Half a million rail workers enjoy free or discounted travel Part 2

Following on from my original post yesterday I noticed a few things that were missed in the Telegraph article and should also be considered.

Rail Staff Discounted Tickets (PRIV) are only valid for Anytime Single and Return Tickets, otherwise known as the full price walk up fare.  In reality it is often cheaper for rail staff to obtain other railcards that are available to the public as these allow discount on off-peak tickets.

In the Telegaff article there are a couple of glaring omissions from the article relating to other industries that receive travel discounts.

Transport for London employees and their spouses/children receive free travel on the Underground, Overground, DLR, London Buses, Tramlink and selected NR routes!  In addition to this, those who joined TfL before 1st April 1996 also get the 75% discount that National Rail employees receive.

The real kicker in this debate is that Travel Agents and National Rail Enquiries Staff can get discount authority documents entitling them to 75% off most walk-up fares, including Off-Peak and Super Off-Peak! meaning that they get 75% off the REDUCED fares.

To give an example of this:

London Euston – Manchester Anytime Return is £279.00, the railstaff discount (PRIV) price is £69.75
London Euston – Manchester Off Peak Return is £70.00, the Travel Agent Discount Authority (TADA) price is £17.50!!!!

This means that a member of rail staff and a travel agent could be sitting next to each other on an off-peak train and the travel agent has paid £52.25 LESS for the same journey!!!

In conclusion, IF the Telegraph article had contained this information, then it might have been a balanced article and the “fury” of commuters could have been directed in the correct way.  Unfortunately, the Telegaff have gone off half cocked again, which means that the rail industry once again receives a bashing that it does not really deserve.

The McNulty Report – Good News or Bad News?

The long-awaited McNulty value for money study of the rail industry has in my opinion fundamentally failed to put passengers’ needs at its centre.

Although the headlines for rail users appear to be fairness and tackling the complex fare structure, there are a lot of caveats buried in the detail of the report which could lead to a lower-quality, more expensive railway for passengers.

There is some good news, such as proposals for three-day season tickets that will provide benefits for part-time workers and also greater local control of the railways. The overall theme of the report is towards cutting the government’s subsidy and granting more flexibility to Train Operating Companies, while passengers’ needs – and a wider understanding of the social and environmental benefits of the railway are at serious risk of being sidelined.

Transport Minister Philip Hammond maintains that passengers will benefit eventually. But in reality, these rewards will happen beyond the life of the current government, and only if the rail industry as a whole rises to the challenge.  Meanwhile rail users are struggling with fare increases that far outstrip pay rises within the rail industry.

Media coverage seems to have focused on what will happen to off-peak fares.  Current fares are resulting in serious overcrowding just at the end of the rush hour period, when, unsurprisingly, regular rail users will wait to travel on a more affordable ticket. The McNulty report is proposing to change the current structure around the peak/off fares to make services less crowded by adjusting times and fares according to areas of heavy usage.  There are also fears being voiced that off-peak fares will be eroded by Train Operating Companies looking to make the most revenue from their services to cut subsidies from the Government.

Essentially, the majority of proposals regarding ticket prices boil down to avoiding costs associated with providing extra capacity, rather than making the option of rail more attractive to potential and existing users. There are also suggestions within the report that ticket prices could increase in areas where rail competes with other transport modes, which can only been seen as a backward step in encouraging more people to use rail as a greener mode of transport.

The other obvious concerns of the report include possible reduction of services on regional lines, the potential for frontline staff cuts meaning more unstaffed stations and the proposals to provide larger car parks which could create larger traffic problems around stations and risk turning passengers away, rather than encouraging more passengers and thus increasing revenue.people away from the train rather than increasing revenue.

Overall, the report leaves unanswered questions.  Namely, what are the railways for? Is the railway a public service, run for the benefit of passengers, Or are we moving towards a more commercial railway that suits the convenience of Train Operating Companies?

There is some good news as a result of the report.  Transport Minister Philip Hammond has committed to a fundamental review of fare structure. This needs to be structured to provide an easy to understand system that removes a lot of complex fares and is also fair to both commuters and occasional travellers alike.  The current fare structure is complicated to the point that even railway staff members cannot understand it and therefore cannot advise passengers properly.  The other opportunity of the fares review is that it gives the Government  a chance to ensure that the views, needs and importance of passengers are heard loud and clear.

To view Sir Roy McNulty’s report in full, you can download a copy from the DfT website.

Tales of the Unexpected (A quiet night at work)

Now that the weekend is over, I can finally tell you about my latest shift at work.

I arrived for work 45 minutes early, walking across the station concourse wondering where all the passengers were.  When I say that the station was quiet, I mean it was QUIET!!  Hardly anybody waiting for trains and none of the usual hustle, bustle and noise of a Friday afternoon.

After signing in, I picked up a copy of our daily orders (which show what trains will be coming into each platform) and  also checked our duty roster to find that I was rostered on platforms 1-3.  This was good news as platforms 1-3 are the busiest on the station and handle a departure every 20 minutes.

I wandered down to the platforms to meet up with the other staff I would be working with and we discussed a plan of attack for the night.  We try to check as many trains as possible but late platform alterations & set swaps can easily bugger up a plan and so it was to be today.

After checking our first train (lightly loaded and NO problems) we were informed that the set in Platform 1 had a defective door and that it would not be moving for a long while.  This meant that we were a platform AND a train down right at the start of our shift and that, if the situation continued this way, we would be in deep shit trouble later on.

Fast forward 5 trains (and a 10 minute fag break thanks to a platform alteration) without problems apart from the usual Advance ticket holders trying to get earlier trains to my first chance to assist a passenger.  Lady approaches me, hands over her ticket and I immediately see that it is routed via a different station and is therefore not valid.  I explained to the passenger what was wrong and that, if she wanted to travel from our station, she would have to go to the ticket office and get her ticket changed (Cue RPO waiting for the usual torrent of abuse).

To my amazement, the passenger apologised for her mistake, and promptly went to the ticket office, returning 20 minutes later to catch her train and thanking me for my help in the process (Why can’t all passengers be like this?).  Almost immediately a male passenger ran down the ramp to be told that he couldn’t board the train as the doors were being closed ready for departure.  Again, I waited for the usual torrent of abuse but all he did was call me a wanker rude name and walked off.

Now the fun was due to start.  The last off-peak service had departed and we prepared ourselves for the usual onslaught of people trying to blag their way onto trains with the wrong type of tickets.  With the exception of about 20 passengers trying to board with off-peak tickets or advances for later times, EVERYONE else had the right tickets for their trains (Some sort of record, surely) and there was absolutely no anger or profanity offered (OK, what’s going on?).

After our meal break, we got ourselves prepared for the second (busiest) half of our shift.  This is the part where we get the commuters and day trippers returning home, as well as people going away for the weekend.  Again, with the exception of a few arseholes passengers deliberately trying to deceive us into letting them travel earlier than their ticket allows, every train left on time with no major problems.

Come the end of the shift, it honestly felt like I had done very little (Is he mad I hear you cry) but I am one of those people who likes dealing with problems as it makes me use my brain (plus the fact I actually enjoy helping people).  So, off back home, only to be faced by signal and points failures on the Underground which meant my normal 45 minute journey home took an hour and a half (So much for investment TfL).

Oh well, only another few days till I’m back doing it all over again, although I doubt I will have another shift like this one for a while.