10% railfare increase?!!

The press has been full of stories this week about the comment from Philip Hammond, the new Government Transport Secretary, that there is no guarantee that the current inflation + 1% formula for railfare increases can be maintained.


Commuters are staring down the barrel of a 6% increase in 2011 anyway (5% inflation + 1%), and the prediction is that the Government may allow the train operating companies (including London Midland) to raise prices by up to 10%.  In the current climate of pay freezes and even salary cuts, that wouldrepresent a significant hit on commuters.


In a previous posting ("How much?!!") I mentioned that the cheque that the taxpayers have written out to London Midland to cover the 2010 subsidy is a whacking £185 million.  According to this week's press articles, the total subsidy paid to the rail industry is £5.21 billion.  That bill needs to be cut, but why should this be to the cost of the rail passengers?


London Midland seem to come out on top whatever happens.  If I've read the situation properly then there are two possible scenarious:

1. They keep the full subsidy for 2011 (the amount paid reduces year on year but for it's apparently £175 million); or
2. The subsidy is reduced but they then get permission to make up the difference by increasing our fares.

Is it an exaggeration to say that the arrangements between central Government and the train operating companies are scandalous?   London Midland et al are in a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation.  Private enterprise is meant to be about risk.  take the risk and you potentially get the reward.  These guys get the reward without any risk...  

Anyone interested in reading more on this subject may like to look at the following press articles

• Millions of passengers face inflation-busting fare rises of 'up to 10%' - Daily Mail
• Train prices 'could face even further price hikes', transport secretary warns - Daily Telegraph
• Rail industry prepares for public spending cuts - Guardian
• Why pile more pain on commuters, minister? - Evening Standard

350 v 321

The 350 in the title is the current Desiro trains, and the 321 the units they replaced.  The 'trainspotter bit' will end with a suggestion that anyone wanting to know about their technical specifications may like to check them out on Wikipedia:

British Rail Class 321
London Midland Desiro 350

What is going to be covered here is how these trains compare for us commuters.

Reliability - New v old?  Untried v untried?  The 321 had their faults (including doors icing up one very cold winter) but in terms of reliability they rarely let us down.  The new Desiro 350s seem to be OK and I think I've only been let down 2-3 times but the London Midland email alert service does seem to report a fair few delays/cancellations because of train failure.

• 350 ****
• 321 ****

Seating - Here it gets complicated because there are two sub-classes for the Desiro 350s.  When the 350/1 (blue seating) trains came in they were a huge leap forward.  Suddenly we had 'front to back' facing seats, armrests and more tables.  There seemed to be a lot more room.  We were happy, but then the 350/2 (green seating) units started to appear.  The 350/1s had a pair of seats either side of the aisle.  The 350/2s had three on one side and two on the other.  The armrests disappeared as did the tables.   To be honest, I think the seating on the 321s was better than on the 350/2s.

• 350 *** (it would be **** if we had the blue seating 350/1s more frequently on the Bletchley services)
• 321 ***

General comfort - The 350s are a lot quieter until the announcements start.  The air-conditioning is fantastic when it works.  The 12th carriage in a three unit train seems to lose the air-con and in the summer this means that the carriage can become unbearably hot as there are no windows to open.

• 350 ****
• 321 ***

Other - The ability to walk through from one end of the train to the other when it is made up on two or three units (8 or 12 carriages) is a real bonus on the 350s.  Joining the train at the last minute at London Euston you can walk through to find a seat, and if you are in a hurry when you get back to Bletchley then it's possible to get to the door that will be nearest the stairs on arrival.  The toilets on the 350s are also better fitted fitted out, and as they store the waste on the train they can be used when in the station.

• 350 *****
• 321 **

Overall - The Desiro 350s are undoubtedly an improvement.  If they could fix the air-conditioning problem, reduce the announcements and then concentrate the earlier, blue-seated versions on the Bletchley services then it would almost be a pleasure commuting into London (I'm not sure I really mean that...)

• 350 ****
• 321 ***.

