Provision of Information to passengers

[whole diary]

[Sixty3Closure]

Having has a miserable day's commuting made much worse by the lack of information available I'm curious as to why GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) (and possibly other companies) find it so difficult to provide accurate and useful information about services to passengers?

Is it a technology or technical issue where the information available to them is just poor or difficult to interpret/make use of?

Something to do with performance measures? The reason for asking this is the number of trains that are on time until they're cancelled or updated as very late which suggests they were never going to run or be on time. Are there bigger penalties for early cancellations notices?

There's no incentive for the train companies to spend much effort in this area? It would be hard to measure the quality of information for performance metrics and if there's no penalties or benefits then would you as a business do the minimum?

[ChrisB]

Can you provide details? Journey made/stations experienced/ do you have a smartphone/signed up to journeycheck?

[grahame]

Having has a miserable day's commuting made much worse by the lack of information available I'm curious as to why GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) (and possibly other companies) find it so difficult to provide accurate and useful information about services to passengers?

GWR are far from being the only ones in the 'firing line' over this.

In my personal view, customer information is paramount and at present many of the systems used are far too embryonic in their algorithms, unreliable in delivery and the delivery often lacks accuracy and clarity.   However, sitting here in the comfort of a warm home office, it's so easy to lash out with that criticism without acknowledging the very real issues that all the train providers have in providing information.  And it would be wise having stated my case to offer constructive suggestions too.

Consider though ...

1. At times the information's simply not there to be had.  A door sticks or a parcel's left on a train and that could lead to a delay or cancellation or security alert, but no-one knows at first.

2. As incidents develop, the unknown develops to possibilities, probabilities and certainties of change and that's hard to convey.   I've seen "cancelled" trains re-appear and run and this is where our embryonic system of "delayed" and "cancelled" could do with a finer granularity

3. Not all customers can / will understand far more detailed information provided to them

4. It's a pretty thankless task facing a crowd of angry passengers, especially when you're trying to help them get home / inform them and you may not have full information yourself.

5. Much as you might like to make personal announcements all up the line to (say) Bedwyn, that's going to be a full time job for someone at 'control' at times when everything is going crazy ... and a 40 second announcement at each of 10 stations probably means you'll only get to each station once every 7 or 8 minutes (say 10 minutes if you're pausing to get updates on whats going on from your data sources).

6. Would you rather be updated every few minutes, or have the issue fixed?  An eloquent example was an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) that had issues ... the conductor / train manager warning us that we were stuck and there would be no more from him for a while - we would just have to sit and stew - because he had to go off and investigate at the other end of the train and the issues they were having meant he could only announce from the one point.  "If I keep coming back to update you, it will take even longer" ...

NOT condoning ...
... information points that have lost communication ... again
... cancelled trains that drive people away and then the train turns up
... upcoming engineering notices that cover the last 4 weekends and not next weekend
... help point customer service people telling you to catch a bus that doesn't stop within 2 miles of the station
... notices that conflict with themselves about the availability of ticket purchasing

[Jason]

I don't know how 'smart' the systems are meant to be. I can infer more from the information available than the screen on the platforms often show. eg if the inbound service is 10 minutes late then it is not going to run on time despite what the screens show, right up until the last minute.

[IndustryInsider]

They're not that smart basically.  That sort of thing should and could be done with manual intervention, though if trains are disrupted the few numbers of actual people soon get swamped and can't keep up.  Having said that, there's room for improvement.

[Sixty3Closure]

Can you provide details? Journey made/stations experienced/ do you have a smartphone/signed up to journeycheck?

It was more of a general query but in this particular instance the first journey was from Twyford to Paddington on the 22nd. Checking the website when I left the house at 06.30 had the .43 and .53 both on time. Getting to the station they're both on time but I skipped the .43 as its standing room only. Of course at 06.53 the .53 then became delayed and 10 minutes later cancelled.

Coming home the 17.36 London to Twyford was delayed and then announced for 17.42. At 17.42 when we're on the platform it was then announced it would be non stop to Reading (even though it empties at Maidenhead and Twyford but that's probably a different thread).

In each instance it felt that providing accurate information would have allowed me to make a decision and catch a different service.

It's mainly the on time until its due that frustrates me and as I.I. says it feels like manual intervention would help a lot but I don't know how practical that is. In my particular example was the 06.53 ever on time or even running?

I don't have a smart phone but I've found the text alerts at the moment seem about as random as the seat reservations email. And if I did I don't want to have to sign up to a 3rd party (e.g. Twitter) just to get alerts so most of my queries are about the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) webpage, station displays and announcements.

I am, however, slightly reassured that it doesn't appear to be an accounting mechanism.

[stuving]

It's mainly the on time until its due that frustrates me and as I.I. says it feels like manual intervention would help a lot but I don't know how practical that is. In my particular example was the 06.53 ever on time or even running?

In that case what you saw was entirely accurate - that's visible on Realtime Trains. This train got to Reading ahead of its 06:45 timetabled arrival, so it was on time until after then. It was cancelled due to "a problem with the train (M8)"; evidently this happened promptly. However that leaves very little time for the decision, and its getting into the public information system, before 06:53. The next stopper is only 13 minutes later, so it doesn't really make sense to keep poking it to see if it will run.

For the evening train, there is nowhere to look for traces of the decision process inside the control room.

[martyjon]

From this mornings Journeycheck.

Between Castle Cary and Yeovil Pen Mill

Planned engineering work will take place between Castle Cary and Yeovil Pen Mill from 00:01, Sunday 01 October 2017 to 23:59, Sunday 01 October 2017.

Additional Information

All day, buses will replace trains between Castle Cary and Yeovil Pen Mill. A revised train service will run between Frome, Bruton and Castle Cary and between Castle Cary and Weymouth.

.... between Castle Cary and Weymouth  via Westbury, Salisbury, Eastleigh, Southampton, Bournemouth, Poole, Wareham and Dorchester South !!!!