Operators should consider the customer

I was delighted that my tweet about the excessive repetition of ‘see it, say it, sorted’ on East Midlands Trains attracted a huge response, and even an explanation from EMT - albeit an unsatisfactory one.

Travelling to Sheffield from St Pancras, and trying to work on the train, I was driven mad by this repeated message from a woman conductor who sounded very nice but who never came round to check the tickets (her male colleague did once).

Moreover, as one of my respondents suggested, what an earth does it mean? What are we supposed to see - a 1920s-style anarchist holding a fizzing cylinder which says ‘BOMB’ on it? Someone stepping over the yellow line at a station when a train is whizzing through? It’s the sort of noise that puts people off travelling on trains.

The response from EMT was that these announcements are mandated by Transsec, the government committee in charge of security on the railways. Supposedly these announcements are supposed to be made at every station stop on long-distance trains and every 15 minutes on suburban services, but thankfully many operators simply do not comply. EMT, for some reason, are being goody goodies and should just tell Transsec where to jump.

As I was writing this, there was more bad news for passengers with the announcement that they will have to pay £2 to withdraw their own money at several station ATMs.

Local news website Inside Croydon reported that according to the owner of the machines, Cardtronics, charges are being rolled out at machines because Southern refused to accept a reduction in fees paid: “In July, Link cut the fees banks pay us for ATM withdrawals. This no longer covers our costs for delivering the service. Southern Rail refused to accept lower commissions from us, which would have kept the machine as free to use. So we had to start charging, or remove the ATM.”

While passenger numbers have started going up again, the trend of continuously increasing numbers has been broken and the future is uncertain - particularly if Brexit leads to a recession.

Therefore, the railways are in competition and must make their ‘offer’ attractive to their potential market.

Expensive cash machines and excessive announcements may (as one responder on Twitter to Nigel Harris argued) be trivial in comparison with a lot else that is happening on the railways, but this is exactly the sort of issue that may well make a difference to a few passengers. TOC managers… think customer.