Storm Desmond- Weekend 4th December

[Bletchleyite]

Were you at Preston last Sunday you would absolutely not have seen my complaints as ridiculous. I find that contemptuous of the customer in the extreme.

I also resent any idea that one should have to fight for customer service improvements. There is only so much time I have to spend on altruism, which is what it would be, as the failings highlighted were much more of an issue to other passengers than myself.

 

[ScotTrains]

I really can't fault the staff onboard the 1M11 1040 from Glasgow today. They came round with complimentary soft drinks for everyone on the train, this was just after leaving Glasgow, before we were delayed. The train manager kept us all informed every 10 mins, and also went round every passenger making sure we all knew what was happening. Unfortunately we were 100mins late arriving into Carlisle partly due to a points failure at Motherwell causing the Edinburgh train to get to Carlisle first, then they only let one train through at a time. All in all a great effort from Network rail and the onboard Virgin trains staff, I really can't fault them.

 

[najaB]

Were you at Preston last Sunday you would absolutely not have seen my complaints as ridiculous. I find that contemptuous of the customer in the extreme.

I've not said that there is anything ridiculous about complaining, just that raging in here isn't going to achieve much in the long run.

I also resent any idea that one should have to fight for customer service improvements.

I also agree that you shouldn't have to, but that's the state of customer service in many industries these days. And if nobody fights it will never change - it's cliché, but if we aren't part of the solution then we're part of the problem.

 

[Bletchleyite]

True I suppose.

 

[sheff1]

There is little more frustrating than making a complaint/suggestion to an organisation for them to completely ignore it or, worse, reply with drivel about something completely different.

 

[thenorthern]

Has there been any mention of when the Cumbrian Coast line will reopen.

 

[Starmill]

It isn't that difficult to get VT to listen to you really, just append a note about how you'd prefer not to receive a stock response and are happy to wait as a long as necessary for a more personal one. Ultimately all they can and will do is listen and record your comments to be put into the reports that come out of the Customer Relations department - which they will do anyway even if they do send you a stock letter. Notably though, that won't happen based on your conversation with the station staff! I think the point was that you have enough time at least to make a very large number of posts here about that and other matters simultaneously, so you probably do have time to carefully word a relatively short email.

You are right though that the majority of the time you complain about something you do get a totally meaningless response or one that has missed the point. And - a Train Operating Company contemptuous of its passengers? Surely not

 

[MKB]

Kudos to Network Rail for their amazing turnaround on the re-opening. Quite incredible.

But I'm with Neil Williams in blowing a massive raspberry at Virgin for their inept communications on Saturday. Furthermore, Virgin's excuses for not providing any coach transport between Preston, Penrith and Scotland don't stack up. I hope someone holds them to account for that.

We took a Birmingham-Glasgow service Saturday just before lunchtime (heading for Carlisle), and it was only after we departed Wolverhampton that we spotted a tweet from Virgin advising passengers to abandon all travel to the North that had been sent over 30 minutes before we had left Birmingham. Yet no-one at New Street -- at the barriers, on the PA system, in the first-class lounge, on the platform or on the train -- had relayed this information to us. So we had a pointless journey to Crewe and back.

I am now waiting to find out if we can get our money back, since the NCoC doesn't seem to make any provision for journeys involuntarily abandoned part-way through. It seem to imply you have to pay for the part of the journey taken, which is rather unfair since taking you part-way and then back home is no use to anyone and not what was contracted.

 

[Starmill]

Normally you would be refunded minus the price of what you've used, correct. However as you were advised to return to your origin by the train company as they would carry you no further that day I would say you 'used' nothing and as such would still be due the full refund. Just my own interpretation of course but I'd be surprised indeed if they were to quibble a request for a full refund given their widespread publicity that these are available!

 

[LAX54]

Kudos to Network Rail for their amazing turnaround on the re-opening. Quite incredible.

But I'm with Neil Williams in blowing a massive raspberry at Virgin for their inept communications on Saturday. Furthermore, Virgin's excuses for not providing any coach transport between Preston, Penrith and Scotland don't stack up. I hope someone holds them to account for that.

We took a Birmingham-Glasgow service Saturday just before lunchtime (heading for Carlisle), and it was only after we departed Wolverhampton that we spotted a tweet from Virgin advising passengers to abandon all travel to the North that had been sent over 30 minutes before we had left Birmingham. Yet no-one at New Street -- at the barriers, on the PA system, in the first-class lounge, on the platform or on the train -- had relayed this information to us. So we had a pointless journey to Crewe and back.

I am now waiting to find out if we can get our money back, since the NCoC doesn't seem to make any provision for journeys involuntarily abandoned part-way through. It seem to imply you have to pay for the part of the journey taken, which is rather unfair since taking you part-way and then back home is no use to anyone and not what was contracted.

