I love Southern Rail

[jonny jeez]

I've commuted for 2-3 days a week since 2012, but have only been doing 2 most weeks for the last 12-18 months due to the Mrs also working in London & doing my share of the school run. I think I've done 5 days a week twice - but both of those were in summer months when the kids were away at the in-laws!!

I'll certainly keep my usual Thurs & Fri commutes - but the strike (which sounds like it will continue on well into 2017) gives me a good excuse to up that to 3-4 (work are relaxed about me arriving late on days I need to sort the kids & then cycle in during the strike - don't get to my desk much before 9:30 on those days)

Roads were crazy busy this morning though - clearly people moved from using the trains to using the roads!

Its interesting to see how work look at this. Do they see you as arriving late...or managing to make it in despite the industrial.action.

I mention as a few years ago, once or twice a year I might pick up a mechanical (puncture and the like) and my immediate boss, whilst outwardly happy would always mention my tardyness.

Yet 5-10 times a year many people didnt turn up at all due to industrial.action and are treated with open sympathy.

Whilst I was sat at my desk....again, as always.

I don't work there any more but I always found that attitude really frustrating and very hard to voice without seeming petty

 

[vickster]

I'm not sure. Roads up here in Norfolk were crazy busy (longer queues than usual inbound around 0900, plus queues on the A149 out of Lynn at 1030ish) and we've no transport strikes. Could there be some other reason why more people are motoring today?

Christmas shopping, schools breaking up on Friday, damp weather, traffic has been hideous in SW London since the start of December

 

[MiK1138]

Its interesting to see how work look at this. Do they see you as arriving late...or managing to make it in despite the industrial.action.

I mention as a few years ago, once or twice a year I might pick up a mechanical (puncture and the like) and my immediate boss, whilst outwardly happy would always mention my tardyness.

Yet 5-10 times a year many people didnt turn up at all due to industrial.action and are treated with open sympathy.

Whilst I was sat at my desk....again, as always.

I don't work there any more but I always found that attitude really frustrating and very hard to voice without seeming petty

You are a better man than me, Strikes are foreseeable so alternatives can be arranged, mechanical failure is not foreseeable, I would be unable to hold my tongue

 

[mjr]

Christmas shopping, schools breaking up on Friday, damp weather,

Christmas shopping perhaps (my panniers seem to be a near-permanent fixture at the moment!), but it wasn't raining here until about an hour ago. And why does schools breaking up in the future make people drive now?

You are a better man than me, Strikes are foreseeable so alternatives can be arranged, mechanical failure is not foreseeable, I would be unable to hold my tongue

Nor me - and nor did I when I cycled to/from work in blizzards and so on, yet some people who lived closer bottled it because the buses packed up before the cyclists did. I wasn't accepting a penalty for being a few minutes late starting (no meeting scheduled first thing anyway and I stayed late to make up time) when many didn't show up at all!

 

[Dogtrousers]

I used Southern quite a bit during the summer. They were seriously the worst train service I've ever had to suffer. Swathes of cancellations every single day due to a "temporary shortage of train crew", for which read "a calamitous failure of planning, about which we don't really care, as we'll be out of this damn franchise soon enough, why did we ever think this was a good idea".

 

[vickster]

Christmas shopping perhaps (my panniers seem to be a near-permanent fixture at the moment!), but it wasn't raining here until about an hour ago. And why does schools breaking up in the future make people drive now?

Drop kids at school, go shopping. Or end of term activities, concerts etc being attended?
I expect the traffic was worse around me due to the strike ...

 

[mjr]

I used Southern quite a bit during the summer. They were seriously the worst train service I've ever had to suffer. Swathes of cancellations every single day due to a "temporary shortage of train crew", for which read "a calamitous failure of planning, about which we don't really care, as we'll be out of this damn franchise soon enough, why did we ever think this was a good idea".

It ain't an old-style franchise: it's more like a management contract, with Govia (Go-Ahead and SNCF's Keolis) being paid £8.9 billion to operate it for 7 years and Whitehall taking all the revenue; and there's part of the problem. The obvious way for Go-Ahead and Keolis/SNCF to make more money from it is by cutting costs, as long as it stops short of triggering any financial penalties. There's little harm to them in forcing passengers to other routes or modes of transport. #SouthernFail has already seen one rail minister (Claire Perry) quit, just after saying in Westminster Hall that "At the moment I do not have the levers to pull to take the franchise back."

There's also nearly f-all in the franchise about cycling: just that they have to allow folding bikes, plus non-folding "when reasonably practicable" or something weaselly like that. I suspect that means no expansion of the Brompton Docks from Southern to the rest of Thameslink or Great Northern in the foreseeable.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Thanks @mjr I knew Southern was "special" in some way, in fact I may once have known (and forgotten) what you wrote.

