with the usual appalling results.

Southeastern are far better, with clear posters, both for advance warning and week-by-week notices. Until recently they even posted timetables for RR buses too, useful but probably a bit wasteful, at least for one-day operations. I find their website easier to navigate too.

 

[AdamWW]

I don't think so, this all sounds pretty abysmal. And no one has rushed to defend it, so far…

Down here I notice the vast difference between Southern (GTR) and Southeastern on this. The former rely on complicated diagrams of the whole network, which are not (imho) customer-friendly: I find them very difficult to interpret, and I am a regular rail user. They have improved slightly recently, but are still a mess. Online they direct you to NRE, with the usual appalling results.

Southeastern are far better, with clear posters, both for advance warning and week-by-week notices. Until recently they even posted timetables for RR buses too, useful but probably a bit wasteful, at least for one-day operations. I find their website easier to navigate too.

Interesting.

I do wonder what extent railway companies go to in order to find out if their information is clear to those who need it.

It's very hard to proofread your own work.

 

[MedwayValiant]

Southeastern are far better, with clear posters, both for advance warning and week-by-week notices. Until recently they even posted timetables for RR buses too, useful but probably a bit wasteful, at least for one-day operations. I find their website easier to navigate too.

Southeastern are pretty good at that, and they did publish a timetable for the replacement bus service which is operating between Sittingbourne and Sheerness this weekend. It's not staightforward, because there is one bus between Sittingbourne and Kemsley only, and a separate one between Sittingbourne, Queenborough, and Sheerness only. (Swale is not being served, since the road it's on is closed, and the station is very lightly used anyway.)

But is it too much to expect that the timings of the replacement bus service are sensible? They have allocated 60 minutes for the Sittingbourne - Queenborough - Sheerness run. When I did it this morning, that required 24 minutes waiting for time at Queenborough (allocated 40 minutes, took 16, no passengers boarded), and we still arrived at Sheerness 12 minutes early (allocated 20 minutes, took 8). A cynic might imagine that the excessive allocation of time is actually designed to put people off using thr replacement bus service.

 

[izvor]

But is it too much to expect that the timings of the replacement bus service are sensible? They have allocated 60 minutes for the Sittingbourne - Queenborough - Sheerness run. When I did it this morning, that required 24 minutes waiting for time at Queenborough (allocated 40 minutes, took 16, no passengers boarded), and we still arrived at Sheerness 12 minutes early (allocated 20 minutes, took 8). A cynic might imagine that the excessive allocation of time is actually designed to put people off using the replacement bus service.

Declaration of interest: I was a RR bus controller for 10 years, and sadly all this rings true. I'm afraid it all comes down to the general attitude of the Railway hierarchy towards the bus industry: we are the superior industry, you are the clients, therefore we know better than you in all matters. Helpful input therefore almost universally ignored.

On a happier note, I see that GTR have reorganised their engineering works posters again, dispensing with the confusing diagrams and resorting to line-by-line text, which is a step in the right direction. Their network is far too complicated to be able to explain the detail of disruption by means of dots and dashes and colour-coding.

 

[The exile]

A cynic might imagine that the excessive allocation of time is actually designed to put people off using thr replacement bus service.

That cynic might well be right!

 

[izvor]

That cynic might well be right!

I'm not so sure. The timetables are just as likely to have (grossly) inadequate running times as they are to be slack. Unfortunately it's the TOCs who set the timetables, and allocate the station-to-station running times. They seem to use either a helicopter or a penny-farthing for the latter. Overall I suspect cock-up, coupled with intransigence, rather than conspiracy.