It seems to be that, in a Emergency situation no one can beat Network Rail in getting things back running again in a very short time, may not bne 100% fixed of course, but running none the less, its the daily mundane things that seem to bog NR down and trip them up !

 

[ian959]

We took a Birmingham-Glasgow service Saturday just before lunchtime (heading for Carlisle), and it was only after we departed Wolverhampton that we spotted a tweet from Virgin advising passengers to abandon all travel to the North that had been sent over 30 minutes before we had left Birmingham. Yet no-one at New Street -- at the barriers, on the PA system, in the first-class lounge, on the platform or on the train -- had relayed this information to us. So we had a pointless journey to Crewe and back.

So it is all Virgin's fault that people don't read tweets? And wouldn't it be Network Rail who runs Birmingham New Street...

 

[SpacePhoenix]

So it is all Virgin's fault that people don't read tweets? And wouldn't it be Network Rail who runs Birmingham New Street...

Not everyone will have access to the Internet and not everyone uses Twitter

 

[TheManOnThe172]

...Virgin's excuses for not providing any coach transport between Preston, Penrith and Scotland don't stack up. I hope someone holds them to account for that.

Like others, I have given up writing to TOCs with complaints or suggestions. I think the only traction (if any) is via your MP.

I'm lucky (in this respect) in having the Transport Secretary as my MP, but specific complaints to "ordinary" MPs do sometimes get the message through. (WriteToThem makes this very easy - you don't even need to know your MP's name)

I've written today to complain about two aspects of Desmond/WCML.

Firstly, NRE being slow in sharing information - I think someone needs to go through the timeline and try to learn how they can be quicker to share the known information.

Secondly, I have suggested that in future disruptions it should be someone without a vested commercial interest who gets to decide when it is safe to run road replacement services. And that there need to be off-the-shelf contingency plans for rationing/virtual-queueing to allow civilised operation of replacement services if there isn't capacity to cope with 100% of demand.

Perhaps others who feel strongly might write to their MPs about whichever aspects of the troubles have exposed lessons to be learned.

 

[DarloRich]

Secondly, I have suggested that in future disruptions it should be someone without a vested commercial interest who gets to decide when it is safe to run road replacement services. And that there need to be off-the-shelf contingency plans for rationing/virtual-queueing to allow civilised operation of replacement services if there isn't capacity to cope with 100% of demand.

Interesting: Could you provide further and better particulars on this point?

 

[cuccir]

Has there been any mention of when the Cumbrian Coast line will reopen.

Now up and running. The only remaining closure is Carlisle to Dumfries.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Interesting: Could you provide further and better particulars on this point?

That is an interesting point. For Preston on Sunday 29th, though, just having actual organised queues for each destination (in different parts of the station if necessary) would have given passengers a clearer indication of how long they had to wait, reassured they were in the right place, and made it far easier for the staff to control. Passengers were, despite the situation, being co-operative as a whole, so it wouldn't have taken much to establish that - each queue could have started with a chair with a sign on it, though obviously some Tensabarriers etc would have made things better.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Interesting: Could you provide further and better particulars on this point?

Decisions on safety of running road replacement services: I am suggesting that we can't trust the TOCs to make such decisions. Virgin have been insulting passengers' intelligence with their claims that they couldn't safely run replacement services on any of four consecutive days - when National Express have run pretty much uninterrupted, and local bus operators have run remarkably complete services. Whatever stopped Virgin helping their passengers - on Monday at least - it wasn't safety.

TP were running trains south from Carlisle on Monday, and while access to Carlisle station might have been problematic, I haven't read of anything that would have made Lockerbie-Penrith road transfers unsafe.

The answer is to have the ORR make the decisions instead, so that there can be no suspicion that safety is being used as a figleaf for cost-saving.

As to rationing or virtual queuing: recognising that there are times and places where it isn't viable to procure dozens of coaches to run 18 hours a day, I'm suggesting that there needs to be a ready-to-run procedure that allows some passengers to be transported, rather than to say "if we can't take everyone, lets not bother taking anyone".

An online system could allocate road-transfer places on a priority basis. There may be perfectly good systems already used in other scenarios, but if not, then something like this: get those wishing to use the road transfer to fill in their ticket details (from, to, when reserved if at all, whether registered with passenger assistance) as soon as there is a prospect of offering services. Rank these in priority order, then offer transfers (by SMS) say six hours ahead, requiring confirmation by SMS within (say) two hours to allow you to make additional offers if there are fewer takers than expected. Make it abundantly clear that those without a transfer offer could wait many hours as they will only get taken when there are spare places after all those with offers have been loaded.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The answer is to have the ORR make the decisions instead, so that there can be no suspicion that safety is being used as a figleaf for cost-saving.

