Did you know that Britain has been as dry as the Mojave Desert?
No well it’s the only explanation that I can think of as to why Southeastern have been so consistently shite this week.
The first rains in a thousand years have completely codsed up the rail system.
It is Thursday any I have not yet this week been on a train that isn’t late.
On Wednesday they even cancelled the morning train due to the biblical floods we have been having. Or that they could be bothered why give a service when you have a monopoly that is subsidised and well you customers are not likely to go anywhere else.
This is England the only place damper in winter is Ireland for fecks sake.
When a Southeastern guard was asked why the trains are so bad his brilliant explanation was “well it is winter” is it? That crept up on us I didn’t see that coming. Did we have this winter thing last year?
This week we were warned by some government committee that the trains in 2014 are going to be overcrowded and provide a terrible service. I think southeastern are ahead of their time. It’s the first target they have beaten without fudging the figures.
Maybe they should change the company tagline to something like.
“Don’t wait until 2014 for your crap rail service. Travel with Southeastern and get it now.”
Guess what this mornings train in was over 10 minutes late so only one more train to make a perfect score for the week.
There is an option of registering with ORR to provide a train service as an Open Access operator - as yet no one has done this for a commuter railway and it wuill be a tough one to crack (trains only used twice per day and where to put them when not in use, train paths in to a suitable London terminus (not impossible - just look what Steam Dreams managed in January with electric trains cancelled everywhere they managed the thread a kettle and coaches through the whole mess, and even offered spare seats to stranded commuters from Kent.
ReplyDeleteThere are old coaches available and diesel locos that can push or pull them and there are also 3 or 4 HS1 trains idle at Ashford because demand is not as high as forecast. There is even a mothballed station at Waterloo Internationsl with a mothballed rail link that connects back via Ashford to Folkestone....
Now aside from the detail that you will have a very limited choice of times to travel, how many might part with say UKP 3000/year for a season ticket to underwrite the running of this sort of open access service? It could perhaps guarantee that only the seated capacity would be sold, offer wifi, free or readily available at reasonable price coffee/newspapers etc....