Great Western Coffee Shop

For the latter part of last week, I was working in South London - commuting from where I was staying in Norbury by train to Balham. That's a very different service / line to the TransWilts - so much so that you would be well justified in asking "is it even valid to make any comparisons between them" - but in fact travellers are travellers, and questions like "what facilities are most important to you at your station" at Balham could ring true at Melksham.

Co-incidentally, I came across a link yesterday to National Station Improvements Program, and the final report published last month on Balham - it's produced by Passenger Focus as one of a series of ten such reports produced (presumably) with the specific intent of making comparisions, as it would seem otherwise to have been an awful lot of effort to go to on a national leve for just 10 of 2500 stations.

What did I learn, if anything, from making such a diverse comparison?  I was struck by the following table (figures transposed off a graph):

"Thinking about the station where you were given this questionnaire, which of the following are the most important facilities to have? [choose no more than four]"
92 - Clear visual information as to when trains will actually arrive
88 - Staff at the station
53 - Toilets
49 - Audible announcements about delays
45 - Waiting Shelter
45 - Audible announcements on arrival and departure times
38 - Waiting Room
29 - CCTV
24 - Convenient Connecting Buses
20 - Step free access from the station to the train
18 - Information boards showing printed timetable
14 - Bicycle Parking
3 - Car Parking
3 - An interactive help point
3 - Other

The full report is at:
http://www.passengerfocus.org.uk/news-and-publications/document-search/document.asp?dsid=3469

What strikes me really strongly is "Clear visual information as to when the trains will actually arrive" at the very top of the list, with "An interactive help point" languishing in joint last position.

That's the difference between:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/helppoint.jpg)

and:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/evemyst2.jpg)

With upgrades to the passenger information system due shortly at some of the less used stations in our area, this comparison gives a very strong push to the folks planning the upgrade to say "put in the units with screens - you'll make the station very much more welcoming and really help encourage traffic".

Staff at the station ... now there's an expensive proposition - or is it? Can it pay for itself, or can a staff task be shared with another business?   Why do people want staff at the station anyway - is it for re-assurance, for information, to sell them tickets, to help them onto the train, to help them from an 'official' viewpoint when there are problems with the train service, for the passenger's security, to assist with the automation when the ticket machine isn't co-operating, to provide a presence that discourages vandals and means the toilets can be unlocked, to sell them cups of coffee, to keep the station neat and tidy?

It did strike me in the Balham survey that there wasn't an option for "trains at appropriate times" and I would say that the particular question that I'm highlighting in this article was restricted in scope to exclude service.  Just a note of caution, though - along with station improvements, there are place very close to home that also need a real improvement in train service - with trains running to where people want to go, at times they want to go, and at easily discovered fares at levels they'll pay.

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Do readers (and poster) here agree with the Balham survey?   Would you get similar results for the stations that you use most often? And what would you yourself find most useful (bearing in mind that posters here have already gone out of their way to take a more-than-average interest by finding us online and signing up to post)

Went to see Chris Green present on this report at the RSA last week.

It is very interesting and quite a lot of good ideas have come out of it, not least of which is an A-F classifications of stations.

F being unstaffed eg Melksham
E being small staffed

Working up to Waterloo.

With suggested minimum facilities for each type of station.

The interesting thing is that the majority of stations are in E & F.

There was some discussion as to whether the right stations were in the right catogories particulary  E to D etc.

Some very interseting ideas particulay about staffing and dual rolls Merseyrail has one station where you buy your ticket from the small supermarket on the station.

From my own point of view I would say ideally all the facilities that you list should be provided at all stations but that's impracticle.

Personnaly I would have put waiting shelter above toilets especialy where the staion is unstaffed.

However, well worth starting teh debate.

 

1340 stations are staffed (A-E) v 1191 unstaffed (F)

DfT starts show 1948449226 journeys from / to staffed and 99142034 journeys to / from unstaffed so 95.16% of joining / leaving trains is at staffed stations even though they account for just 52.94% of stations.

Stations were already categorised A-F before his report, it wasn't a change.

"The stations were classified into six
categories (A ^ F) at rail privatisation in 1996 on
the basis of passenger footfall and annual
income."

What he did was to rename a category:

"Regional Hub ^ Stations to be re-named
National ^ Interchange stations to better
reflect the role of the majority of these
important stations."

and split categories C and F into two parts:

"Categories ^ and ^ to be sub-divided to
reflect the wide range of stations in each
category. This has been requested by both
train companies and the DfT to avoid
applying standards wastefully at lesser used
stations."

So there are really 8 categories now...

Paul

Why do we have to complicate things 7 was enough.

I used to have a boss that said any problem with more than 3/4 varibles is unsolveable.

The Netherlands has I believe 3 standard stations.