 

Assault poster

"Assault our staff and this will be your next destination

At London Midland, we take any physical or verbal assault on our staff seriously.  Together with the British Transport Police, we work hard to make sure that all offenders are prosecuted and receive the maximum punishment possible"

The London Midland's poster about assaults on staff isn't new (I think it first appeared a couple of years ago), but a copy has just appeared at Bletchley on the overbridge stairs.  To be clear, I am not for one minute suggesting that assaults on railway staff aren't serious and I feel very sorryfor the victims, but I still find this poster disturbing. 

This is a personal opinion, but I believe that it is one shared by many other passengers on our line - London Midland are taking an increasingly authoritarian position with their passengers as illustrated by:

Shops often display a sign that says "shoplifters will be prosecuted'.  That sign serves a purpose because it isn't stating the obvious.  The newspapers are full of stories of people who are caught shoplifting getting on a slap on the wrist and a small fine so a statement by a company that they will put the time and effort into pursuing a conviction does have impact.

Do London Midland really think that the 1,000+ people who travel through Bletchley on a daily basis are so stupid that they think that assault isn't a serious crime?  Also, why does their poster only mention assault against a member of their staff?  I have travelled on the line for 20 years and have never seen a physical attack on a railway worker.  What I have seen on a half-dozen occasions is assault by a passenger on another passenger.  Does the omission infer that they'll not support any action if that occurs? 

• The approach of the staff manning the gates for platforms 8-11 at London Euston late afternoons.  They don't seem bothered to explain to people why their 'cheap day' tickets can no longer be used to board trains between 1645-1845 (I've seen elderly people, families with young children and foreign tourists dismissed with just a "you can't travel on this ticket on that train").  
• The "Riot Act" that we now get read out to us on trains at London Euston before departure.  I don't have the exact words but the announcement on the train is usally now along the lines of "Passengers are reminded that they must have a valid ticket for the whole of their journey.  Off peak tickets are not valid on this train.  Passengers are further reminded that if they sit or stand in the First Class area on this train without a valid First Class ticket then they will be charged the full First Class fare for their journey".

There's a line on the home page of http://www.londonmidland.com/ which reads "We look forward to welcoming you on board soon".  I don't see much evidence of that positive attitude to customers in any of the above.

(Please note: I have no personal axe to grind on this.  I have never had a physical or verbal altercation with a member of the railway staff and I have never had a "travelling on a train without purchasing a valid ticket" problem)

Late afternoon trains

I had a feeling that Bletchley wasn't as well served by trains for the journey home in the afternoon as it used to be, but I didn't realise how poor things had become until I missed my usual 17:51 (semi-fast) from Euston and the following (all stops) 18:05.  There wasn't a train to Bletchley until 18:29 (semi-fast).

For a long time we've had a gap in trains to Bletchley before 5pm.  If you miss the 16:24 then it's a 45 minute wait for the 17:05.  What we haven't previously had though was gaps after 6pm.

I've got a copy of the timetable that it was in force a year ago (17/5-12/12/2009) so I figured I'd do a comparison based on arriving at London Euston after 17:50.

A year ago there was a semi-fast train departing at 17:54 which got into Bletchley at 18:43 (49 minutes).  If you missed that one then the next train was the fast 18:13 (first stop Leighton Buzzard) which got into Bletchley at 18:50 (37 minutes).  The next was the semi-fast leaving at 18:24 which arrived at 19:17 (53 minutes). 

Today, the last train before 6pm leaves earlier at 17:51 and is a semi-fast getting into Bletchley at 18:39 (48 minutes).  Miss that and it's the all-stops 18:05 which doesn't get into Bletchley until 19:04 (59 minutes).  Arrive at Euston after after that one and the following train is a semi-fast which leaves Euston at 18:29 and gets into Bletchley at 19:18 (49 minutes).

Analyse the above and you see that in 2009 we had:

• 3 trains spread over 30 minutes
• A maximum gap between departures from Euston 19 minutes
• A fastest journey time of 37 minutes and an average of 46 minutes

In 2010 we've got:

• 3 trains spread over 38 minutes
• A maximum gap between departures of 25 minutes
• A fastest journey time of 48 minutes and an average of  52 minutes

Every one of the changes is to the detriment of passengers travelling home from Bletchley.

