Major problems at Nottingham

[tdg1986]

These are all reasonable points. My hunch is that it isn't the decision making that's the issue here but communication, again I don't think that is anyones fault, but an issue with the constraints of the systems which are in place.

Do you think there is any scope to improve the way decisions and information is transferred between control and passengers/staff? for example different technology or technology used in different ways. Or is there a need for additional staff in control rooms tasked with getting accurate information out, e.g. checking what is going out on feeds & correcting it where necessary.

A lot of it is about understanding what the other person is dealing with as I suspect the majority of the time the frontline staff have never worked in a control room and the control room staff have never worked on the frontline. Whilst I don't work in the rail industry I have worked both out in the field and in the control room for the company I work for so have seen it from both sides and it's surprising the lack of understanding of each other sometimes.

You're right that communication is the issue. The bigger an incident becomes the more people become involved (including more senior management) and that's how the wrong message then gets passed out. And as more people get involved it becomes very common to find that two people in the same room have different understandings of what is happening let alone passing the information to those on the ground. With the amount of technology available there's got to be a way of getting information circulated, and someone being responsible for getting that information out would help a lot I think!