Are we heading for a strike? We could be, as South West Trains has announced plans to trim its workforce by 480 heads.
‘In common with other rail operators we have carried out a review of our cost base to ensure we are operating as efficiently as we can in view of reduced passenger growth and an increasingly challenging economic climate,’ the company announced on its web site.
Interesting term, that ‘reduced passenger growth’ bit. What it means isn’t that passenger numbers are falling, but that they’re still growing - just slightly slower than they were before.
So if it needs these 480 people to cope with present demand, how can it insist that it won’t affect passengers. It will if the rest of the staff go on strike. It will if it means platforms will be deserted and unsafe. It will if it has anything to do with the company’s plans to close ticket offices and force us all to rely on ticket machines, even though they might not sell us the best ticket.
Some of the jobs will be lost through natural wastage as people leave and aren’t replaced, but around 200 other staff who work there now look set to lose their jobs through a mixture of compulsory and voluntary redundancies.
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British Transport Police want to change the Conditions of Carriage that form a contract between every rail passenger and the companies that carry them on their trains. If it happened, and the proposed new clauses were introduced, it would mean that every time you bought a train ticket you agreed to be searched by the police.
That doesn’t mean you will be searched - just that you could. If you don’t agree to be searched, you don’t agree to travel. Simple as that.
Passengers who buy a London train or tube ticket would automatically be giving their consent to be searched, under proposals now under consideration. [says The Guardian]
The trouble is that at the moment the police have to have a reasonable suspicion about you before they can search you or ask you to walk through a knife-detecting arch. After the proposed changes they could just ask everyone to submit to searching, regardless of how many people are in a queue in front of you or how many trains you’ll miss as they do so.
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The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 has been used to stop 62,584 people at railway stations and another 87,000 were questioned under “stop and search” and “stop and account” legislation.
That comes from The Telegraph, which reports comments from Lib Dem transport spokesman Norman Baker.
Clearly this is another example of overzealous application of laws in areas for which they were never designed - just like the way the government used anti-terror legislation to seize the money in Icelandic bank accounts in the UK when those banks went belly-up.
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On the day that rail prices have risen by an average of 6%, train operators look set to reap even higher revenues by confusing vulnerable passengers.
SouthWest Trains is leading a drive to close many of the network’s ticket offices, either permanently or at off-peak times, giving passengers no choice but to buy their tickets from machines.
This is a problem, as machines can’t sell you a ticket from the boundary of your season ticket to another station, and often offer you a peak-rate ticket outside of peak hours. For anyone who doesn’t know when peak and off-peak apply, this could be confusing - particularly as not all train operators have the same off-peak hours.
As The Times puts it:
The Government is preparing to approve the closures, despite receiving evidence from the passenger watchdog that people find machines confusing and prefer speaking to ticket clerks for advice on the cheapest option.
Clerks are legally obliged to offer impartial advice whereas machines simply display long lists of ticket options without explaining which is the most suitable. Passengers who fear being fined for having the wrong ticket may feel compelled to buy a more expensive ticket without realising that cheaper options are valid.
This may be a cost-cutter for the rail companies, but it’ll be a cost-hiker for the passenger, meaning the operators win twice over. Not only are their outgoings lower; their income will be higher, too.
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End of the line for cups and saucers on trains - Telegraph:
The move comes after passengers in the First Class dining car complained that they were being annoyed by the noise of spoons making tinkling sounds as they sit on saucers.
If only rattling tea cups was the worst thing to assault our ears in standard class. You’d be lucky to hear a teacup over the cacophony of mobile phones, clattering keyboards and leaky MP3 headphones.
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