Another example I've seen of that is during strikes, when rail replacement bus services otherwise planned are often cancelled too. There is no justification for this - they might as well run as planned for those passengers for which they provide a service allowing their full journey to be completed.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

An online system could allocate road-transfer places on a priority basis. There may be perfectly good systems already used in other scenarios, but if not, then something like this: get those wishing to use the road transfer to fill in their ticket details (from, to, when reserved if at all, whether registered with passenger assistance) as soon as there is a prospect of offering services. Rank these in priority order, then offer transfers (by SMS) say six hours ahead, requiring confirmation by SMS within (say) two hours to allow you to make additional offers if there are fewer takers than expected. Make it abundantly clear that those without a transfer offer could wait many hours as they will only get taken when there are spare places after all those with offers have been loaded.

The difficulty with this kind of thing is that the most vulnerable passengers (elderly etc) may well still not have a mobile phone.

If you're going to do that, you might as well enter the replacement services in the TSDB and take traditional seat reservations for them at stations. (Is the system capable of that?)

 

[merry]

Not everyone will have access to the Internet and not everyone uses Twitter

Couldn't agree more. Twitter actually has quite a small, and falling, userbase. Unless a user chooses to subscribe to a medium largely full of things i really don't wish to read, they won't read them.
And note: i am an IT power-user. I work with computers all day some days, and configure from scratch But I don't use social media, because there is so much tripe and so little useful content. No social media is, IMO, a medium for important communications!

So (I hear you ask), what's the alternative. Well...when I book online, the operator (or ticket issuer) gets my email address, know when I have a reservation, and it'd be reasonable to take my phone number in case of an issue. So the operator has a link to a lot of customers in SMS and email. This relatively old tech is robust, reliable, and covers a wider customer base. I appreciate there would need to be some information passed between ticketing and operator, but that is not unreasonable if used for strictly operational purposes.

Yes, this will not cover everyone, but it is widely useable, is targetted, and works much better in the common case of intermittent internet / phone network access one has when travelling in the UK.
For such events as this, major disruption, I would not object to everyone on the ticketing database receiving a txt & email. Better than a flood of marketing and twaddle via social media. (and better than being stuck in a flood...)
Oh, and above all it is _simple_.

My 2p-worth. Perhaps it's unfeasible, perhaps useful.

 

[najaB]

So (I hear you ask), what's the alternative. Well...when I book online, the operator (or ticket issuer) gets my email address, know when I have a reservation, and it'd be reasonable to take my phone number in case of an issue. So the operator has a link to a lot of customers in SMS and email.

Doesn't help people who don't book online, and doesn't help people who don't have Internet access when they're out and about (or even those who don't have a mobile). Again, putting people who most need the service at a disadvantage.

 

[underbank]

The difficulty with this kind of thing is that the most vulnerable passengers (elderly etc) may well still not have a mobile phone.

An even bigger problem is that when large areas are without power, i.e. Lancaster, the phone networks are down too, so anything internet based is completely useless. Lancaster in the last few days has been a wake up call for organisations to have a plan B to communicate when the mobile networks are down. In Lancaster it was the local radio, but unfortunately lots of organisations (schools, public transport etc), continued to use Twitter rather than contact the local radio to make important announcements so untold numbers of people hadn't the faintest idea what was going on!

 

[Llanigraham]

From friends working as volunteers not only has there been no or very poor internet access available, there has also been no mobile signal over large areas. They have been using 2m radios and Raynet for comms.

 

[AndyW33]

An even bigger problem is that when large areas are without power, i.e. Lancaster, the phone networks are down too, so anything internet based is completely useless. Lancaster in the last few days has been a wake up call for organisations to have a plan B to communicate when the mobile networks are down. In Lancaster it was the local radio, but unfortunately lots of organisations (schools, public transport etc), continued to use Twitter rather than contact the local radio to make important announcements so untold numbers of people hadn't the faintest idea what was going on!

Quite right.
The lack of power also escaped the notice of those keyboard warriors who were vigorously attacking TOCs for failing to provide rail replacement buses to/from Lancaster on Sunday 6th. Only 8 hours of daylight at this time of year, and no street lights. No phone signal, no switchboards, many domestic phones need power these days or the lines were out. You can't send SMSs to phones with no signal, or emails either, it's not just social media. Nor can people with no usable phone ring NRE.
So people in Lancaster itself would have no way of finding out what service could be offered, other than local radio, if they had a battery radio. If they were on the far side of the river from the city centre both road bridges, the lower level footbridge and the area around the bus station and key road junctions leading to M6 J34 were closed by flooding. The only way across the river was the footway on the WCML railway bridge, a poor safety option in gale force winds and heavy rain especially once it was dark - no lights remember.
People waiting in Penrith or Preston etc to go to Lancaster could have been dropped off somewhere in the upper part of the city centre (accessed from M6 J33), though not at the railway station as the (partially flooded) one way system in the city centre would have trapped the coaches there. How they would have got to wherever in the city they were going, especially after dark with no street lighting, goodness knows. At least Preston and Penrith had power and were not at risk of imminent flooding.

