GA franchise extension

[Dave1987]

Seeing passengers day in day out I can honestly say most of them don't really care what the issues are. You only have to look at the twitter feed and one in particular regular tweeter to realise that the only thing that will make most passengers happy is a brand new fleet of trains and 4 tracks all the way to Norwich. Most people who have an idea how things work on the railways realise that would be hideously expensive and nearly impossible to accomplish. From what I've heard before C2C got their new fleet their trains were worst than on GEML. And in the future the trains on GEML will eventually be newer than on C2C.

 

[iphone76]

Seeing passengers day in day out I can honestly say most of them don't really care what the issues are. You only have to look at the twitter feed and one in particular regular tweeter to realise that the only thing that will make most passengers happy is a brand new fleet of trains and 4 tracks all the way to Norwich. Most people who have an idea how things work on the railways realise that would be hideously expensive and nearly impossible to accomplish. From what I've heard before C2C got their new fleet their trains were worst than on GEML. And in the future the trains on GEML will eventually be newer than on C2C.

As a regular traveller from Wickford to Liverpool Street, all I'd like is a reliable service with trains and infrastructure that don't seem to break down everyday. It would be a bonus if the trains didn't have the heating on in the Summer, but are freezing by the time Winter rolls around.

The last couple of months have been the worst in my 13 years doing this journey. It seems every-time the franchise change, or there is (another) rebrand, the service takes a turn for the worse.

I appreciate the GA line is busy, but for at least the last 10 years we have been told our above inflation fare increases and patchy weekend/holiday service (engineering works) would result in a better service. Instead, it seems to have got worse. I wonder what today will bring?

My only other concern is that if Labour gets in next year, they change the franchising policy resulting in yet another short franchise from October 2016.

Time will tell I guess.

 

[Pugwash]

You really can tell the Franchise is running just to return funds to the DFT ( 260million over 2 years, an absolute minimum appears to being spent on maintanence and train presentation, the seats are thread bear and the trains are often filthy both inside and out, I have had flea bites on board class 321 trains.

They just seem to be trying to run too many trains without enough flexibility to properly take trains out of service for service whilst maintaining the timetable.

GA are running the rolling stock into the ground.

This combined with Network Rail seeming to take forever to complete the OHL rewiring. Weekend service has been disrupted for probably a decade.

 

[Aictos]

Seeing passengers day in day out I can honestly say most of them don't really care what the issues are. You only have to look at the twitter feed and one in particular regular tweeter to realise that the only thing that will make most passengers happy is a brand new fleet of trains and 4 tracks all the way to Norwich. Most people who have an idea how things work on the railways realise that would be hideously expensive and nearly impossible to accomplish. From what I've heard before C2C got their new fleet their trains were worst than on GEML. And in the future the trains on GEML will eventually be newer than on C2C.

Why look on Twitter when we have someone here who's like that

 

[ainsworth74]

I have had flea bites on board class 321 trains.

Did you tell GA? I think that's the sort of thing they'd like to know so they can deal with it.

 

[Rheilfordd]

Which is exactly why I mentioned it. My point is, people need to look beyond the franchisee for the cause of at least some of the problems.

But the problems which already existed, have got worse since the franchise changed. Therefore it is entirely reasonable to associate the new service provider with the degradation in reliability.

 

[Manchester77]

Thats just because C2C got the trains, AGA/NXEA didn't.

Only because Anglia had received new stock under network southeast while LTS still had slammers hence why they got new stock. Anglia did get 30 379s too so they've not exactly been completely neglected.

 

[jon0844]

Did you tell GA? I think that's the sort of thing they'd like to know so they can deal with it.

I'd write to them too, not Twitter. They'll just say they'll pass it on to the fleet team or similar, and do nothing.