So what has happened?  Bletchley appears to have been put into the same category as Harrow-on-Wealdstone, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhampstead and Tring.  All get three trains between 17:50 and 18:30, either all-stops or slow (the journey time being a lot less significant for the stations closer to London).  Leighton Buzzard only gets three trains but they still have a 29 minute express (the 18:13).   Passengers from Watford Junction and Milton Keynes are very well off.  Five trains over the same 40 minute period (a mix of slow, semi-fast and express).

Unfortunately I haven't got timetables going back 5, 10 and 15 years but I am absolutely certain that these would demonstrate even better the decline in the Bletchley service.  I seem to remember that we once had a train departing from Euston at 17:40 which was first stop Bletchley, sometime around 18:15.  Those were the days...


(Before anyone points out that the above ignores the 18:13 from Euston changing at Leighton Buzzard onto the Southern service for the final leg to Bletchley, see Rail Delay Claim online.   That posting tells the story of what happens if the connection isn't made.  With trains calling at Leighton Buzzard during the mid-week rush-hour home not stopping at Bletchley it's not a journey that's worth the risk unless you don't mind sitting on a draughty platform for half an hour...)   

How much?!!

Andrew Gilligan in the Daily Telegraph has done it again...  In his column in yesterday's Daily Telegraph ("The personal agony that will forever be public transport") he launched his second attack on our railway system in a fortnight (see also "High Speed rail?").

In this second article he suggests again that very little of the investment in railways since privatisation has gone into increasing capacity (he suggests that much of it has been spent on repainting carriages!)  This mention of subsidies interested me, so I did a quick search on Google and what I found shocked me. 

On the Investis website I found a summary of the subsidy payments that London Midland are receiving from the government (Go Ahead Group - London Midland operating review).   The total changes year on year from the start of the franchise to the end, kicking off with £203 million in 2008 dropping to £155 million in 2015, but for 2010 it's £185 million. 

For anyone who might be thinking that £185 million doesn't sound so bad given the scope and scale of London Midland's services, please do bear in mind that Network Rail separately receives government support for the maintenance and development of the railway infrastructure (I figure that identifying how much that would amount to for the London Midland area is an impossible task for an outsider).

Finding the above then left me wondering how much the senior management at London Midland were receiving in salary and other rewards.  A quick look didn't reveal any detail for London Midland's top executives, but I did find a useful summary on the Reuters website for the Go-Ahead Group (London Midland's parent company):

• Keith Ludeman, Group CEO - £916,000
• Nicholas Swift, Group Finance Director - £470,000. 

These gentlemen of course oversee the running of a number of rail and bus companies (plus Meteor, the company operating Bletchley's car park, and other transport-related businesses), and we need to be careful because whenever we get into a debate about how much the senior executives are getting paid there is no doubt that envy has a major influence on people's opinions. 

Quite honestly, I wouldn't care what the people who were responsible for the running of the trains that I use to get me into London were being paid as long as the service was satisfactory and offered value for money, but:

1. I don't believe that the train service that we have between Bletchley and London Euston is anything like as good as the one that we deserve
2. I don't believe we do get value for money given what we pay directly for our season tickets (in my case £3332 pa) and indirectly as tax-payers (this year's £185,000,000 susbsidy) 

Come back British Rail, all is forgiven (Andrew Gilligan does suggests in the 10/06/2010 article that the improvements in punctuality that we've seen have only taken us back to BR levels and that the only reason that they've managed that is because of the slack that we've now got built into the timetables). 


  

Distance and time

Stuck on the train this morning with no paper to read (See Bletchley shop post) and unable to sleep, I thought it might be interesting to work out how far and for how long a typical commuter probably travels on this line in a year.  The numbers are sobering...

Journeys

365 days in the year, minus 104 Saturdays and Sundays, minus another 40 days for holidays, sickness, etc.  This leaves a possible 221 commuting days, or 442 round trip journeys.

Distances

The distance between Bletchley and Euston stations is approximately 46 miles, so in a year we potentially travel 20,332 miles.  It's around 3,500 miles between London and New York so this is the equivalent of three round trips across the Atlantic...

