Railway blighted by a lack of consistency

One of the key negatives of the fragmentation and privatisation of the railway has been the lack of consistency throughout the network.

I have written about this in recent columns, focusing on aspects as diverse as lost property and the approach to suicide prevention. The franchise system could and should have been designed to ensure that there were certain network standards which meant passengers knew what services to expect, and employees responded to key sets of rules.

There are numerous other examples. Should there not, for instance, be a consistent approach to the carriage and storage of bicycles? Is it too much to ask that every station should have a set amount of cycle parking, based perhaps on local usage and past experience?

Should there not be a standard approach to ticket checking, so that (say) every station with a particular throughput would be staffed, while those with fewer passengers could be left unstaffed?

And here’s another example of the dysfunctional nature of the railway. The guy who runs the Queens Park Rangers blog,

Clive Whittingham, has had to claim refunds on several journeys because strike days have prevented journeys, and the response is so inconsistent.

LNER, the supposedly terrible state-run railway, enables refunds immediately with one click. And the money appeared in his account within 30 minutes.

With Avanti, he had to set up a separate ‘delay account’ and he had to upload pictures of all the tickets. But the refund did arrive quickly after that.

Similarly on Great Western Railway, he had to set up an account and the refund was slow in coming.

But the worst was East Midlands Railway. The company at first claimed he was not entitled to a refund because it had not been a strike day, when it clearly was. After a lengthy correspondence with very poorly written letters that kept on wishing his family well (!), the refund did eventually arrive.

Again, this shows the disadvantages of fragmentation. The system is not geared towards helping customers, but instead is determined by whether the company cares or doesn’t. Another issue for reform.