allotments
Member
Fortunately tonight's delayed 2R73 19:16 Royston-Kings Cross Thameslink service set off with almost all passengers detrained and transferred onto the 19:42 Royston-Brighton.
A member of the platform staff had passed through advising passengers to transfer but hadn't quite got as far as the front car in time for me to prepare to alight.
I was one of the few passengers still on the 19:16 when the doors were locked and it set off unexpectedly shortly before the 19:42.
Driver made an announcement after arriving at Letchworth that the next stop would be Welwyn Garden City. There were only a few seconds for affected passengers to jump back out onto platform if travelling to Hitchin or Stevenage for example. I would have jumped out too, to join the 19:42 which was following, but didn't have time to prepare.
Stopping at Welwyn Garden City allowed passengers who knew how to reroute themselves to double back to Stevenage and Hitchin by changing onto the hourly northbound service.
There was real potential for passengers to be over carried beyond their intended destination and disorientated. Perhaps even arriving in London having skip stopped their destination much earlier.
How does the railway protect passengers in this situation, provide revised valid ticketing to reroute to their destination and avoid suspecting that passengers have attempted to short fare?
There's no conductor on these driver operated trains so no on train 1:1 support for confused passengers.
It seemed the last minute changes were news to the driver too, with multiple adjustments to schedule happening real time during the journey. The service recovered 15 of the original 25 minutes delay by Kings Cross after skipping 6 stops.
Attached Realtimetrains screenshot for 2R73
A member of the platform staff had passed through advising passengers to transfer but hadn't quite got as far as the front car in time for me to prepare to alight.
I was one of the few passengers still on the 19:16 when the doors were locked and it set off unexpectedly shortly before the 19:42.
Driver made an announcement after arriving at Letchworth that the next stop would be Welwyn Garden City. There were only a few seconds for affected passengers to jump back out onto platform if travelling to Hitchin or Stevenage for example. I would have jumped out too, to join the 19:42 which was following, but didn't have time to prepare.
Stopping at Welwyn Garden City allowed passengers who knew how to reroute themselves to double back to Stevenage and Hitchin by changing onto the hourly northbound service.
There was real potential for passengers to be over carried beyond their intended destination and disorientated. Perhaps even arriving in London having skip stopped their destination much earlier.
How does the railway protect passengers in this situation, provide revised valid ticketing to reroute to their destination and avoid suspecting that passengers have attempted to short fare?
There's no conductor on these driver operated trains so no on train 1:1 support for confused passengers.
It seemed the last minute changes were news to the driver too, with multiple adjustments to schedule happening real time during the journey. The service recovered 15 of the original 25 minutes delay by Kings Cross after skipping 6 stops.
Attached Realtimetrains screenshot for 2R73
