Monday, March 21, 2011

Dispatches

So did you catch dispatches on channel 4
Richard Wilson was traveling the country to see how shocking the rail service is in this country.
I am disappointed that he didn't say "I don't believe it!!" not once I say it myself at least once a month when I buy a ticket.
There were outraged people talking about how much it costs to get to Manchester from London etc.
I think it focused a bit to much on the easy target of how much it costs to use these crappy trains and not enough on the shoddy service we receive for the huge outlay.

There was a guy Chris who was discussing the SouthEastern performance on how the fairs have risen 13% and the service has got worse and they were insulting people by offering them a £20 Marks and Spencer voucher.
Well I am really insulted not to even get the insulting voucher. I have been complaining for months and have only received two emails which are the same patronising bullshit that they send out all the time. With the according to the passengers charter we don't owe you shit now pissoff! phrased slightly differently but that's the general gist of it.

Nick

1 comment:

  1. I was a bit thin on core detail and too much talking heads (without much to say) Notable (non) performances here from Ms Villiers, and Mr Kumar who might have said more by saying less better from Barry Doe and Louise Ellman.

    The programme missed completely the fact that just as you cannot solve traffic jams by building more roads you cannot excise rammed trains by buying more trains. There is a fundamental elephant in the room which was never even discussed. The failure of land use and economic planning that continues to grow the number of people all wanting to be in the same place at the same time - in effect at least half the working population of the Home Counties participates in a mass exodus crammed in to a window of under 2 hours in the morning and the repeats by evacuating the city every evening - filling trains to 200% of their capacity at times, but outside those rush hours the service can be delivered by half the number of trains running less than 50% filled. This is not a sustainable economic model, and 'buying' more trains won't solve it. For a start, with 4 London Stations EACH handling more passengers than Heathrow on a fraction of the land area how are you going to ram even more passengers through them at peak times?

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