Public and internal reports of ongoing incidents

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From Journey Check.

Line problem: between Ealing Broadway and Lond... Owing to a broken down train between Ealing Broadway and London Paddington all lines are affected.
Impact:
Train services running to and from these stations may be cancelled or delayed by up to 45 mins at short notice. An estimate for the resumption of normal services will be provided as soon as the problem has been fully assessed.

Extra information gives

To find out whether this will impact your journey and to get alternative options, please check www.nationalrail.co.uk or call National Rail Enquiries on 0845 7 484950 (24 hours). For the latest rail travel news, why not follow us on Twitter @FGW^▸ (First Great Western).

Now ... wouldn't it be nice for regular rail users to have those extra details also to include:

Heathrow Connect Up Main Line closed Acton West to Ladbroke Grove area owing to Heathrow Express service (1Y30) suffering brake problems - service declared a failure - fitters on site. All Connect services will call additionally Acton ML caped Greenford services. Message Received :09/08/2013 08:21

Which I think is the rail industry's internal report.  Probably in error, this last report has appeared on journey check giving a rare insight into the next level of information;  I do feel that it would be advantageous for it to be generally available as it helps keep knowledgable passengers informed, and would show a degree more respect for the passengers by the train operators [discuss?].

[Red Squirrel]

There does seem to a view in some quarters that rather giving the public information that it may not understand, it is better to wrap it up in bland generalisations or not publish it at all.

Not only is this rather patronising; it diminishes trust between the public and the industry. It is generally the case that the more open a society or organisation is, the more successful it is.

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

Richard Stallman

[Lee]

Some might disagree with you there. China, for example, is hardly the model of an open society, nor are its state-owned firms models of open organisations, and yet...

I accept that's a bit deeper and slightly less relevant then grahame may have envisaged with his opening post, though 

[grahame]

I accept that's a bit deeper and slightly less relevant then grahame may have envisaged with his opening post, though 

I did add discuss onto my first post ... happy to go wider.

There does seem to a view in some quarters that rather giving the public information that it may not understand, it is better to wrap it up in bland generalisations or not publish it at all.

There is, I'm afraid, a natural fear and worry about providing too much information to people as it will lead to more questions, including questioning of what and how a job is done.   And that's going to be particularly the case with railway issues, where there are a lot of people enthusiastically interested.  So it's a needs brave, confident, assured people to break the mould and provide more information.   

Not only is this rather patronising; it diminishes trust between the public and the industry.

Agreed.

Provided that "casual traveller" easy data is available at first access, the default should be thorough data availability.   But that's an important proviso.

I have stood at Swindon station and instructed a couple of young people who were clearly new to our services as to how to get on the train ("you need to open the door with the handle") and such front line stuff is and will remain vital - indeed with an improved TransWilts service we would have a preponderance of new travellers, and we should have EASY USE data available - such as http://atrebatia.info/using.html - for the things that we on the forum know about, but others may not.

This "easy use" is something of an issue when it comes to putting timetable sheets that everyone can understand together, as well as providing full connectional and fare information.

[Red Squirrel]

Some might disagree with you there. China, for example, is hardly the model of an open society, nor are its state-owned firms models of open organisations, and yet...

I accept that's a bit deeper and slightly less relevant then grahame may have envisaged with his opening post, though 

I would argue that recent liberalisation has unleashed what is probably only a fraction China's massive potential. China has been the world's biggest economy for most of the last 2,000 years, but the time of full state control was it's lowest ebb.

[SDS]

I was recently sent (forced) to go to some atoc meeting about PIDD^▸ (Passenger Information During Disruption). (Pax info during disruption). Needless to say it was a typical case of what we (atoc) says is gospel and sod anyone else!!

Things that came up were actually quite good from a railway industry point of view. Colour coding disruption Green | Yellow (delays up to 59mins) | Red (severe delays likely to last over 1 hour) | Black (Don't even think about travelling). Different TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) will have different thresholds.

Another thing was that passengers should be told more basic information about incidents according to a set down list of reasons.

the "internal information" should not be given to pax. Mainly because this is where operational stuff is disused. E.g. Driver hit pax and xyz is being cleaned up. Or wrong side failures.

[Electric train]

Another thing was that passengers should be told more basic information about incidents according to a set down list of reasons.

the "internal information" should not be given to pax. Mainly because this is where operational stuff is disused. E.g. Driver hit pax and xyz is being cleaned up. Or wrong side failures.

I agree, there is a lot of sensitive info contained in the internal comms however passengers do need to have better info, the "industry" needs to get away from the blaming each other

[SandTEngineer]

............the "industry" needs to get away from the blaming each other

Well there's absolutely no chance of that....its called Privatisation

There is now a lot more information out there (e.g. Real Train Times) I use that all the time to check disruption and late running of the services I use/am going to use.