Seen around

Saturday 30th September 2023

Another month’s miscellaneous musings not worthy of a full blown blog from my travels in September including the lovely Helsby Junction signal box and still very much in use (above).

Oxted delight

I made an “integrated public transport journey” from train to bus in Oxted earlier in the month and was struck by the extensive retail offer in the town bearing in mind its relative small size with an 11,500 population but no doubt helped by a rather prosperous hinterland. The rail station run by Southern was also welcoming…

… with a lovely map and mural in the ticket office area….

… and even had two windows, albeit only one open.

And the subway under the railway had its walls decorated by colourful tiles.

A great station.

Farewell Southdown

Following Southdown Buses being purchased by the Go-Ahead Group it’s poignant to see the buses now being absorbed into the Metrobus brand with the Southdown (“Your local, independent bus company”) name disappearing as Metrobus vinyls now appear on the fleet …

… pending repaints into that company’s livery. This, of course, is the second time the Southdown name has disappeared. Will it make it back for a third time?

Manchester bus woes

While I was in Manchester for the Public Transport North conference I thought I’d try out a ride on the city centre free bus network. It had been changed back in April when the three routes were revised to just two.

Buses on both new routes 1 and 2 should run every 10 minutes. Following a long wait of around 20 minutes with no buses appearing outside Manchester Piccadilly railway station when there should have been four departures, I decided against the idea guessing city centre roads must be suffering from severe traffic congestion as they often are.

I suspect there were also vehicle issues with the 13 year old Optare Versas Go North West inherited from First Bus to operate the service as a double deck was operating on the routes on both days I was in Manchester.

While waiting for the bus I had time to look at the publicity including this rather complex but comprehensive street map depicting the three routes and therefore confusingly being around six months out of date and useless.

It wasn’t the only out-of-date map left on display to mislead potential passengers as they exited Piccadilly station. The map on this totem right outside the station exit…

… also showed the three routes that ran pre April.

Luckily, if a passenger ventured into one of the two bus shelters for routes 1 and 2, and could get to the head of the queue that had built up waiting for the bus, they’d have found an updated map.

The colourful vinyls on the outside of the shelter still confusingly referred to the withdrawn route 3…

… as did the promotion of the routes as you left the station.

It doesn’t bode well for promoting the Bee Network whenever that might change.

More on ticket offices

As staff at Transport Focus and London Travelwatch continue reading the 680,000 responses to the public consultation about closing almost all ticket offices, I’ve taken to keeping an eye on the relative use being made by passengers between an open ticket office window and a Ticket Vending Machine (TVM) when given a choice. The above photo depicts around 16 passengers queueing at the windows while most of the 20 TVMs opposite stand idle at Victoria.

Over at Hatfield a queue at the ticket office …

… while the TVM immediately outside stands idle.

And in Bolton queues to buy a ticket at three open windows with three TVMs standing unused nearby (I didn’t take a photo, but trust me, they were).

Give me a sign

Still in Bolton, I noted the main exit from the station continues to be signed for “Buses & Taxis”…

… whereas buses now mainly depart from the new “Interchange” which opened six years ago in 2017. For that you need to turn right and go through an unmarked corridor and footbridge over the railway tracks. Come on Northern, keep up (although I acknowledge you can access the Interchange via the old route).

Congratulations Angie

Well done to Angie Doll who’s been promoted to become CEO of GTR. Obviously this was lauded across social media by the Go-Ahead Group but I had to smile at the “Image description” from the Tweet describing the posed shot as “Woman standing on a platform at a train station, with a blurred view of a train in the background”.

I’m sure Angie won’t bring a blurred vision to her new role though and here are a couple of suggestions she might like to take up….

Electrostar refurbs

It’s nice to see the first tranche of GTR’s £55 million refurbishment of Southern Railway’s 75 Electrostar Class 377/4 trains is now complete. You can always tell a refurbished train from the much welcome usb/plug sockets now installed under the windows by each pair of seats (hard luck if you’re on an aisle seat) and electronic information screens scrolling around promotional images to travel by train.

It’s just so disappointing that the head rests on seats couldn’t have been replaced or even given a wash as part of the £55 million. They really do let the image down now.

Hassocks ahead of the ticket office closure game

Meanwhile at my lovely local station, Hassocks, we’re already well ahead of the ticket office closure programme by having ….. a closed ticket office. OK, I’m not being very fair, it was just for a few mornings over a two week period when one of the two regular members of staff in the Ticket Office was on a well deserved fortnight’s summer holiday and no-one came to take over as is often the case.

