Ticketing and Concessionary Travel on Public Transport - United ...

Ev 188 Transport Committee: Evidence
the man had evidence of booking, <strong>and</strong> he agreed to stump up considerably more on his credit card. The
conductor was very sloppy in filling out the counterfoil, <strong>and</strong> the passenger, who worked for a bank,
dem<strong>and</strong>ed that it was correctly filled out. The police were called again at Motherwell <strong>and</strong> eventually the
passenger was escorted oV the train <strong>and</strong> dumped in the centre of a place he did not know at 1.00 am. The
incident was witnessed by several people in the seated coach including the son of Hounslow’s MP! As a result
of this totally unwarranted abuse of a passenger we were an hour late at Carstairs, delaying the start of
engineering work, <strong>and</strong> leaving all passengers very displeased with the staV behaviour.
Only a threat to safety of those on or around the train, or serious disturbance/damage will occur, should
the train not run to timetable. Poor protocol on such issues has famously backfired on the operator—in an
example of cyclists being refused access on to trains after the London to Brighton ride in 2004, by hired in
“heavies” leading to a near riot at Brighton when passengers with valid tickets were refused access to catch
the trains to Southampton <strong>and</strong> the West, <strong>and</strong> the initiative of around 30 cyclists in boarding at Preston Park ,
safely on a near empty train, but with the train crew refusing to move it , blocked all services for 90 minutes—
a pig headed management attitude eliciting the passenger behaviour it deserved as a result.
Rail—Overcharging by Inertia
On the Virgin Trainline <strong>and</strong> some other models of this template some selections appear highlighted by a
yellow bar—reading the small print reveals that you have to opt out of paying a first class upgrade rather
than opting in—<strong>and</strong> only checking the total payment being taken on a credit or debit card. This is an
undesirable side of this website, <strong>and</strong> the fare initially “rung up” has to be the basic fare, <strong>and</strong> any optional fare
supplements such as first class upgrades <strong>and</strong> travel insurance should—for all web-based selling, be oVered
purchases as opt-in rather than opt-out.
The web based booking system also fails to have a show every fare option, as noted elsewhere.
Need for Showing of Real Timetables—Not Extracts Selected by the System
A journey frequently undertaken is that from Glasgow to the East Midl<strong>and</strong>s <strong>and</strong> options to alight at
Rugby, Coventry, Nuneaton or even changing trains at Birmingham or Crewe, mean that selecting a train
is not a crude A to B choice but an area generic one, in much the same way that A Glasgow to South
Yorkshire trip could use trains to Leeds, Doncaster or SheYeld <strong>and</strong> arrange collection or taxi as appropriate
to check the options without access to Table 26 requires repeated enquiries with detail changes. This was
pointed out to the team interviewing about the NRS upgrade.
Similar problems also occur with the flow chart design for the voice recognition system. If it
misunderst<strong>and</strong>s a station name it became fixated on that name for the rest of the call, <strong>and</strong> only by
terminating the call can you try to get the system to let you correct it. Nowhere does the voice activated
system designers seem to have thought their system is fallible, <strong>and</strong> added in the option of saying “stop”,
“back” or “operator” to get out of a loop or one stage back in the menu.
Fish nor Fowl—The Break Between Booking Your Ticket <strong>and</strong> Booking Your Bike
Dr Bogus Zaba, a regular user of Virgin services, always books his bike from Warrington B Q as he
changes trains en route, <strong>and</strong> in so doing benefits form being a regular customer with staV used to carrying
out the transaction, although he reports that recently the booking process has been less smooth. His
experience on train was also soured by an incident at Preston where staV refused to open the door <strong>and</strong> let
him board with his cycle, even with a reservation
The experience of call centres—especially National Rail—is of staV with a geographic, <strong>and</strong> horairial
illiteracy dependent solely on what they read on screen—I have had reports of the denial that trains run to
Wick, or a service runs from Fort William to London the latter to staV who were due to work on the train,
who strongly advised otherwise. The inaptitude extends to being unable to book cycles, one Chesterfield
traveller booking to get to the ferry at Harwich had no success with National Rail, Midl<strong>and</strong> Main Line, <strong>and</strong>
Virgin, until fortunate enough to l<strong>and</strong> with ONE’s call centre in Norwich.
Gareth GriYth’s experience in Solihull where he has to travel to only two stations capable of making cycle
reservations (where is the commitment to selling any ticket from any ticket oYce?) Birmingham New Street,
<strong>and</strong> Birmingham International, parallels a TV producer living in rural Warwickshire who used to spend
around £3,000/year travelling with their bike down to Euston <strong>and</strong> enjoying a ride of under 15 minutes to
the London studios instead of a miserable <strong>and</strong> long ride on public transport. With on-line booking he simply
went to the ticket machine <strong>and</strong> collected the full set of tickets for a fully predictable journey sequence (like
Dr Zaba knowing he can make his reservation in the connection time at Warrington). However at New
Street, the uncertainty of queuing time to get served nudge the balance <strong>and</strong> now £3,000 worth of business
has gone to driving down the M40.