Also wishing to eventually take on the two currently on loan to GC.
Same parent company of course so wouldnt be too difficult to transfer them two.
The role of the DfT is quite important here.
Which will be utterly pointless unless they sort out the dumb crewing issue of needing a guard on each set. It’s an expensive extravagance that needs abolishing.
That’s because it’s taking quite a while for DfT to sort out the replacement 9 car tri-mode fleet, the brand new route map including Liverpool, Paddington, Ramsgate and Brighton, and the extra traincrew bonus payments to work weekends.
It wouldn’t be that easy. DfT and the leasing companies will make sure of that
Within London commuter areas there is a wide variety in TOCs fortunes as well. Compare Greater Anglia or even Southeastern against Govia Thameslink Railway or South Western Railway you could easily think there are very different attitudes to service levels or performance. Within a single TOC the situation may vary from area to area of the network as well. It's a little simplistic to assign it as indifference when the challenges and circumstances will be different everywhere.
All of this may well be true, but it’s no excuse to the thousands of passengers who put up with the outcome of poor management and planning.
No there are no limits on passenger numbers carried on trains except where Pendolino’s will not tilt which merely leads to slower running and thus delays. London & the SE would not function with limits on passengers onboard and who would enforce it? Just imagine that happening on the tube also.
It’s just always been like that and is a global standard not just confined to the UK. You wouldn’t allow passengers to even walk to the toilet/buffet if that was the case. Mass transit often needs crush loading, that’s how & why it operates.
I guess that makes sense for short commuter journeys, where 10 mins of unpleasantness is par for the course for getting into a city from the suburbs. But not intercity travel. Not sure I get the walking to the toilet point.
I was at Birmingham International yesterday shortly after 5pm and the XC to Bournemouth was due on platform 5 while first a LNR and then my Avanti, both stopping at Coventry, were due on platform 4 subsequently.
Trains have very different safety frameworks to buildings so lumping them in the same legislation isn't ideal. Rail has a safety regulator (Office of Rail and Road) that approves new stock and safety is a key consideration for them. There are RSSB standards for rolling stock evacuation e.g. RIS-2730-RST Iss 1.1 Vehicle Fire Safety and Evacuation.
I get your point, but as 99% of members on here know, our ticketing system isn't exactly simple/easy to understand so I think it's good Customer Service to announce where possible that certain ticket restrictions apply.
One reason is that important nodes sometimes are inconsiderate enough to be less than 20 minutes apart. Apply that rule hard-and-fast and you have to choose between Tempke Meads and Parkway to serve the Bristol area. Parkway not only has the big car park, but also the IC Welsh connecting service (part of the rationale for the station in the first place)
The risk is mitigated in other ways (and also there’s probably an understanding that if you drastically limit the numbers on trains you drive - no pun intended - people onto alternatives that are less safe). The circumstances in which speed of evacuation is likely to be critical are pretty limited.
Yes it’s a six of one, half a dozen of another kind of thing.
The circumstances may well be very limited, but the point is when they *do* happen, the ability to get out quickly may mean the difference between being alive or dead. I thought this was why we bothered with H&S generally - otherwise you seem to be saying 'it'll probably never happen so just leave it'? I didn't think we did any proper large-scale joined-up thinking along the lines of 'forget seatbelts on trains, they'll save 1.4 lives per decade but push people onto cars where 5000 will die in crashes' (these figures entirely made up, but you get the point).