 

[Bletchleyite]

From friends working as volunteers not only has there been no or very poor internet access available, there has also been no mobile signal over large areas. They have been using 2m radios and Raynet for comms.

Must admit to being genuinely surprised that the mobile masts (at least some of them, to provide a basic 2G service) don't have very large batteries and possibly even generators. The ones under water would of course have issues once their cabinets were swamped, but not so much the higher ones.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

People waiting in Penrith or Preston etc to go to Lancaster could have been dropped off somewhere in the upper part of the city centre (accessed from M6 J33), though not at the railway station as the (partially flooded) one way system in the city centre would have trapped the coaches there. How they would have got to wherever in the city they were going, especially after dark with no street lighting, goodness knows. At least Preston and Penrith had power and were not at risk of imminent flooding.

While mobile phones wouldn't have been a lot of use for communication, most of them these days do have a torch function! (In an odd way I would almost like to have been there - a city in true darkness is not something you can often experience. The closest I've been was in Kosovo, but as almost everyone had generators due to the flakiness of power there it wasn't quite 100% black).

FWIW, I still believe the service should have been offered with a clear explanation what passengers were getting themselves in for if they used it. But I've always believed in individuals' responsibility for their own safety.

 

[Llanigraham]

Must admit to being genuinely surprised that the mobile masts (at least some of them, to provide a basic 2G service) don't have very large batteries and possibly even generators. The ones under water would of course have issues once their cabinets were swamped, but not so much the higher ones.

'Fraid not. They rely on mains power.
Luckily our organisation have been encouraging us to become radio hams on the 2m band and with the help of Raynet we can get excellent comms over most of the country.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

... But I don't use social media, because there is so much tripe and so little useful content.

Just a thought – is a rail enthusiasts' internet forum not "social media" then?

Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking , social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.

BTW I don't use social media either and for the same reasons, but "so much tripe and so little useful content" couldn't possibly apply on here at RailUK forums!

 

[LAX54]

Well , having seen the images of the flooded lines , I think NR have done a remarkable job in getting the WCML open so quick - well done to all those on the ground in what must have been very challenging conditions to work in......Bravo !

Here is a glimpse of some of the issues...

Work needed for restoration of signalling at Caldew, if all goes well and timescales are met without further problems !

Build 6 new location cabinets & deliver to Carlisle depot.
Test/renew lineside cable/equipment and refurbish 8 existing location cabinets. to be Completed by 1600 Friday 11/12.
Pre-test all 6 new location cabinets at Carlisle depot. Completed by 1800 Saturday 12/12.
Erect the 6 new location cabinets at Caldew. 12 hour possession Sat/Sun.to be Completed by 1800 Sunday 13/12.
Connect up cables to the 6 new location cabinets & test all cabling. Sunday. to be completed by 1800 Sunday 13/12).
Connect & test power supplies throughout 3 x 12 hour TBW daytime working required between Monday 14/12 & Thursday 17/12.
Install & setup transformers.
Through test 90+ circuits.
Fully test 7 track circuits.
Full correspondence test of all points 1 x 6 hour block required on Friday 18/12.
Correspondence & aspects sequence testing & commissioning. 12 hour block Sat/Sun 19/20.
Full signalling functionality returned at Caldew. 1100 Sunday 20/12.

 

[G0ORC]

'Fraid not. They rely on mains power.
Luckily our organisation have been encouraging us to become radio hams on the 2m band and with the help of Raynet we can get excellent comms over most of the country.

Some of us already are radio amateurs - and have been for a very long time.....

 

[Llanigraham]

Some of us already are radio amateurs - and have been for a very long time.....

When our voluntary organisation (4x4 Response UK) was set up very few of the members were licensed radio hams and we mostly used CB and mobile phones, but we very quickly realised that in many parts of the country neither were satisfactory, and the latter could easily "fall down" at inconvenient times and was patchy in many areas. Therefore there has been a gradual move to 2mt mobile units, often with close liaison with Raynet and other bodies.
And to keep it on a railway theme, some of the regional groups now have a working relationship with NR and a few TOC's.

 

[miami]

And note: i am an IT power-user. I work with computers all day some days, and configure from scratch But I don't use social media, because there is so much tripe and so little useful content.

This site is "social media". Usenet is social media. IRC is social media.