Announcements - operation oriented, or customer oriented?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I was struck by the difference between two announcements at Chippenham this afternoon.

1. "The 15:29 to Westbury is cancelled due to flooding in the Swindon area"

2. "The 15:55 to London Paddington is canceled due to flooding in the Swindon area. Customers are advised to wait for the next available service for Didcot, Reading and London Paddington, which is at 16:25"

The second announcement was customer aware because it told the customer about alternative plans and what they should do.  The first accouncement was not ...leaving customers to their own devices.

No direction to wait for further details; the member of station staff I asked went to find out "from control", and didn't come back - could have been dealing with more important matters, or could have gone to control in person  .  Queueing out the door of the ticket office.  And the cancelled trains duly went off the board when their scheduled time passed, leaving those without an alternative feeling just a tad forgotten.

Solution - just a change to the announcement: "The 15:29 to Westbury is cancelled because of flooding in Swindon. Passengers for Melksham and Trowbridge can catch the 15:58 Faresaver bus x34 from the station forecourt, which will accept your train tickets. Passengers for Westbury are advised to wait for the next train to Bath which is, however, delayed and change there."

[ellendune]

From the picture tweeted by Network Rail, https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/730435746948108288 the flooding was just by the new Broad Town Road bridge in Basset. 

[tomL]

There has certainly been an improvement as time goes on.

The automated announcements are clearly included some more useful details "Passengers for Reading and London Paddington, your next fastest service is expected to be the xx:xx service from Platform x"

[grahame]

From the picture tweeted by Network Rail, https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/730435746948108288 the flooding was just by the new Broad Town Road bridge in Basset. 

Co-incidence?  Prior flooding record at that point?    It's not Chipping Sodbury tunnel nor the Melksham platform this time.

[ellendune]

From the picture tweeted by Network Rail, https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/730435746948108288 the flooding was just by the new Broad Town Road bridge in Basset. 

Co-incidence?  Prior flooding record at that point?    It's not Chipping Sodbury tunnel nor the Melksham platform this time.

I am not sure if it has flooded there before. However, flooding due to surface water from intense rainfall like we have had today can be caused by very local. I have certainly seen flooding in places today that I have not seen before. I know the cutting at Hay Lane (between Swindon and Bassett and just west of the M4 bridge) has flooded before, but NR^» (Network Rail - home page) have done drainage works there in the last year.  Broad Town Road is too far away for NR to have moved the problem from there. 

[JayMac]

Back to the OP^▸ (Original Poster / topic starter). Announcements of any sort (bar the generic 'delays due to flooding') would have been welcome at Paddington this evening.

The 1730 to Taunton was, when I arrived at Paddington, showing as calling at Reading, then Bath. That told me it was going via the B&H^▸ (Berks and Hants - railway line from Reading to Taunton via Westbury) and would be no use for me headed to Swindon. It stayed like that right up until platform allocation at around 1800, when I briefly saw the calling points revert to booked route during the mad rush to board. I chanced it even though I wasn't 100% sure what it was doing beyond Reading.

It surely couldn't have been beyond the realms of the manual announcer confirming that the delayed 1730 was indeed calling Didcot, Swindon, Chippenham... Folk were left to guess and resort to tweets to check the train was going where they wanted. The first time the calling points were confirmed on board was when we were stationary at Reading. Had the service been diverted there may well have been folk carried to Bath who wanted Didcot, Swindon and Chippenham.

I appreciate that during disruption things may be very fluid, but someone must have known the delayed 1730 had reverted to booked route prior to departure. That important information should have been relayed to passengers. I fear some folk were left on the concourse at Paddington having not seen the departure board update the calling points. I very nearly was. And even after boarding still I wasn't certain where the train was going.

[bobm]

Just for the record, my weather station in Swindon recorded 0.85 inches of rain yesterday and 0.5 the day before.  That is more than 10% of the rain we have had so far this year.

[grahame]

Just for the record, my weather station in Swindon recorded 0.85 inches of rain yesterday and 0.5 the day before.  That is more than 10% of the rain we have had so far this year.

Oh - I was on the 13:30 from Paddington going to change at Swindon ... but stayed on to Chippenham because it was so pee-ing down I didn't fancy having to expose myself on platform 2 (you know what I mean), opting for the same platform change at Chippenham even though faciities are less.  Turned out to be a wise (or flukily good) choice.

What DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) work in the end was that the Faresaver x34 bus from Chippenham accepted rail tickets to Melksham and Trowbridge. One person queued at the ticket office and was told that it was going to - that's how we found out. And I was going to go on that bus and pay if I had to anyway, not fancying waiting around until 18:00 for the next train.   Makes you question - why the heck can't an interchangeable public transport ticket always be provided - make the special arrangements permanent!

[johoare]

Not announcements as such but I was at Paddington last night attempting to get the 19.48 which is first stop Maidenhead.. I arrived about ten minutes before but because of all the delays on the screens I went to ask someone at the customer service desk (there were stopping services I could have got WITH the correct information after all)..

I was told.. "The train is here (I think that bit was true) and will be boarding in about five minutes (much less truth in this bit".. After another 15 minutes I asked a different person and was told exactly the same thing although this time he did tell me it was waiting for the driver..!!!

I got a local stopping service in the end and looking at realtime trains the 19.48 eventually left Paddington 52 minutes late.

I would much prefer to be told that they have no idea of how long it will be because of the flooding, misplaced drivers etc..  Then I could have made an informed decision rather than a naive one of believing them and waiting for my fast train home..

[phile]

There are two things I hate:-

Trains disappearing from the screen when they haven't turned up even though they are still running but delayed.     If a train disappears and is cancelled, why not say so even after scheduled time.
Secondly - Delayed showing.   Can an estimate not be manually input.  In the good old days an explanation would be given together with an estimate by a live voice.   Surely it should be known if going to be 10 minutes or 2 hours.

[tomL]

There are two things I hate:-

Trains disappearing from the screen when they haven't turned up even though they are still running but delayed.     If a train disappears and is cancelled, why not say so even after scheduled time.
Secondly - Delayed showing.   Can an estimate not be manually input.  In the good old days an explanation would be given together with an estimate by a live voice.   Surely it should be known if going to be 10 minutes or 2 hours.

Limitations of the system(s) I'm afraid. If no updates are sent (which is generally the case when a train is stationary at a platform in Paddington for example, then the system can only assume 'delayed' until the train departs and suddenly becomes 'Departed 40 mins late'.

[JayMac]

And that's why manual announcements are essential during disruption. To provide information that the automated systems can't.

I witnessed good practice at Bristol TM^‡(resolve) this week following a train failure that blocked the line from Filton into Bristol. Manual announcements giving accurate information, with estimates given beyond the auto systems 'delayed'. Told exactly which service had failed, and told of the services that were stuck behind the failed train.

This happened immediately after the details of the failed train (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) unit - GSM-R^▸ (Global System for Mobile communications - Railway.) fault) had been provided to industry feeds.

[phile]

Another info problem which has developed in the technology age is that when a train is Cancelled,  I feel that passengers should be advised whet to do in relation to alternative arrangements as soon as it is announced or appears on the CIS^▸ (Customer Information System).   I was once on a train that terminated at Bristol Temple Meads en route to  the West of England.  The announcement was made on the train as we were approaching.  Result was crowds of people running round Temple Meads like headless chickens trying to get information.