Is James Price serious? He is living in a fantasy world? He is going to train up station staff to get a PSV licence and give them all buses. And this guy is on silly money to come up with ideas like this. It's no wonder Welsh Transport is a laughing stock when this guy is in charge.
Interesting that there is no commitment for TFW to start adding emergency rail replacement buses to journey planners as Cross Country and some other TOCs do. The amount of emergency buses that TFW Cardiff request that station staff don't even know about is laughable. Staff in Cardiff don't care for anyone outside of the offices, as long as they are happy, that is all that matters. There's been signs up in Chester all of last week saying 'Buses replace trains between Chester and Liverpool/Manchester until Friday' and then come Saturday it changed to 'this weekend'. It was a week long block and why say buses replace trains to Liverpool when Merseyrail was running perfectly fine and similarly Northern was running perfectly fine via Mid Cheshire and running between Warrington and Manchester Victoria. Cardiff staff don't have a clue what is going on in the world and their inability to properly inform customer is laughable.
Railway staff are usually better paid - why would they leave unless they could get a healthy redundancy package?
It regularly is, but it would ential enormous costs that simply can't be justified on the basis of reduced delays alone. Plenty of examples around Wales though where additional services have triggered doubling with the benefits for everything else (North of Wrexham and a section around Swansea to name two examples)
I know of at least 2 conductors and 1 driver who used to drive buses before they had enough and left to join tfw
research.senedd.wales
I actually find the station staff PSV option interesting. The flight risk from station staff to bus drivers is minimal to negligible in my opinion - rather the opposite transition is more prominent.
Is he?
Was mentioned in the BBC documentary about TFW.
Are you sure you didn’t mishear? There are supposedly only four Welsh billionaires, and none of them live or work in Wales.
Ah OK, I misunderstood.
They do talk about James Price having £billions in his pocket but they're talking about taxpayers' money to spend on the railways, not personal wealth.
I agree about Swanline. its ridiculous that its been neglected so much. The service isnt much better now than it was when the Manchester trains picked up Swanline stops during the Covid timetable. Whether the 1105 runs seems to depend on how many carriages are on the 0911 from Cardiff. If its 3 or 4 carriages made up of Sprinters then it usually runs as some go to FIshguard and some go on the Swanline back to Cardiff. Today the Swanline was cancelled as they send a single 153 to Swansea which went onto the FIshguard service.
It's completely bizarre, unless they plan to buy a load of buses which will be sat around all day doing nothing, and employ more people at stations to be able to drive them when needed, which 90% would just be milling around the station.
SameTo be fair as a conductor with a valid PSV and CPC, I would happily drive the odd rail replacement bus if I'm sat spare
Wouldn't in a million years leave the industry to go back bus driving though, the 2 industries are miles apart to work in.
I believe you're right here - I recall terminating at Gloucester because of a broken down freight train. I recall someone mentioning abellio sorting taxis for passengers.
Usually the problem during disruption is they are not empowered to move passengers using a cab on the rank and instead someone must order one from an approved supplier list.
Some stations have a docket system thing where they can walk outside onto the rank and write on where the taxi went from, and to, time and date. The taxi then takes the passengers and the driver reclaims to expenses at a later date. Some however it is a case of using the approved taxi list. The issue with taxis are that not every firm joins the rail replacement portals and so there are so many firms losing out on potential custom because they aren't on the lists. While not the same, look at the amount of taxi firms who didn't partake in the traintaxi system thing and so on. Taxi firms don't know about the system, don't think about this kind of work or simply don't care about it. I don't think many of the portals actively advertise that they are looking for companies to add to their database and that of course doesn't help the taxi or bus sides.
How do you think that the intermediate stations are going to get served without a bus? Any passengers making through journeys were directed onto trains, only those for the intermediate stations were sent to the buses. Messaging has to be kept brief.
Still need authority from Control to do that.
Eh? I never said don't run the buses over the affected sections. I was criticising the message on the board (well, half of the message, it didn't all fit on the board as either the boards aren't configured properly or someone put too much text into the line). As for the message, it was easy, you just say 'Buses replace trains between Chester and Newton Le Willows/Liverpool South Parkway'.
That may have been the case for passengers asked staff about what is going on. For anyone who didn't seek station staff assistance inside though, it certainly wasn't the case. There were a good number of people who just read the board and consequently walked outside to get a bus replacement, only to be sent back inside because the trains were still running to where they wanted to get to. Not passengers fault, if a big sign says 'buses replace trains to Liverpool' you go outside to the bus. Unnecessary stress caused to a large number of passengers for no reason other than someone in offices in South Wales struggles to write basic signs and despite it being reported on Monday that this sign needs changing, it was still up on Friday. Even when alerted to issues, no one resolves anything.
The dispatcher at Junction should be on until very late (1D94 is the last dispatched train of the night, I think). They contact Control. Where there is no dispatcher then find the guard.
There you are, can't fit too many words in.
You can if it was on separate lines. The boards have about 10 lines and the message was too much text as it was only on about 4 lines with the other lines empty! If they made use of the boards properly, it would have been fine, it was clearly configured by someone who didn't have a clue about railway geography (such as the diversions and other operators affected) and didn't have a clue how to do the LED boards properly.
For the Manchester ones there were more people on journey planners but not everyone did and some people just had open tickets and just wanted to get to Manchester some way, they didn't care how. Or they had old screenshots from before buses were showing. Some people just click the first one on the app because it's easier etc. For Liverpool because Merseyrail is turn up and go, people just turned up at the station, checked the boards for the next departure, saw the notice saying buses replace trains to Liverpool, walked outside to get the replacement bus. Got turned around because the train they wanted was still running, as normal, off 7B, it was just a misleading sign that no one will be held accountable for, it will just be another failure brushed under the carpet.
Have you considered a sheet of A1 and a marker pen