The only trouble was on the first Monday morning, the TVM was out of service…

… and on the following Monday … no matter how hard you “touch to start” it just wouldn’t wake up.

As I’ve previously observed we do have another TVM positioned by the Brighton bound platform 2 accessed via the subway but it’s often impossible to use on a sunny morning due to the screen being directly in line from the sun.

On another morning there were no gateline staff either and a regular passenger who is blind arrived to buy a ticket and ended up being rescued by the helpful owner of the adjacent coffee stall who looked after him and ensured he could board his train.

On a Friday morning the gateline staff member felt he had to offer apologies knowing the frustration the continuing closure causes passengers.

I hope Angie does too and it’s not a blurred impression.

And did you spot that poster in the photo of the ticket office queue at Victoria? Welcome to our helpful ‘world leading’ public transport in London where everything is fully “integrated”. Not.

One other little task for you, Angie. Could you have a word with the signallers about routing a train from Coastway West into Brighton station Platform 1 when a train is already stabled at the buffer end meaning passengers have to walk all the way along the platform when alighting even though both platforms 2 and 3 (accessible from the Coastway West tracks) were completely empty.

It didn’t help that it was the first train to arrive into Brighton along the line after a two hour gap in service due to a problem with the electrical supply between West Worthing and Angmering.

Avanti’s new contract

And while I’m in rail journey whinge mode: hello Avanti and congratulations on your long term contract award from the DfT this month but please try not to cancel the completely full 15:00 train to Manchester at 14:58 on a reduced Sunday timetable with all passengers on board expecting it to depart on time in two minutes due to …. no driver. Surely that was known about before then?

As D Ream used to say “Things can only get better”.

Good for Safeguard

I’ve featured plaudits for Guildford based Safeguard before and once again want to highlight the company’s continued excellent policy of printing timetables with maps and ensuring they’re always available on board buses as seen here.

Well recovered Pingo, the Routing company

Following my recent blog about getting stranded in the village of Kirdford, West Sussex when the Pingo app cancelled my journey before the DRT bus had arrived as well as other issues I highlighted, I was contacted by the tech company called The Routing Company (“Powering flexible, efficient and convenient transit”) based in the USA which runs the app, wanting to obtain my feedback and any suggestions first hand.

That was impressive I thought, so happily accepted the invitation to join a four-way zoom call with CEO James Cox based in Texas (bottom left), Saurabh Mohan in Arizona (top left) and Pandora Shelley in New York (top right) to discuss my recent ride experiences not only using the Pingo app but their competitors’ apps too. It was an interesting half hour and I’m very pleased the team took away my comments and undertook to improve the app where the deficiencies have been highlighted. Good for them. But it does make me smile to think tech people based right across the USA are having such an influence on bus passengers in deepest rural West Sussex.

An extra eight seconds on the Bakerloo

My eye was caught by this fascinating poster at Paddington Underground station advising there’s now an extra eight seconds to wait for a peak train on the Bakerloo line with 23 seconds more to wait early on Saturday mornings.

TfL can be reassured I won’t be put off using the Bakerloo line as a result of these changes.

Keep Your Distance

Meanwhile back in Manchester I noticed there’s still a need to keep 2 metres apart when walking around the city centre. You can’t be too careful.

Hidden parking for TfGM staff

Mind you, Transport for Greater Manchester staff won’t be impacted on their journeys to and from the office as I noticed the Double Tree Hotel car park underneath the hotel has a large area of parking set aside for TfGM staff to park. I couldn’t help wondering why Metrolink trams and the much hyped Bee Network aren’t sufficient for their mobility needs. It’s not a very good example to set citizens of the city. Perhaps that’s why it’s location is not very prominent – only being visible when the garage doors are occasionally opened for a delivery or let a guest in or out. Otherwise the doors are closed and the sign hidden from view.

Some Twitter trends

Over at the Social Media channel everyone now calls “X, formerly known as Twitter” which was formerly known as Twitter, it’s been a busy month of communications from bus and train company social media teams.

Blackpool Transport tried to recruit a complainant making a complaint about the lack of a tram journey to become a tram driver….

… which I don’t think quite came across as intended.

