[Travel] Trains shitshow - next STRIKE - October 8th (Spurs)??

[maresfield seagull]

Not really comparing like with like though. Rail passenger numbers have increased enormously since the 1980s and all these extra users are willing to pay these high prices. I guess a lot of people have joined you as commuters. Perhaps it’s just difficult to manage the increase without building new railways and that’s not really possible.

https://www.statista.com/statistics...-passenger-journeys-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

Willing to pay the price More like have to endure the price hike s !
Not a lot of alternative options Nor can everyone can work local

 

[trueblue]

And the trains were more comfortable then too.

You're right about that! When I use one of the new ones, with the seemingly concrete seat and half the footwell taken up by the curve of the carriage wall, I need to factor in the price of an osteopath on top of the usually exorbitant ticket.

 

[Gazwag]

Bizarrely heading east yesterday after the game I had possibly the best getaway ever - left at the full time whistle, power walked out the west upper and down to the station, snaked round in a queue but got straight onto the platform and was away on the 1708 Ore service which was a minute late. I don't expect that to ever happen again, but that was a right result with the afternoon sun and heat as it was.

Ah the one that was allowed to leave with the last 4 coaches empty of passengers and a 40 minute wait until the next non-seaford train, which had we stayed at Falmer was actually an hour due to delays. We ended up playing train roulette at Lewes as the London line and the Brighton line trains were due at almost the same time but just kept getting later, we finally got on the train from Lewes about 10 minutes later than we would have usually got home in Bexhill for a 3pm Saturday ko.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Not really comparing like with like though. Rail passenger numbers have increased enormously since the 1980s and all these extra users are willing to pay these high prices. I guess a lot of people have joined you as commuters. Perhaps it’s just difficult to manage the increase without building new railways and that’s not really possible.

https://www.statista.com/statistics...-passenger-journeys-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

But the money could have been taken from those people paying high prices and made other infrastructure / rolling stock improvements to make reliability and capacity much better than it currently is today

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

This could be utter nostalgic boll**** so please correct me, but I do get the impression that one of the things that's changed is that there was more of a pride in the service (from memory I think Paul Barber once similarly referenced the current lack of this this in an open letter) in the BR days. Stations being presentable was more a matter of pride, getting the trains run on time likewise.

There are plenty of rail employees now doing a very good job these days, but the break up of the constituent parts of the service and the fact that most operators are profit making, sometimes foreign, companies means that inevitably there is less motivation to bust a gut in some way

 

[drew]

Not really comparing like with like though. Rail passenger numbers have increased enormously since the 1980s and all these extra users are willing to pay these high prices. I guess a lot of people have joined you as commuters. Perhaps it’s just difficult to manage the increase without building new railways and that’s not really possible.

https://www.statista.com/statistics...-passenger-journeys-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

Pretty certain that BR, like most of the privatised services, were starved of investment in the decades prior to being sold off but then, miraculously, their debts were wiped out to sweeten the sale.

 

[Arthur]

Rare jaunt into Brighton on Saturday pre game which was very enjoyable until it came to getting to the ground. Spent 45 minutes without joy trying to sort out taxis so bit the bullet and joined the queue for the train at 14:20. Queue wasn't that big at that stage from what I recall it being like in the past we were just on the bend next to the greek takeaway van. Geordie bloke next to me was panicking I told him we'd get on the next one easily. Train arrives we get to the very front and they shut the gate saying its full.

We gave up and asked to leave the queue along with a lot of others to walk up to the taxi rank. Very frustrating to walk up the side platform to see the "full" train not even busy. Don't think anyone was standing. Is this a fall out from Covid that they won't cram the trains full or were they just being incompetent bellends?

Got a taxi pretty promptly but even he said he could only take 3 of us due to the covid rulings. Made it to my seat 8 minutes into the game. Not sure I'll go out of my way to head into Brighton pre game very often this season.

 

[BLOCK F]

Ah, the delights of British Rail catering! I remember getting a cheese sandwich at Brighton station buffet - roughly where M&S is now - from their glass display cabinet. Magnificent, curled up stale white bread and the cheese - sweaty and rubbery like a fat man’s flip flops.

The station toilets, which were underground, were I’m sure run by Porton Down. The smell alone would have overcome any invading army.

On the bright side, nothing, absolutely nothing, could match the wonderful breakfast that was offered on the old Brighton Belle.

Love your vivid descriptions.
I have never had a Brighton Belle breakfast, but I have to say that the seats from yesteryear were far more comfortable than the rock hard plinths of today. Thankfully, I rarely/ never have to use trains these days.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

But the money could have been taken from those people paying high prices and made other infrastructure / rolling stock improvements to make reliability and capacity much better than it currently is today

Agreed

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Willing to pay the price More like have to endure the price hike s !
Not a lot of alternative options Nor can everyone can work local

That’s a tricky one. There has been a big movement of population out of London to places like Sussex. Many of these people then commute back in to London to work. You’re right that not everyone can work locally but the corollary is that there are way more people in Sussex villages and towns than is needed for the work available. If rail tickets are priced cheaper then that will encourage commuting even more. That’s not the best environmental solution and nor is it best for quality of train services. I can understand that this impacts on people who are not a part of the influx though.