Time

Journey times vary depending on the service and delays, but I'm going to assume an average of 50 minutes.   Total journey time on London Midland trains equals just over 368 hours or 15 days 8 hours.   It takes around 11.5 hours to fly from London to Hong Kong so we spend the same amount of time on a train as someone would on a plane flying to the Far East 32 times (16 round trips).


Matters arising

The above is all pretty depressing stuff, but it's when you dig deeper into the numbers that things really start getting disturbing.

I pay £3,320 for my season ticket to travel between Bletchley and Euston (no tube).   Focusing on the 3 round-trips to New York, I could easily do those flights with a decent airline (economy but with meals and movies included) for around £350-£400 each.  Why should the cost of rail (supposedly heavily subsidised by the UK tax-payer) cost three times as much as flights to New York?!!!

368 hours a year on the train.  If a commuter starts travelling down to London from the age of 22 and retires at 65 then he or she will have actually spent 1 year 9 months and 23 days on the train...

Nooooooooooooooooooooo.....    

Platform planning?

Three trains into platforms 8-11 within minutes of each other...  Automatic gates in operation...  Only one member of the platform staff in attendance... 

The above occurred this morning.  The 07:00 from Bletchley normally pulls into Euston around 07:38.  Since the new timetable came into force the arrival platform has been  platform 11 (it used to be no.17).   This morning there was an 8-car train disgorging its passengers on platform 8 (all stops from Bletchley due in at 07:34?) as we pulled onto platform 11 and disembarked.  Within a minute or two a 4-car (07:40 arrival from Tring?) was pulling into platform 10.  

Twenty carriages' worth of passengers at the same set of platforms at the same time would be bad enough, but on when its platforms 8-11 at London Euston then queues and frayed tempers are guaranteed...

The picture above was taken on a quiet Saturday morning but it does illustrate one of the issues with this part of Euston station.   The platforms themselves are more than wide enough but where 9 & 10 (which are effectively bay platforms) cut into the walkway too many people are forced through too narrow space.

To make matters even worse, the flow of passengers through the barriers is distorted with some crossing from left to right and others from right to left.   The problem is made worse by the fact that the underground station entrance, the ticket office, the information booth and the gate for people who can't use the automatic barriers are all on the same side.

Last year London Midland acknowledged the problems on platforms 8-11 and agreed to reduce the impact by keeping the barriers open for particularly busy time slots during the morning rush-hour.   When two trains have arrived at about the same time there is still queuing, but it is nothing like as bad as it would be if the automatic barriers were operating. 

So the questions that need to be asked are:

1. Why has London Midland and/or Network Rail decided that it's a good idea to have three (full) trains arriving on platforms 8-11 within minutes of each other?
2. Why weren't the automatic barriers open this morning?
3. Why was there only one member of staff on duty?

From experience I know that there is absolutely no point whatsoever raising these questions with London Midland customer service.  Send them an email and you get a reply saying that they are experiencing a particularly busy period and it may take longer than usual to reply (I'm told that there 'standard' was 2.5 months earlier this year).  All you'll eventually get is a letter apologising for the inconvenience and saying that it has been raised with the appropriate department.

We don't want a belated apology and a promise of an investigation.  We want actrion to make sure these problems don't occur again!

Windscreen leaflets

I'm starting to worry that the postings to this blog are starting to become just a long line of whinges, but this is one moan that has to be voiced.

I got off the train this evening to find that my car was one of many that had had a leaflet stuck under the windscreen wiper advertising a new "Gentlemen's Grooming Centre" (i.e. more expensive than usual barber shop) in Bletchley.  

Although I find it incredible that this practice is legal (most of the leaflets are discarded so end up as litter), the nuisance is normally minor.  Unfortunately, it had rained today and the glossy leaflet had become a sticker.  I could see that I wasn't the only driver who found that when they tried to remove the leaflet it left a large white area of paper stuck to the windscreen (when I got the car home it took 5mins to scrap this off.

It didn't look like the cars on the lower deck of the car park had been leafleted, so my guess is that whoever had done the job had tried to avoid being picked up by the CCTV cameras.

