10 May What are the train companies not telling you?
Georgina Waight
Photo by Nick Edwards for The Telegraph
Train prices are rising every year while delays are getting longer and more frequent. Customers aren’t happy and are starting to fight back with some refusing to use the service and some even suing the major train companies like Southern Rail. What do you not know about your train service?
Commuters are paying thousands of pounds on train travel a year. A season ticket from Guildford to London is £3,496 a year and many people are unhappy with their experiences. In 2016 233,606 trains were cancelled. The worst culprit was Govia Thameslink who are responsible for Thameslink, Great Northern and Southern Rail with an average of 19 cancelled trains per hour. (The Telegraph) With more people travelling by train than ever, and prices at an all-time high it is up to the train companies to safely and efficiently run their operations better than they are now.
Elizabeth Rehn from Crawley travels to London three days a week by train. ‘I would say my train ticket costs about 10% of my salary. It’s not worth me getting a season ticket as I only work three days a week so as they don’t have any options for part time workers I’m forced to buy my ticket every day. It’s very expensive’ she says. The price of train tickets has been going up every January for at least 20 years. In that time, they have rose by 23.5% (The Guardian) and nothing seems to have been done with the extra money to make customers commutes more relaxing or pleasant. Elizabeth says ‘I pay so much but I can never get a seat, it’s a nightmare. I have found myself sitting on the floor on the way home so many times, after being at work all day the last thing I want to do is stand up all the way home.’
While there are ways to get better prices for your travel it is not as simple as you may think. Booking in advance or buying split tickets is a sure way of getting a more reasonable price. Buying split tickets is when you buy lots of different tickets for small parts of a journey, which make up your big journey. There are websites online for you to do this or you can ask a member of staff at the ticket desk. However, it seems to be that some staff are less inclined to give you cheaper tickets and may need a lot of persuading. It appears that staff are told by their superiors not to tell a customer if there is a cheaper way to do their journey, such as splitting tickets, but if a customer asks if there is a cheaper way to do it they are allowed to show them alternatives. It is also revealed that there can be significantly different prices at different ticket machines in the same station. (Channel Four Dispatches) This lack of unity among prices for the exact same route is extremely confusing for passengers. It should be the worker’s duty to make sure that customers are getting the fairest price for their journey and are not paying more than someone else for the same journey.
It has been revealed that the boss of Southern Rail, one of the worst performing train companies has been rewarded a pay rise of nearly double his original salary to almost £500,000 a year. (The Guardian) This is despite terrible customer satisfaction and many commuters unable to get to or from work on a regular basis. With so many trains delayed and some people even losing their jobs, as they could not guarantee to be at their jobs on time, it seems ridiculous for the person in charge of all this chaos to be given such a large pay rise, while things seem to be in more turmoil than ever.
‘I don’t actually find the expensive tickets that much of a problem, it’s the constant delays that annoy me so much.’ Says Josh Yates, a commuter who travels from Barnham in West Sussex to London five days a week. ‘I’m just glad I have an understanding boss, it is ridiculous how often I have to work from home because of all the strikes, it’s actually become so frequent now that it’s not even a surprise anymore.’ Many train guards, drivers and conductors have striked over the past few years. Govia Thameslink Railway Group wants to introduce driver only trains, this means there would be no guards on certain trains. Many staff believe that means trains will be a lot less safe for passengers and in the future guard’s jobs may be at risk. (The Independent) But these strikes can be awful for commuters and put their jobs on the line too.
Max Oakley who travels from Horsham to London Bridge five days a week has decided that the constant disruptions aren’t worth it. ‘I’m actually in the process of looking for another job outside of the city. It’s just too stressful for me to never know if I’m going to be on time for work or not. I always get an earlier train than I should need to just in case it’s late. It’s stopping me from spending time with my family so I think we’d all be a lot happier if I found a job somewhere nearer.’ It isn’t surprising that many people are trying to turn away from the jobs in London because of the commute.
What many commuters may not know is that the Govia Thameslink Railway Group actually has two train timetables. One for the public and one for the train staff. The timetable we don’t get to see runs slightly behind the public timetable. Govia Thameslink, like all companies, have targets to meet but if we look at the amount of trains delayed every day on their railway lines it is hard to imagine they are meeting their targets. But with the use of a second, private timetable they do reach most of their ‘targets’ so nothing is done to make their services better, because they are already being seen as doing well enough. Public timetables can also be tweaked so that it looks like a train is not as delayed as it actually is. Instead of being 15 minutes late, it is 11 minutes late, meaning a lot less compensation is having to go out to members of the public. It is very manipulative and misleading for the public, especially if they are wishing to get compensation for their delayed journey. The Association of British Commuters who run campaigns such as #SouthernFail and #SouthernJustice on twitter use their voice on social media to share people’s stories and are rising up together to try and sue Southern Rail for all the money they have lost in either compensation, taxis or hotels from delays and cancellations.
As of March 2017, it has been announced that South Western trains have been taken over by a Hong Kong company called MTR and should start running from August. In Hong Kong 99.9% of trains run on time (The Standard) so this could completely change the company and train travel in that area. They have also promised thousands of more seats in and out of London Waterloo every day, which would instantly help with the overcrowding that is currently such an issue. Laura White travels in and out of London Waterloo most days for work and thinks it sounds like a great idea in theory ‘if this new company can do that it would be amazing but I’m not going to believe it until I see it.’
Hong Kong is well known for their on-time train services and great customer satisfaction so if they can bring that same high standard to the UK it could possibly change our trains for the better but it’s also the prices that need to be fair and as they will still be being owned by a private company it’s hard to see the prices dropping anytime soon. Train companies need to go back into the governments control so profits can’t be used to fill anyone’s pockets, if that can’t be done then train travel may continue to be overpriced and lacking in service even if they are taken over. Unfortunately, both Southern Rail and South Western refused to comment on the issues raised when contacted, and the allegations were put to them. Many customers are still fighting to get better train services and get their voices heard. The British Association of Commuters continue to work together to try and make the train services better for everyone and give them a platform to say how they’ve been mistreated, which can be the most important thing for people who feel like they have no voice at all.
