Severe Weather in UK

[Flamingo]

Then we need to change our attitude to extreme weather. we need to accept that there will be disruption, that we should not make journeys that aren't essential (and that doesn't include a 20 mile round trip to our favourite supermarket!) and that we need to ensure that we ourselves are as prepared as we can be in terms of the ability to live for a week or more on what we have in the home, and that we have proper snow gear to wear if we do want to venture outside.

There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!

 

[jon0844]

JonMorris0844:

May I ask where did you place your order please?

Many Thanks

http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/salt-and-ice-melt-products/index.html

I got the Shaker Dispenser too. Very easy to put it down that way.

Quick delivery too, although probably not for the next week or so!

If we had a proper neighbourhood community, I'd like to go get the £600 pack and a proper machine, then do the pavement from one end of our road to the other. If everyone chipped in, the cost would be negligible, but I have no way to collect the money!

 

[Greenback]

I know the media can misquote but at face value Robin Gisby has well and truely put his foot in it.....

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...-as-rail-boss-says-network-is-working-well.do

It's all a question of perspective. For some reason, people (no doubt influenced by the media) expect that the network will run without major disruption even during the sort of extreme weather that the whole of the country has been suffering.

Gisby will be hung out to dry for daring to try and put a positive spin by looking at the bigger picture. In my area the service has remained remarkably good, with trains running even when roads were impossible and buses and taxis had given up. Yes, trains have been delayed but no one has been left stranded, and no one has found it impossible to travel despite the record low temperatures and snowfalls. But we can't say that without a media feeding frenzy simply because everyoen expects, unrealistically, to just carry on as normal!

There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!

I will be examining my clothing options very carefully in the near future! I have been caught out by a lack of suitable seasonal clothing this year!

 

[Nevasleep]

I think the rest of Europe has struggled, the UK has simply thrown its hands up and surrendered.

"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" as a French girl at work mocked. It was hard to disagree.

I'm aiming that primarily at the aviation industry, the rail network (around here at least) hasn't done too badly if I may say so.

Instead of aviation bosses holding their "important" conferences in hot places, perhaps they could go up to Ivalo, at around this time of year, and watch how grown ups keep an airport open in -35C and 24hrs darkness.

All lorries, and coaches were stopped from travelling in northern France and Paris.

I think the problem is more to do with the temps we get, more ice than snow.
Hell, Heathrow is operating at over 98% capacity on a good day.

Although there may be a difference between our train companies. I think DB were sending out every train stock they had, whereas in the UK we love an 'emergency timetable', and cut services. Guess it gives a slightly more reliable service though.

 

[jon0844]

ATOC should have certainly said about all the trains that did run, explain a bit about why some decisions are made, explain the need for speed restrictions, emergency timetables and by all means said that xx% of trains did run.

ATOC should then acknowledge that despite this, a lot of people had little or no information - or information that was wrong and made a situation worse, on account of people assuming trains were running (or, perhaps worse, weren't and so we had empty trains running around).

ATOC could then say that they will be applying pressure on each TOC to fix the situation, invest in providing information via things like SMS, email and Twitter (the latter is particularly well suited and few people haven't heard of Twitter thanks to the BBC, Sky, newspapers etc).

People don't want excuses and we're all going to get them in the coming weeks/months. They don't even want to hear about people being punished for not doing things properly; they merely want the problem fixed.

 

[O L Leigh]

The railway will always be a victim of changing weather conditions, and it's the passengers that will suffer. With the best will in the world, things change quickly and we have to respond to that.

For example, on Monday it was down to -10 and we had failures galore. We'd set off with a full load in the full expectation of getting all the way to London. Unfortunately we only got one signal out before we had to go back, detrain and go to assist another failed train. How can you inform the passengers of that? Fortunately our service frequency is high enough for this not to have been a major problem, but elsewhere on the network this isn't the case.

On the wider point, I can see snow chains (or equivalent) becoming a legal requirement for all cars, and not before time. We should also be looking at training people how to drive safely in the snow. If everyone took a bit of collective responsibility the situation wouldn't have been half as bad.

O L Leigh