 

[CheeseRolls]

nothing more said than the silliness of tickets. franchiese are a mess too, not relevant to the point. fwiw we did see competition on Brighton-London, Thameslink offered cheaper fast trains, people complained about that too. put the whole lot on the same footing as Network Rail, see if that changes anything (it wont, most the delays are from engineering, signalling or industrial action).

I take your point on the silliness of tickets, but would argue that this reflected a privatisation, which was designed to make it difficult to take the railways back into public ownership, rather than one focussed on adding value for stakeholders including passengers. Any vestige of competition on the Brighton London line, was completely undermined when Thameslink and Southern ended up under one parent company. The rationale for the wave of eighties privatisation was that government was really poor at running large complex organisations and that private companies would be incentivised to deliver better value for money. What I have obeserved specifically over the last decade is that government is far worse at regulating private monopolies than it ever was at running these organisations.

There should have been criminal proceedings against Southern Water (including senior executives) and Thames Water. The procurement of the Emergency Services Network should have been cancelled years ago, rather than having to pay Motorola a huge premium to maintain a legacy network and continue to reward them and BT for the snail like progress of its replacement and don't get me started on handing back rail franchises at the first whiff of a loss.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Rare jaunt into Brighton on Saturday pre game which was very enjoyable until it came to getting to the ground. Spent 45 minutes without joy trying to sort out taxis so bit the bullet and joined the queue for the train at 14:20. Queue wasn't that big at that stage from what I recall it being like in the past we were just on the bend next to the greek takeaway van. Geordie bloke next to me was panicking I told him we'd get on the next one easily. Train arrives we get to the very front and they shut the gate saying its full.

We gave up and asked to leave the queue along with a lot of others to walk up to the taxi rank. Very frustrating to walk up the side platform to see the "full" train not even busy. Don't think anyone was standing. Is this a fall out from Covid that they won't cram the trains full or were they just being incompetent bellends?

Got a taxi pretty promptly but even he said he could only take 3 of us due to the covid rulings. Made it to my seat 8 minutes into the game. Not sure I'll go out of my way to head into Brighton pre game very often this season.

Almost certainly being incompetent bellends. They have no common sense at all at Brighton in my experience and all the trains back into town I was on last season were rammed to the gills.

We left early to have a pint outside as a Geordie mate was with us who needed to collect a ticket. I think it was around 1.30. It was noticeable that fewer trains seemed to come in than normal while we were queuing for and drinking beer.

 

[Andy1611]

Trains can be so hit and miss. Sometimes queueing for ages, sometimes the queues move freely and you're straight on.

I live in Burgess Hill and last year used the Park and Ride a lot more. Means less time on the beer which I suppose isn't the worst thing. But it's so much better than the trains. Less queueing, more likely to get a seat and can then drive home in my own car with my own tunes on.

Sent from my DN2103 using Tapatalk

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

It would help immensely if they reinstated the departure boards on the concourses that they had in the early days of the Amex, plus installed some departure info by the area where you get funnelled into one or other queue. Then folks could make a value judgement as to whether to opt in to a stupidly long wait, or to opt out in favour of other beer/transport options. As things stand, for many of us, the first you know about when the next train is due, and how many carriages it's got, are when you're actually on the platform. Appreciate that much of that info can be gleaned from one's phone, but that's not the point. Needs far more prominently displaying. Hardly rocket science. Barely even train science

 

[MattBackHome]

It's the No.1 thing that annoys me about visiting.

The England Norway match was the worst it's ever been IMO, but even then I was so conditioned to it being at least something of a shitshow that I resolved immediately to chuck £30 at Seagulls travel (who are amazing, and lovely) for a lift there and back from Southern Cross for the Spain match.

 

[Gwylan]

I live in Burgess Hill and last year used the Park and Ride a lot more. Means less time on the beer which I suppose isn't the worst thing. But it's so much better than the trains. Less queueing, more likely to get a seat and can then drive home in my own car with my own tunes on.

This surprised me. Have SASTA banned people using headphones/earbuds on their trains?

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

It would help immensely if they reinstated the departure boards on the concourses that they had in the early days of the Amex, plus installed some departure info by the area where you get funnelled into one or other queue. Then folks could make a value judgement as to whether to opt in to a stupidly long wait, or to opt out in favour of other beer/transport options. As things stand, for many of us, the first you know about when the next train is due, and how many carriages it's got, are when you're actually on the platform. Appreciate that much of that info can be gleaned from one's phone, but that's not the point. Needs far more prominently displaying. Hardly rocket science. Barely even train science

Have emailed PB on pretty much the above. Love the bloke. He replied within 30 minutes - as I sort of knew he would - and he copied in the Albion transport manager. Class act PB

 

[amexer]

Hopefully I am wrong but crap transport is not PBs greatest concern all the time 31k turn up and hospitality is full

 

[chaileyjem]

Hopefully I am wrong but crap transport is not PBs greatest concern all the time 31k turn up and hospitality is full

You said this earlier in this thread more than that - that he never talks about it, never acknowledges there are issues - yet two posts above unsurprising evidence that this isn’t true and that he’s responded virtually immediately to an issue/ suggestion about improving train woes…
Oh well.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Hopefully I am wrong but crap transport is not PBs greatest concern all the time 31k turn up and hospitality is full

It should be of concern to PB. It's the Albion's least best 'customer matchday experience' by a country mile. 10k of that 31k are pure EPL tourists of one sort or another. Not the kind to hang around should things ever go tits up