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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High-speed rail?

In Friday's Daily Telegraph (28/5/2010) there was an article by Andrew Gilligan titled For most of us, high-speed rail is anything but.   The piece covers a lot of ground and challenges a number of things that seem to be accepted as gospel, but what caught my eye was the paragraph which suggests that instead of spending money on grand flagship projects, the government should be investing in improvements to existing, ordinary services.

The West Coast mainline received a lot of funding aimed at increasing capacity and reducing journey times for the long-distance services, but what did it do for us commuters?   I reckon the answer is "not a lot".  We had to put up with a long period of inconvenience while track and signal 'improvements' were made, but some of the changes that have resulted include: 

1.  A significant reduction in the number of non-West Coast maninline (Virgin Trains) services using the fast-line.  There are fewer fast trains between Bletchley and Euston and the semi-fasts that we get are sandwiched between the 'all stop' trains.
2. Less flexibility when things go wrong - To increase line speeds Railtrack (as was) had to reduce the number of points on the line where trains could switch from fast to slow and vice versa.  What this means now is that if there is a problem on the line, perhaps a failed train or lineside equipment failure, then trains are more likely to get stuck.
3. A drop down the list in terms of priority when things go wrong.   This does seem to have improved in recent years but there certainly seemed to be a time when the local services were cancelled left, right and centre when there was a significant problem while Virgin Trains West Coast Main Line services appeared to come off significantly better.

The cost of the West Coast main Line upgrade apparently increased six-fold by the time it was finished, coming out an eye-watering £14.5 billion (National Audit Office).   Was it worth it?