We’ve come to the end of the line (South West Trains)

Member Name: Modena

Product:	South West Trains
Date:	17/02/02 (486 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Acceptable when the service is running properly, new trains soon, new information system soon, frequent service from some stations, maybe my line does not paint an accurate picture

Disadvantages: Delays, dated trains, a mess during peak hours, do not fully inform passengers, only pretend to listen to customers and also see stories section of this opinion

South West Trains (SWT) operate services between London Waterloo and the South West of England; reaching places like Reading, Exeter, and Southampton etc, it also runs a suburban network through south west London, they are a subsidiary of Stagecoach; probably best known for its bus services… I’ve been travelling one the “Reading” line for almost 4 years now, and this is what I think of them, I can only speak on behalf of this line, there is a chance I could mislead you on the general picture…

••The SWT Experience

•The reliability of the service
In one word, I think it has been awful, I have traveled on SWT for almost 4 years and the percentage of times I have been on time (i.e. no later than 3 minutes later than the advertised arrival time) about 75% of the time, is this acceptable? I think your opinion is as valid as mine. I have had my train cancelled 4 times, which isn’t bad, but when waiting on the platform at Waterloo, I have heard of far many more cancellations. The latest it has made me is (whether because of cancellations or delays etc, has been one and a half hours.). Why is it so bad? I shall tackle this later…

The average big station on the Reading line has about 6/8 trains towards London Waterloo an hour, the small suburban ones (like Chiswick or Barnes Bridge) will have about 2. This is not that much, but acceptable given that the off peak trains are empty and there seems to be a lot of traffic once we near central London.

•Price
These are just like for any other part of the railway network, because performance isn’t that good (it’s one of the worse performers in the UK), SWT aren’t allowed to raise fares by too much, I think the prices are a little bit too much, and I have no idea if my tickets are subsided or not, and anyway, most passengers buy a travelcard, whose price is not fully determined by SWT. The bottom line is you
pay the same price as others for an inferior service.

•The Trains
On the Reading line (as with most of the network) SWT runs the “Slam Door” trains which were probably born in the 60s or 70s, these are not clean, smell strange and possibly pose a health hazard (okay that’s an exaggeration, and some of the slam door trains are acceptable). The suburban trains are not slam door, and are acceptable, but look abused…

Recently, they have decorated the chairs of most of the Slam Door trains, this is probably because the existing covers have been there for over 30 years… The problem is that they tried to do this with the older non slam door trains and the covers are worse than the old ones as they always fall off. The trains aren’t the cleanest, this is what one would expect, I somehow get the feeling that SWT give passengers the impression that it’s okay to throw litter on the trains as firstly there are no litter bins on the slam door trains and they have litter pickers at London Waterloo who sort it out before they prepare the trains.

SWT have promised that within the next few years, the Slam Door trains will be replaced by new trains, and I have seen them around on the line, and they do look quite good, problem is, all the other train companies seem to be running them already. Luckily, I have been on these new trains once and they are very good, but will that mean I’ll be on time???

•The Stations
This is really pot luck, let’s start with the base, London Waterloo. I must admit I really like this station, it feels very cosmopolitan without being modern, there are plenty of facilities, the displays used to be those flapping board things but they decided to replace them with LCD screen which are too small.

What about your station? Well if you use one of these suburban stations, chances are it’ll just be 2 platforms and some rusty chairs, an informat
ion terminal and an information point (more on these later). There probably won’t even be a ticket machine.

The average station, like the one I use (Hounslow), will have a ticket office too, the one in Hounslow is only open in the morning to early afternoon (assuming it’s staffed which is not as often as you would think), I think the average one is open for most of the day. The ticket machines are relics, the buttons are quite difficult to press and often they don’t take notes or give change, however, the average passenger will probably have a monthly/annual ticket, and most of the time you can buy your ticket on a train, or from a ticket inspector/conductor.

•Customer service
The staff at staffed stations try to help you as much as possible, but the problem is they don’t usually know too much that you don’t already know and can be quite patronizing sometimes. They have a pager informing them of delays and cancellations and you need to ask them before they tell you, why can’t they tell us as soon as they receive the information.

