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=3469What 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:
and:
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.
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)
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