It is indeed a strange mix.
But it could be managed in a much better way. See for example Transport for London which manages to run a system based on a similar mix - which can and does, for the most part, respond as a coherent whole when things go wrong. You would never be refused entry to a bus, for example, just because another route which has gone down is run by a different company. And it manages fine temporarily allowing ticket inter-availability between trains, buses and tube when necessary.
I don't really want this thread to start talking about different models of ownership. That's been discussed a lot in other threads and probably always will be. I would much prefer railways to be regarded as a public service by everyone, but that just isn't the case at the moment.
Suffice it to say that I've always thought that the TfL model is a much better way of doing things than what we have on the railways, though it's not perfect by any means.
I refuse to accept the "just suck it up" attitude when the railway network acts against the interests of passengers. With enough political will it would be entirely possible to make it work better than it does now.
I don't disagree with you at ll in general terms. I do think there's a line to be drawn somewhere in this specific subject area. I'm not sure where it falls exactly, though. That in itself is part of the difficulty of putting anything in writing. It's impossible to cover every possible scenario, so some things will always have to be left to be a judgement call by someone, somewhere.
I think there is a need to distinguish between "emergency situations" and pre-planned engineering work. In emergency, use of some buses may be unavoidable. However, with pre-planned engineering work, some TOCs see buses as an easy option.
There is truth in what you say. I'd be surprised if there was a great deal of disagreement with the view that things can often be done in a better way when it comes to pre planned disruption, even if it might only emerge after the event.
Ah well, XC is generally overcrowded to start off with.
However, I don't really see how its so unfair that passengers on the unaffected TOC experience some overcrowding. Surely they're both sets of paying passengers and its only an 'accident of history' that one set of passengers' route has experienced long term damage in the first place.
I don't disagree at all in principle. In practice, as you rightly point out, some aspects of the network is simply unable to cope with the pressure that can be brought about by disruption, especially when it is more than a few days and sufficiently serious.
XC is often held up as an example of a TOC that should be avoided, by me as much as anyone else, and to then expect them to carry hundreds of additional passengers and probably damage their own business as a result, is bound to lead them trying to protect themselves.
As much as I don't like it, we no longer have one overall company to run national network of passenger trains. If we did I expect things would be different, but unfortunately that's just the way things are.
'Protecting' their reputation at the expense of the wider passenger community. I don't see the reputation of any of the TOC's involved in the shuffling of ticket acceptance around the WCML incident being enhanced by the episode.
That's probably true as far as those of us who are interested in the railway industry go. Most of us would prefer to see a more unified and integrated network, one way or another.
Not all passengers will set it the same way. Those who might feel that their already uncomfortable and expensive journey has been made worse by a sudden influx of passengers for several weeks may decide to travel by other means if they are able to. Some will probably be very vocal about it and contact their TOC as well. All of this is additional hassle and expense for a company through no fault of it's own. I can understand why they might feel that accepting tickets for a few days is acceptable, but not to let the situation drag on.
Or rather, how reasonable it is for one branch of the railway industry to force paying passengers onto the road for their own narrow commercial interest.
I don't think it's particularly reasonable, I think it's an unfortunate but understandable by product of the system that we have.
Like many aspects of the industry, things would be much easier if we had sufficient trains, capacity and other resources all over the network to cope with situations like sporting events, concerts and so on. The sad fact is that we don't. They industry model makes things worse in my view, but the real issue is that we normally just about manage to scrape by in many areas without events such as floods and other serious weather disruption.
Underneath the issues being talked about here, those are the real problems that need to be tackled. But they won't be, and nothing will change. It's pretty depressing.
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