At larger stations, such as Staines there is a computer in one of the rooms showing what train is on which part of the line, that is the only place where I do get a good answer. There is an information point and a information display system at every station, however, the problem is that the information display system only displays the time and the if I use the information point, I only get through about half the time and some of these don’t even work; if you do get through, you usually do get an adequate answer. When I started travelling with them, these information points did not exist, but there were old TV screens with patronizing good morning messages, and some useful information, but this screen broke about a few months into when I started using them (Mid 1999 at my station), they promised to fix it in Jan 2000 but it never was.

The problem is, it
can so easily be solved, at the large stations there are fairly accurate screen showing when the next train is and when it is due etc, it is just the small stations where this is a problem. But at all stations they have these new information displays indication where the next train is heading and when it is expected etc, but the displays are blank! They display the time and tell you the next train is not for public use. Hopefully these will be up and running soon, as it is just what the passengers want in my opinion.

•Safety
As far as I know there have been no major incidents involving SWT recently, the only incident I recall is that on the same day as the Paddington rail crash (or another disaster, I can’t remember) a train hit a bus on a level crossing. I have not heard of any derailments etc…

••The nightmare

•What are my priorities?
What I want out of my railways is for the train to be on time and to get me from A to B without any hassle at a reasonable price, I want to know fully if my train is going to be late for whatever reason, I also care about safety of course. Clean trains? Preferably. New Trains? I don’t mind. Let’s just sort it out then worry about the bells and whistles… Overall I don’t think SWT meets my expectations, I have been let down too often and seen many other commuters as distraught at them as I have been…

•Who’s line is it anyway?
I was/am a supporter of most of rail privatization (shock horror), BR wasn’t any good before privatization, and I don’t think SWT would be much better if it was in public ownership, in fact I think it would cost much more. The problem lies with Railtrack in my opinion, the people who run and maintain the railways, I don’t think that should have been privatized, often the reason to blame for my delays are signal faults/failures, this causes trains not to arrive at their dest
inations, thus no trains for the people waiting for that train. Will SWT in public hands solve this? This is clearly Railtrack’s responsibility.

Also if you have traveled to London Waterloo on SWT, you may have had to wait outside (for a platform allegedly) for about 2-5 minutes (more if your train is early), is that privatisation’s fault?

Another reason for non-running trains is because there is no crew, I have had a train cancelled because of that once, and I have heard that excuse many times at Waterloo, in my opinion, this is the fault of management or the unions, if it’s the unions fault, then you can’t blame privatization, if it’s the managers’ fault, then you could blame it if you believe that SWT would hire more drivers if it was a public firm.

Also there are some well publicized strikes on SWT, I have only been affected 3 times over the last 4 years and they do make an effort (like managers training to become guards, which is a good gesture, and I totally do not buy the RMT’s argument of compromising safety.), I don’t think privatization is to blame for this either, and with my knowledge, I think the RMT is to blame.

Also, who’s fault is it that if someone wants to get on a train in the morning, they wont get a seat unless they lived further to London than Feltham? And if you lived closer to Putney, the train is likely to be full, and the next one does not arrive until 20 minutes later?

•Stories from the city, stories for the sea
Okay, so far I have given no examples of what I am complaining about. Well here are just 3 that made me very frustrated… *Affix Health Warning Here*

1) “Standing Still” (November 2001 Approx.)
The location is Egham station, about 18:20PM, I wait for the 18:33 from Reading to Waterloo to take me to Staines to catch the 18:46 to Hounslow. At around 18:35 a platform attendant informs passengers
that the 18:33 is delayed by at least half an hour, a freight train passes by and passenger numbers build up on the platform and then the gates at the level crossing goes down indicating a train is arriving soon, all the passengers build up hope that their train will arrive, a train appears through the darkness and slowly passes us with the guard sticking his head out of the window and saying that this train is not for public use, it then stops at the station because of the red light ahead.

The train leaves, the passengers wait, another train is due soon, the Weybridge to Staines service, this could take me to Staines and assure that I get to Staines in time for the 19:16 to take me to Hounslow, but there was no sign of it, in fact is was cancelled. A few Reading bound trains later, another empty train passes to everyone’s disgust. This one stood at the station for about 5 minutes waiting for the light to go green or amber, it was held up because there was a train at Staines with no driver so it blocked the trains behind it apparently. At about 19:10 the 18:33 arrives and like the previous train, it is stranded at Egham station for 5 minutes and we crawl to Staines, arriving at a 19:20 approximately, I get off the train and head to the information board seeing if the 19:16 had departed, it had.

