The annual national survey of passengers has found that the vast majority of travellers are happy with their train service, but can that really be the case, asks Sir Alan Greengross, Chairman of Passengers’ Panel
The philosopher John Rawls, who died in 2002, argued that the rules of any society should be made by people who do not know where they are going to end up in that society, in other words, at the top or the bottom of the pile. Rules, he said, should be made on the basis of what is right for that society rather than what might be comfortable or acceptable for those making them.
In Issue 26 (January/February) of e-motion, Passengers’ Panel suggested that despite all the many problems on the railway, South West Trains passengers seem to be relatively content. As we put it, “a huge majority... feel that, overall, things are not all that bad”. Clearly the “regular user of the services between Guildford and Waterloo for the last 28 years” who wrote to us did not agree. He said he read the article with
“a mixture of disbelief and disgust” and then went on to list a large number of true causes for complaint.
The article was based on face-to-face interviews that had been made for the Panel and tried to reflect not only what was expressed in those, but also the feedback that members of the Panel receive on their day-to-day travels. It was written, in part at least, to express some surprise at this general feeling of passenger satisfaction despite the fact that, in the recent past, there have been so many causes for complaint. How can you be “satisfied” with your journey when you have been unable to buy a ticket, found yourself packed sardine-style for 45 minutes on a train, possibly delayed by a signal failure?
In fairness, some of the problems that passengers experience every day cannot be laid at the door of South West Trains. You can hardly blame the company for engineering work over-runs, lack of capacity, platforms that cannot take longer trains, a person who throws themselves on the track or a lorry hitting a bridge. That is certainly not to relieve the train operator of all responsibility, which is why the Panel is continually putting the problems that passengers face day after day to South West Trains.
While clearly some problems are beyond even the company’s control, many might have been avoided if the government hadn’t been so intent on squeezing out public subsidies to the railway and concentrated more on seeing that passengers received a reliable service at an acceptable price. With so much for passengers to be unhappy about, a stream of people seemingly expressing their overall satisfaction with the system makes one begin to wonder.
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