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grahame
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« Reply #18 on: December 18, 2007, 12:09:30 » |
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This is following up on earlier posts, not the very latest exchange. As you can imagine, it's taken a bit of a while to prepare!
Some of you old hands may find this a bit of a "repeat" from me - but we have many new users here (to whom I extend the very warmest of welcomes) who may wish to hear my view on Fare Strikes as the administaror of the board. And I'll take the opportinity to fill a few other things in, in context, too.
If a safe, reliable, comfortable, low cost, fast, clean train service, which ran at times when we all wanted to travel, with a clear system of ticketing and easily accessible information, with excellent road interchange was provided, allowing us to travel from Paddington to Windsor, from Paignton to Copplestone, from Great Malvern to London, from Chippenham to Salisbury and from Melksham to Oxford when we wanted, a forum like this would be a truely quiet place and perhaps it wouldn't exist at all. But the fact that I, as a private individual, raised 1700 signatures including 8 MPs▸ , 5 MEPs▸ , countless councillors .... for a petition calling for an appropriate train service from Westbury to Swindon and on other illogically slashed services (be it in number of trains, schedule, or capacity) indicated that all is not well - from the point of view of the passenger - in some parts of First's empire. Thus, this site.
And it's not here to slag off, to critisize for the sake of it, or to moan. Those things will occur - and perhaps they're the first necessary step in identifying a problem to look to doing something about it.
Some matters - informational matters such as ticket availablilty, how weekend first works, where to see interesting train formations, we as passengers can help each other. A question asked, views and answers given, and a matter resolved. But other matters aren't within the remit of the passenger to deal with.
Even with the help of other passengers, we can't simply club together and buy or lease ourselves a "153" and run it up and down between Chippenham and Salisbury every 2 hours. So that's where we need to constructively engage the Train Operator, the Franchise awarder, the local transport authorities who are at the front line of that provision, and a huge raft of other influencers and interested parties ranging from Network rail to our MPs, and from the Press to Passenger Focus. In these cases, the forum is useful to discuss the most effective way to make such approaches and to have the case heard, seriously considered, and have sensible conclusions reached.
There is no perfect approach. "Meek and Mild" has been tried. The result is along the lines of "never mind the people of Melksham - they'll put up with crap and not complain" which leads to people in my home town being walked all over. Just two trains a day - at 06:18 and 18:45 from our main centre - and a population of 24,000 is absurd. And the bus alternative takes 95 minutes versus 25, with changes necessary on the way too.
My own approach is "Constructive engagement" - looking to work with people within the current system (all be it pointing out the inadequacies of the system from time to time) with an eye to reaching and retaining the desired target. At times I'm not sure how it's working - someone copied an email to me just the other day that talked about a "cunning plan" from one of the main players, and I'm hoping that the cunning plan is NOT to spend so long discussing things that - oops - another deadline has been missed. "Constructive engagement" needs, to some extend, some teeth - it can't be "Meek and Mild".
More provocative approaches may be tried ... although they may tend to antagonise the very people who have to be on board at the end of the day. I'm personally not averse to, on occasions, doing something to embarrass people (and, yes, I have been known to do so) but it must be done in such a way that they know why I am doing it. I will stop short of doing anything which I know to be illegal, or I suspect may be illegal, or to encourage others to do so.
I have to take my hat off and salute the people who HAVE taken the more provocative approaches, and to congratulate them on publicity whihc has helped us all - and in some cases has helped their case to be heard loudly to the near-exclusion of ours on the TransWilts. Just ONE of the extra coaches that First added to trains to ease overcrowding could have been used to provide a service on the TransWilts that would have provided rather more that merely eased a squeeze or saved a further 30 minutes wait for the next train. Our gap is 12 HOURS between trains! However - there SHOULD be room for all of us, and I have no desire what so ever to say "take that train away from X and give it to me". To suggest that there aren't trains available for lease is a convenient falasy - the two extra 150 units that arrived recently actually caused accountant-type questions in FGW▸ I'm told, and there are perhaps other 142s and certainly 180s that could feed a cascade.
Now some specifics for the forum. We have a whole load of constraints on us - ranging from copyright, discrimination through decency, libel and slander to consider as we moderate the boards. We also have to consider carefully any posts which could be seen as attacking people personally or inciting others to break that law. Whilst we can't be responsible for a post as it is being made, we can (and do) take reasonable steps to remove posts that contravene these legal matters quite quickly, and if we failed to do so there would be a responsibility on us too. Myself and the other moderators are, of course, far more aware of the details of these various issues and we also talk amongst oursleves to give a correct and clear response as necessary. Such responses, though, are sympathetic - we will not delete a post without comment or explanation, especially from an established poster, but rather will ask for it to be modified and explain why that needs to be done. After all - we very much want to keep everyone on board, and provide a forum to help us push for a situation where we do ourselves out of a job. That means a safe, reliable, comfortable, low cost, fast, clean train service, which ran at times when we all wanted to travel, with a clear system of ticketing and easily accessible information, with excellent interchange ...
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