Please London Midland, when we pay to use your car park it would be nice to think that our vehicles weren't abused in this way.  It doesn't happen very often (maybe a half dozen times a year?), but it would be nice to think that you didn't have to pay someone to pick up the litter and that on the days that the leaflets get wet, we wouldn't have to scrape stickers of our cars...

Inadequate information

This morning it's raining (not a lot, but enough to get wet waiting on the platform).   Most people waiting for the 07:00 therefore sheltered under the platform awning.

The 06:53 slow train from Milton Keynes to London Euston comes and goes on time.  At 06:59 we get the announcement that the 07:00 is the next train on platform 4, so we leave the shelter and walk out to take up our usual positions on the platform.  We wait, and we wait...

At 07:03 I use my phone to check the National Rail Live Departure & Arrival Boards and find that they don't have the train listed for Bletchley, but it is showing as due to arrive 2 minutes late arriving at London Euston (This isn't unusual, the 'system' appearing to assume that a train has passed through the station if the departure time has been exceeded and there has been no positive report of a delay).

At around 07:07 we get an announcement that the 07:00 has been delayed and the next train onto platform 4 will be the 07:05 Southern service.  In the distance we can see a couple of workmen in orange high-vis jackets on thge track, and two trains are pulled into the passing loop.

At 07:10 a London Midland 8-car Desiro pulls onto Platform 4.  There's no announcement, and the train looks to be 80% empty.   After departure, the onboard announcement says that it's the delayed 07:00.  We pull onto the fast-line immediately (unusual for the 07:00) and when we get to Leighton Buzzard the usual crowd are waiting on platform 2 (so they had had an announcement to tell them about the platform change).

The train makes up time, arriving at London Euston at 07:46, only three minutes later than usual.  As we pull in we get an apology for the late arrival which "was due to a signalling problem outside Bletchley".


If this were an isolated incident then I wouldn't bother mentioning it, but unfortunately it isn't.

• YET AGAIN Network Rail have had a signalling problem which has impacted on the London Midland service.

• YET AGAIN London Midland have either not know what's happening or if they do know then either can't be bothered or are to disorganised to tell us.

• YET AGAIN we have evidence of the amount of slack that London Midland and Network Rail have built into the timetable.  The 07:00 which is scheduled to arrive at 07:43 in London Euston frequently gets in around 07:37/38.  Here they had a ten minute delay at the departure station but managed to cut that back to three minutes at the destination.

Please can we have the level of service that we pay for?

Feet on seats

Walk through any half-empty London Midland train on the way home in the evening and you'll see people stretched out with their feet on the seats.  

Put "feet on train seats" into Google and you'll find stacks of links to national and local newspaper reports about people being taken to court for this by the train operating companies, but most of these seem to date back to 2007 whene there was a purge (they were particularly hot in Merseyside).  

Most of us will avoid sitting on an obviously dirty seat, and are presumably not happy about sitting on a seat where someone has had their feet (bearing in mind the chewing gum, grease, food remnants, bird mess, etc which litter the platforms).  So why do London Midland allow this to happen?  People do move their feet off the seats when the guard comes through to check tickets, but the new Desiro trains supposedly have CCTV so they have the evidence if they want to use it. 

It would only take the publicity arising from one or two prosecutions to stop this practice.

Bletchley station shop

Returning to work yesterday (after an extended bank holiday weekend) I was disappointed to find that the paper and coffee shop at the entrance to Bletchley station had closed down.  Apparently its last day of opening had been the previous Friday and the owner had been in over the weekend to strip out the fixtures and fittings.

I'm unsure how long "Puccino's" had been trading at Bletchley station but suspect it was 5-6 years.  They took over when the previous operator, W.H.Smith closed the shop down.  They added hot drinks to the usual mix of newspapers, drinks and snacks, and have helped to make train journeys from Bletchley a bit more civilised.   The staff have generally been friendly and efficient, and I hope that they find new jobs quickly.

So what now for us commuters?  Hopefully someone will take up the lease before too long, but in the meantime there's no newspapers, hot coffee or tea.  This situation is hopefully only temporary, but for now at least the journey into London has taken yet another turn for the worse...