While at First Essex frustration boiled over in the team when trying to explain a delay in dealing with a bus breakdown…

… the tweet was subsequently deleted.

And still in Essex, Travel Essex were encouraging passengers to attend relaxation classes now available at bus stops throughout that county.

And I noticed a strange Twitter time line at Grand Central where any tweets about cancelled trains (and there are quite a few these days) are all deleted at the end of the day so there’s no online history other than bizarrely a whole chain of “Good morning” and “That’s all from us today” tweets from May last year. Most odd. Take a look here.

Toilet stop

It’s now time for our habitual monthly toilet stop and this time a whinge about the provision (lack thereof) of toilets for the female gender at St Pancras International. Like London Bridge the station gets lauded for its reconstruction and has won many awards. I can never understand why when such a basic provision is completely lacking, much to the inconvenience of women in the regular queues that build up – especially when a Eurostar train is departing soon.

Meanwhile in Bolton I was encouraged to see the bus station toilets were on free vend on Monday morning. I hope this is a permanent feature and not just because lots of TfGM staff were in the bus station for the first morning of the Bee Network. Assuming it is permanent, please can the hideous turnstiles be removed as soon as possible – maybe Wandsworth Prison would be interested in taking them for its kitchen?

Luggage Hold

The modern day problem impacting rail companies of too much luggage also afflicts coach companies as I spotted in Leicester on my recent visit. I feel sorry for drivers having to load all that lot.

And while on the subject of luggage and how much passengers wheel around with them these days, I for one wasn’t afraid to say firmly “excuse me” as I passed through this Thameslink Class 700 train on its way to Gatwick Airport last week.

All the luggage you can see belonged to two people.

NBC style

Still in Leicester, am I the only person to spot the positioning of the fleet name and logo on First Leicester’s new electric single deck buses is reminiscent of the way NBC subsidiaries did the same on their buses in the 1970s and early 1980s?

Another Acton

London famously has seven stations called Acton (Main Line, Central, Town, North, South, East, West), but there is one more on the National Rail network and I had the delight of visiting it this month when seeking out the Cheshire West DRT.

It’s even got a long closed shuttered ticket office window.

Can you see the join?

I was puzzled by something I hadn’t noticed before when travelling on a new Transport for Wales Class 197 train this month.

There were no doors between the two carriages.

I can only assume they’re locked away behind the cabinet doors so when the train is split for whatever reason an end seal can be put on the carriage. Or are they like the walk through trains belonging to many train companies these days and aren’t ever going to be split?

Please ignore the above item as my brain wasn’t quite in gear when writing it as the train is obviously a two-coach “walk through” style and not meant to split.

But I still can’t get over the complete waste of space taken up by the useless and unused galley area on a two coach train.

Truronian in Guildford

An unusual visitor to Guildford on First’s RailAir service to Heathrow Airport last Saturday was this coach in Truronian livery.

Maybe it’s a long term loan with the new RailAir 3 service now operating from Watford Junction taking precedence for RailAir branded vehicles?

Never again TfL

There’s been a justified social media storm over TfL’s crass decision to rename Bond Street Underground station to Burberry Street during London Fashion Week earlier this month.

It’s one thing to give exclusive space on escalators….

… it’s quite another to change all the signs on platforms…

… causing considerable confusion and bewilderment among passengers as I found when visiting the station during the campaign.

Many commentators on social media rightly criticised the move which smacked of an unfunny student rag week stunt from the 1970s…

… rather than a world leading public transport organisation supposedly proud of the quality of its wayfinding.

It just gave the impression of an organisation in such desperate financial circumstances it’s willing to grab any money from any act of self harm. So pretty accurate I suppose. Except that on top of all the confusion caused to passengers the service on the Central line on the Saturday I was there (16th) was impacted by a “shortage of staff in the control room” leading to long gaps in service, overcrowded platforms in many stations including Bond Street and shuttle trains running between Leytonstone and Epping and North Acton and West Ruislip. Passengers were not impressed.

Do us all a favour TfL. Cease these inappropriate money grabbing ideas and sort out the disruptive problems of staff shortages.

And finally

Most of my travels are as a solo passenger but sometimes it’s a pleasure to be joined by good friends including the recent Flying Scotsman trip on the Bluebell Railway when Ray Stenning, Martijn Gilbert and Geoff Marshall came along, as captured in a rare (for me) selfie.

More miscellany at the end of next month.

Roger French

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