Using them this summer really was a bad experience. They are a cut above any other service provider of any sort I can think of for outright hostility and crapness with their Millwall-inspired customer care slogan: "We don't like you, we don't care"

 

[mjr]

They are a cut above any other service provider of any sort I can think of for outright hostility and crapness with their Millwall-inspired customer care slogan: "We don't like you, we don't care"

I feel it's really important to distinguish between the management who seem to be taking some customer-careless actions (best-known local example is forcing the as-seen-on-TV award-winning pub out of Downham Market station by trying to treble their rent) and the railway workers, some of whom are now on their fourth employer and seem to be doing their best in a very strange environment.

We seem to have a core of long-serving workers out here on the now-run-by-Govia Fen Line and I suspect they insulate us from the worst management madness. Like the weekend before last, our train home after the Cambridge Mill Road Winter Fair stopped short at DM because of track damage and I think it was John who seemed to be there alone, marshalling everyone on and off the correct emergency-replacement buses (some were stopping at Watlington and some weren't) and somehow keeping it all calm and fairly cheerful and moving along as best as he could.

And that's part of why I'll often take the time to find the reasons for strikes on rail union websites, rather than just believe the Sun's gibberish about "crush the strikers. That means ordering them to return to work or face the dole" - lots of railway workers don't like upsetting their customers and won't strike without pretty good reason.

Oh and quite a few cycle to work

 

[Dogtrousers]

I feel it's really important to distinguish between the management who seem to be taking some customer-careless actions (best-known local example is forcing the as-seen-on-TV award-winning pub out of Downham Market station by trying to treble their rent) and the railway workers, some of whom are now on their fourth employer and seem to be doing their best in a very strange environment.

I wasn't having a pop at staff, who I'm sure do their best. My issue was with the endless cancellations due to "temporary shortage of train crews"

Lets see, Southern, your job is to employ crews to run a service.... Did the dog eat your resourcing plan?

 

[midlife]

It ain't an old-style franchise: it's more like a management contract, with Govia (Go-Ahead and SNCF's Keolis) being paid £8.9 billion to operate it for 7 years and Whitehall taking all the revenue; and there's part of the problem. The obvious way for Go-Ahead and Keolis/SNCF to make more money from it is by cutting costs, as long as it stops short of triggering any financial penalties. There's little harm to them in forcing passengers to other routes or modes of transport. #SouthernFail has already seen one rail minister (Claire Perry) quit, just after saying in Westminster Hall that "At the moment I do not have the levers to pull to take the franchise back."

There's also nearly f-all in the franchise about cycling: just that they have to allow folding bikes, plus non-folding "when reasonably practicable" or something weaselly like that. I suspect that means no expansion of the Brompton Docks from Southern to the rest of Thameslink or Great Northern in the foreseeable.

Surely that's a recipe for disaster with no incentives or levers to do a proper job !

Shaun

 

[mjr]

Probably no-one will win this. The only reasonably-forseeable winner at the moment is the government getting to reduce union power yet further, but even that's not that likely. The passengers, the taxpayers and the workers have all already lost more than they're likely to regain.

 

[srw]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...s-knife-and-threatens-conductor-a3493431.html

Bring on DOO.Can't wait for the idiocy.

That line (Chiltern) has had DOO for at least the last 20 years I've been using it to commute into London. The story is wrong - they don't employ conductors. Some (a very few) trains have ticket inspectors, some trains (most of the ones on the long line to Birmingham) have people selling food and drink.

 

[srw]

Lines are different though.I don't know how it works over there

You don't think it's helpful to find out before posting?

There might be good arguments in favour of retaining guards on some lines. The fact that someone's been arrested on a DOO line for threatening someone with a knife isn't one of them.

There's plenty of real information on the BTP website, including this one: http://www.btp.police.uk/pdf/FOI Response 0001-17 Assaults With Weapons.pdf

 

[srw]

So I heard they were thinking of taking the First Class out to increase capacity but I wondered where Chris Grayling will sit as he'd never sit with the plebs*.

* Of course hit sit in his limo...(doh)

Yes he will.

But if he lived somewhere in the High Wycombe - Bicester - Banbury - Birmingham direction and actually used the train, he'd be sitting in the single class with everyone else. Chiltern (yes, that pesky little company again) abolished first class when they were refurbing their trains sometime last century before privatisation. They've since invented something called "Business Zone", for a £10 or £25 fee, which uses old BR first class carriages, but as they say isn't first class. My local MP does (very) occasionally use the tube or the train - both, from here, are single class. As is the local line I use into and out of Guildford.

And believe me I do understand how easy it is to believe what the press say - but on this particular subject all you have to do is look on page 1 of this thread... I love Southern Rail