The Ticket Collector

Ticket names to change.

As if you were not already confused by the huge number of different ticket names, the powers that be have decided to change the names yet again.

So say goodbye to the SuperSaver, the Saver, the Cheap Day Return, the Standard Day Return and say hello to Super Off-Peak and Anytime.

The new ticket types are as follows.

RMT/TSSA London Underground Strike Dates

The RMT and TSSA unions have announced a 72 hour strike from 6.30pm Sunday 6 April, until 6.30pm Wednesday 9 April 2008 after voting by five to one and four to one respectively for action.

Widespread tube chaos is expected and many lines will be closed due to no staff.

Both unions have told LUL that its plans for ticket-office closures, de-staffing, lone working, introduction of ‘mobile supervisors’, use of agency and security staff and other disputed policies amount to an unacceptable attack on safety standards and the casualisation of safety-critical work.

RMT votes for Tube strike.

As previously mentioned in an earlier Blog posting the RMT were in dispute with LUL. The RMT have now announced the results of the strike ballot. RMT’s strike ballot saw 1,673 members vote for action with 333 voting against. Members have voted by a margin of five to one for strike action.

TSSA have also voted for strike action and it is rumoured that both strikes will happen on the same day to maximise disruption. However these are only rumours and have not been confirmed.

The unions together represent 7,500 station staff and drivers. Both unions have said safety standards are at risk due to LULs new plans to close 40 ticket offices. They also have concerns about staff working alone and plans to introduce “mobile supervisors” at stations.

The strike dates will be announced at a press conference tomorrow at 11:30am. As soon as we know the dates we will announce them on this blog.

Free Family Railcard.

Basicly the same offer as last year.

The Daily Mail in conjunction with ATOC are giving away free Family Railcards valid until 30th June to anyone that fills in their details on line at http://www.family-railcard.co.uk/dailymail.

Your Family Railcard should be with you towards the beginning of April, and will also include a voucher for a half price 12 month Family Railcard.

But be quick as this offer is only available online until midnight 23rd March 2008

SWT drivers to strike.

THIS STRIKE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED PENDING FURTHER TALKS

ASLEF members which work on SWT have voted yes to industrial action in the ballot regarding the 2007 pay review. SWT have offered an insulting offer of 4.5% which is below RPI (currently running at around 5%).

Members will be withdrawing their labour between 00.01 on Monday 31st March 2008 and 23.59 on Thursday 3rd April 2008.

At the present time SWT have stated that a reduced service will operate and that some services will be replaced by buses.

Notwork Rail York to strike Easter Weekend

Update: We are now currently hearing reports that Notwork Rail have been told to make an 11th hour agreement. Furthermore if the strike does go ahead NXEC do not have an Emergency timetable ready.

Staff in Network Rail’s electrical control room at York are to strike for five days from 18:59 next Wednesday, March 19, over the company’s plan to cut the number of operators there by a third, from 18 to 12.

The union’s ten members in the control room, who voted unanimously to take action, will not book on for shifts that commence between 18:59 on March 19 and 06:59 on Monday March 24.

The electrical control room controls the current from York to Doncaster so services through that area will be effected. It also controls the current from Bedford to Moorgate West (TL). So FCC and EMT services could be affected.

NXEC cockup continues.

So another really bad day for the new owner of GNER, National Express. NXEC seems to have a serious problem at admitting when they are doing rubbish and further more pretend that everything is hunky-dory when it obviously isn’t.
Take today for example. Notwork Rail slapped 50 MPH Emergency Speed Restriction on all lines between Stevenage and Berwick. First Capital Connect knew this around 12hours before it came into effect. So it sent text messages out to all the staff pagers and mobiles. It also sent out text messages to its text alert service. It updated its website admitting a problem and possible delays THE NIGHT BEFORE.

National Express East Coast however did nothing, even though it knew of the speed restriction. It could not even be bothered to update its website. Apparently according to their customer fob-off centre they added a message at 0616 this morning. Well theticketcollector.co.uk never saw it when leaving the house this morning while checking the NXEC website. The fob-off centre goes on to say they updated it at 0900 to state delays. Well done, sod the commuters which had to be into work by 0900. But where is the amended timetable it promised? No where to be found. Good old National Express purveyors of information distribution.
AN HOUR later a major botch up of an ‘amended’ timetable was added on the National Rail website, it took NXEC until 1100 to update its website to state there even was a timetable to be downloaded, but it did not admit they cancelled half the services. At 12:45pm they admitted there was a revised timetable and half the normal services were running.
Archived ‘amended’ timetable.

As at 2000 NXEC updated the website to say they would not be running a through service from London to/from Scotland, there is no reason for this stated on the site. However National Rail states this is due to overhead wire damage at Doncaster. Why the hell can’t NXEC say this on their own site? Maybe because it was one of their trains that took the wires down in the first place?
We are still waiting for the promised amended timetable. Perhaps there is a timetable already but its not going to be made public until half way through the day or maybe NXEC are so incompetent that they cant be bothered about customers?