The Ticket Collector

Blind man refused travel on ScotRail

A blind man was refused travel on the ScotRail Caledonian Sleeper on Tuesday 15th April because his dog might have had fleas, germs or even mites.

Mark McClenaghan said: “Well, basically, I turned up at the station, on time for the train. My blind pass doesn’t allow me through the regular ticket barriers, and so I have to wait for assistance, I have to wait for somebody to physically open the barrier at the side.”

He continued: “By the time I got through, the train was rolling out. I was then aware that there was a sleeper train leaving for Edinburgh, well, for London. I asked if I could board it and they said, ‘No, no dogs allowed.” I said, well, my pass covers me and my dog’s a guide dog and they said absolutely no dogs allowed, through possible risk of the dog passing on fleas or germs or mites, which is just absolutely ridiculous. I mean, she’s a certified guide dog with the Health and Safety Executive.”

“They left me stranded in Aberdeen with no route to Edinburgh. I then spoke to a station manager who was just an idiot. He questioned my disability. He asked if I was genuinely blind. You can tell my eyes look normal but it’s behind my eyes that’s gone. The only option was rather than spend the night in what effectively was a building site at the front of the station, was to jump on a train to Perth which is still about 50 miles to Edinburgh. And I had to get in a taxi costing me 95 quid.”

The official (not for public reading) rules on Guide Dogs on the Caledonian sleeper is as follows

Guide Dogs travelling with a blind or deaf traveller are conveyed free of charge with NO CLEANING CHARGE APPLIED.

TheTicketCollector is wondering why this man was refused travel with his guide dog when it clearly states in the retail handbook that they are conveyed free of charge. TheTicketCollector is hoping that the members of staff who refused this man travel get a Form 1 disciplinary hearing and get retraining in disability awareness.

A spokeswoman for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association Emailed TheTicketCollector saying it was illegal to discriminate against guide dog owners. She said: “It is against the Disability Rights Act to refuse a guide dog access to any public place or public transport. Guide dogs and their owners should be treated the same way as any other user. All guide dogs are given a certificate of health and safety and do not pose any risk.”

We have emailed First Scotrail and a spokesman said: “We are investigating these claims and will respond direct in full to the customer. Our policy is to make services accessible to everyone, to provide all necessary assistance and to enable guide dog owners to travel safely.

“People with guide dogs are welcome on our services and they have Scotlandwide free travel at all times. There are clear guidelines in place and we expect these to be followed at all times.”

Another NXEC failure

At 1643 today a driver reported seeing water or smoke coming from the rear power car of an NXEC train (1635 Kings Cross to Leeds).

The train was stopped at the next station and safety checks were made, and the result of which was the driver of the 1635 service to Leeds stating he had dragging brakes on the rear.

This is yet another NXEC train failure messing up the East Coast mainline. Trains do fail, but if you had have kept the maintenance budget the same instead of making cut backs these failures wouldn’t keep happening.

So just what is “on time” when it comes to the Railway?

The term ‘on time’ normally means that a train arrives at the correct time publicised in a timetable - correct?
No, not on the railway its not.

When it comes to punctually - the figures which the Railway Companies print huge A1 posters and show off and say “hey look at us we have 98% punctually, blah blah” and which also determines your season ticket discount . You’d expect that when they say they have 98% that 98% of trains arrived at the destination at the timetabled time.
Wrong! The trains only have to arrive within 5 minutes of the timetabled time.

So the train arrives 5 minutes late and it is still on time! Even better is that long distance ‘intercity’ services have an extra 5 minutes allowance. So now the train can be up to 10 minutes and be still on time!

Now what the Railway Companies are getting wise to is that they can add extra minutes into the timetable here and there as ‘recovery time’. So if they are regularly failing the 10 minutes time the can always add extra minutes into the working timetable to compensate. Now what the Train Company would say is this ‘recovery time’ is to compensate for engineering works and speed restrictions.

When it comes to compensation for the trains running late, you have to be delayed by 30 minutes before you even get to start to get compensation. But what with the extra minutes being added here and there just how late is it in real terms?

NXEC - Communication Skills Lacking

As there is not much else to talk about this week, its time for another review of NXEC and their excuse of a Train Company!

It seems that NXEC have finally discovered the seat reservation printer!! Hooray! However they are still failing at putting the seat reservations out on the late night services from Kings Cross and also the last service out of Edinburgh.
The seat reservations which are put out at Peterborough on the 07:20 have been put out for the last two weeks! That’s a record, however what’s the odds that when the printer decides to pack it in again that they wont be put out again for months on end.

Another area which NXEC always fails on is communication. Whenever the trains are late, you never get any information at all, the staff have not got a foggiest and couldn’t give a rats backside about you the customer. They may pretend they care and put out scripted announcements on the public annoyance system, but that’s just it. The announcements are scripts.

Our friends over at NXEC Commuter have also been noticing the lack of communication from National Express to their customer facing staff. To quote them..

“Clearly NXEC HO still have serious problems communicating with customer facing staff. The thing is if they can’t communicate changes and/or the reasons behind them to staff, what chance have customers got of obtaining up to date and accurate information?”.

The “technical problems” with the trolley in standard seems to have been fixed as that excuse has not been used for a while to explain the absence of the trolley with rip off priced sandwiches.

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.