A passenger, who was on the delayed train (and another delayed one before that) goes into the information room and asks an attendant, “Hello, I’ve been delayed by one and a half hours, I think by law you got to call me a cab to get to where I want to,” he then explains that the previous train was delayed etc…

The attendant then says that she does not have the authority to do so, and suggests that he fills in a complaints form. “I’ve filled in 4 of these before, you have never replied to me” he protests, “Well it does take a little time to process and investigate these sir,” she replies. &#
8220;The first one I sent was from August last year he says” and the attendant just apologies. I found it strange that the passenger was never compensated for his troubles…

Actually on some of the trains they have posters/boards saying “The passenger next to you does not need to know what you think of us, we do”. In my opinion, the message from customers is really clear, and SWT are just pretending to be listening (where have I heard that before???).

Why did those empty trains pass and not let us on? Why didn’t they delay the connection train I was taking (which was starting at Staines anyway) and why wasn’t I or the other passengers compensated? And why does this happen most Thursday evenings?

2) “Hold up” (Spring 2001 approx.)
I’m on an afternoon service (already delayed by about 5 minutes), from Waterloo to Hounslow, via Brentford, we’d just passed Syon Lane and the ticket inspector arrives in the carriage to ask to see tickets and sell tickets to any passenger that has not purchased one yet. He approaches a teenage girl and says that she’s shown him already and threw it out, this conversation gets quite loud, the train is quite empty also.

We arrive at Isleworth station and the inspector makes a call and tell the driver not to drive on. The train closes its doors and the teenage girl loudly says “this is all my fault sorry” and walks to the other end of the train, the inspector follows her. All the passengers sit for about 20 minutes and then we hear a siren, it turned out that the inspector called the police (or someone did) and waited for them to arrive to hand her over to them. WHY!!!!!!! Why did myself and the other passengers have to live with that? Why didn’t she buy a ticket? I bet that held up the trains behind us and whoever was waiting for the train I was on for its next journey. I thought that was ludicrous, at least the conducto
r could have told the policemen to go to Hounslow (the next stop) to pick up the “criminal” there…

3) “Platform for disaster” (Summer 2000 Approx.)
I’m on a morning (about 10am) train from Reading to Waterloo, via Hounslow, it arrives a few minutes late at Hounslow and makes its journey to Clapham Junction, where it’s held up by red lights and other trains on the same line pass it. It gets to just outside Waterloo and stops (as usual), usually we only have to wait 2 or 3 minutes until a platform is vacated but after 5 minutes, nothing was said to us, no apology whatsoever.

Then an announcement is made saying that we were waiting for a platform, fine, until a lot of other trains pulled into Waterloo with only a one minute wait and unfortunately the guard forgot to turn the PA system off, and the passengers heard someone inside the station say “oh just tell them the train hasn’t left yet because of problems”, which is what was repeated again. 15 minutes later, without a train pulling out of the station, the train moves forwards and we are there, there was a fully boarded steam train there, maybe that wasn’t working, but it was no excuse to delay me by half an hour.

There are many more stories I have to tell, like the time I had to go to an exam and waited 20 minutes for half a packed train, or the time the train stopped halfway and the passengers all got off and then headed empty to where we wanted to go but in another direction, but I think you get the message…

•Doors closing
The bottom line is that Railtrack needs to sort out the signaling and repair the track so that speed restrictions can be removed, and that SWT need to run more peak time trains for commuters near London, and more importantly for SWT to be more considerate to passengers, like letting passengers board the empty trains so we don’t have to wait hours (which SWT have done o
nce to me and other passengers before) and also make sure that there are sufficient staff to drive the trains, the present system relies on so many things to happen for the system to work, and one chain breaking breaks other chains and it’s the passengers who suffer.

If you use SWT, I hope your line is not as bad as my line, judging from most of the other opinions we seem to be on the same boat, this is a company that has a lot to sort out, and has many constraints, not just financial. On a good day, the service is acceptable, but so often the whole line breaks down and that is just not acceptable, especially if a lot of passengers are not informed.

Summary: