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Co-incidentally, just after the article appeared, the National Passenger Survey (NPS) was published. Twice a year the government, through rail watchdog Passenger Focus, carries out this survey to measure passenger satisfaction. Conducted by Continental Research, it gathers the opinions of approximately 1,500 South West Trains passengers by asking about 80 questions ranging from ticket-buying facilities, helpfulness and availability of staff to the cleanliness and provision of information on trains, security and car parking.
Again, bearing in mind the problems on the railway—overcrowding, rising fares, breakdowns and delays—one might have expected the answers to indicate a fairly high degree of complaint. Yet to the overriding question, “Given the journey you have taken today... are you: very dissatisfied, fairly dissatisfied, neither, fairly satisfied or very satisfied”, an amazing 85% were “satisfied” or “very satisfied”. Indeed, if you strip out the 11% who expressed no feeling one way or the other, only 5% of all those interviewed were “dissatisfied”.
Surprised? A lot of people are when they see the figures. Certainly, some adopt the attitude “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts”, but the interviews the Panel carried out and the much wider NPS seems to show that only one person in every 20 is “dissatisfied” with the service that South West Trains provides. “Disgusted from Guildford” would say, “Just try and tell that to the guys who commute to Waterloo with me every day.”
Can we be clear, therefore, that this article is not saying that everything is fine on our railway. It is not claiming that there is not a host of problems. Nor is it suggesting that many things do not go wrong or could not be changed for the better.
For many people, punctuality is the overriding quality they seek. Certainly it is one of the most important factors and the steady and substantial rise in the satisfaction figures enjoyed by South West Trains is mirrored by the staggering increase in punctuality over the years. That said, if you look at the NPS results closely, you find that almost twice as many people are actually dissatisfied with punctuality compared to their journey as a whole.
The Panel still believes that there is much that South West Trains can do to improve the service—and, more importantly, should be doing, and we will continue to fight for it. There is, however, surely a need to try to better understand what question the passengers who are surveyed think they are being asked and what their answers really tell us. Even the 85% of travellers who feel that their journey has been “satisfactory” surely cannot be saying many problems do not exist. Is the NPS, therefore, measuring something that you and I might not normally call “satisfaction” in other circumstances Does “satisfaction” on the railway actually mean something different from “satisfaction” in every other walk of life?
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