Passenger Focus survey

This week Passenger Focus were handing out survey forms at Bletchley.  According to the script that introduced the survey:

"If the Government proceeds with high-speed rail proposals between London and Birmingham, then some services would transfer to the high-speed line.  this would provide an opportunity at some point in the future for considerable service improvements to be introduced on the existing route.  We would like to hear your views on the these potential future improvements."


I'm sorry, but I find this a bit strange...  As the intro also says "Passenger Focus is the official independent consumer organisation representing rail users nationally".  Now if the date were somewhere close to 2026 (the date that HS2 is scheduled to complete assuming it gets the go-ahead and all goes to plan) then I could understand why they'd want to ask questions about priorities on train frequency, journey times and seat availability, but that's 15 years away.

The questions asked here are extremely detailed.  See example below:

Passenger Focus survey - Question 14a asks
for a preference between a train every 15mins with
100 seats for 80 passengers and a journey time of
43 minutes with the other option also being 15 minute
frequency but only 100 seats for 170 passengers
with a journey time of 30mins.

Question 14b has a journey time of 50 minutes for
both options but one has a frequency of 10 minutes
and 100 seats for 170 passengers while the other
has a frequency of 15 minutes and 120 passengers for
100 seats

Am I being paranoid when I say that I suspect that this is another marketing exercise designed to dig up statistics which the pro-HS2 lobby can use to justify the £30bn plus expenditure, disturbance to people who live on the proposed route for the line and ecological damage?  Commuters can't say anything else other than that they'd welcome more trains, quicker journeys and more seats.  Have we been tricked into giving them ammunition to help them railroad this one through? (pun intended!)



What do you think?  Is it odd that Passenger Focus (the body which produces the customer satisfaction stats used by the Department of Transport and the Train Operating Companies to measure performance which regularly show favourable opinions for our line) is asking the public this kind of questions at a time when a large number of local councils, heritage and environmental groups, and a significant percentage of the general public have voiced their opposition against HS2?

See also:

• Passenger Focus - About Us
• Passenger Focus - Customer satisfaction survey results for London Midland

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