Abeilio took a profit but that was after subsidies IIRC.
No, they didn't. The cancellation was as big a win for them as it was the government, they still do the same back of house admin as before but no longer have to be the public punching bag for Scotrail and Network Rails screw ups.
Serco have lost £65million over the last 8 years.
Hardly surprising, they brought a load of new stock in (I think, did those carriages from Canada ever turn up?) and in the meantime quadrupled the price of a berth. It doesn't make any sense to take the sleeper now.
IRC – rather a differnce between a private citizen taking risks and a workplace exposing their staff to risk against government advice
Where did I say it was my car? I work for the NHS. I shared an NHS car with a different employee every shift. I saw the police with 2 cops per car during Covid as well. Tradesmen. etc. So govt advice was obviously not a blanket ban and plenty people just got on with it, private and public sector..
Seems to me that if a train driver trainee could have been paired with the same instructor for in cab training the risk would have been low and justifiable unless either was medically vulnerable. Certainly after initial lockdown once we had a better idea of risks. Not zero risk but nothing is.
No skin off my nose as I hardly use trains and a driver shortage doesn't affect me but I'm not suggesting anything that isn't lower than the risk I was exposed to for the entire pandemic without getting Covid. The only time I got it I had been on holiday for a week before so it wasn't caught at work.
Is the difference essential service v non essential? It was not a ban - it was advice. Under HSE you must make mitigation and balance that against risk and also need. Its called risk assessment.
Maintaining a supply of drivers is pretty essential. Ask train users.
No skin off my nose as I hardly use trains and a driver shortage doesn’t affect me
Do you drive at anything approaching peak times?
If you do, you’ll be affected by the extra traffic, as people who can’t catch their train drive instead.
Or get their other half to collect them.
Ukrainain trains are more punctual than Trans Pennine, and not by some statistically insignificant margin, only half of Trans Pennine trains make it on time compared to 95% of trains in a country that's actually at war,
which frankly, is ****ing shameful
I agree our trains aren't punctual but there's context to it. Punctuality is heavily impacted by the interdependency and complexity of your network. For example, in Germany I used to get a train to work that was on a single branch line with only a couple of physical trains on it shuffling back and forth and no junctions. It was even single track with a few passing loops. If one train had some issue, then no other trains were affected and it could eliminate the delay whilst waiting at the terminus. In the UK rail network a delay in one spot ripples through the entire network for the rest of the day, there's no slack that can be used to reset everything until the trains stop at night. There's not much we can do about that except build new lines to increase capacity - and look at the fuss that causes. Ok so perhaps changing the way we do signalling would help but that's not easy. Our transport network has a lot of legacy issues that can't easily be solved even with money, and sure as hell can't be without.
Now I don't know about the Ukraine network, it probably is better run anyway, but it may well have been better planned to begin with and it may not be running at 100% capacity which would give it a big advantage in remaining punctual, war or not.
I'm not defending how UK railways are managed centrally but there's more to it than simply being 'shit'.
In Germany if a train is late then that's that. If you're in for the long haul then you're better getting off and getting on whatever is behind you as its going to have priority. So I hear.
Do you drive at anything approaching peak times?
Nope. Work shifts off peak and time my leisure driving to avoid peaks.
It’s probably not a coincidence that many services terminate just before traditional pub kicking-out time. They’re likely loss-leaders on maintenance and cleanup costs.
I wouldn’t imagine that a GWR mainline train from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads would be concerned by that, considering the last train out of Paddington, as I pointed out, leaves at 11.32pm, most pubs are 11.00. They’re not like the last local bus, you know! Pub closing times are irrelevant to a mainline train operator.
It’s the fact that the last National Coach is 11.00pm pisses me off!
Actually that time isn’t true; I’ve just checked, it’s 22.30! The next coach is 07.00. Jeezus wept. 😖
Oh, and Megabus doesn’t stop in Chippenham anymore, the nearest stop is Bath, 12 miles away.
Yes, of course use public transport, instead of the car! In som parallel universe.
in Vic they just made all the trains a maximum fare of 9.60 anywhere. longest ride you can do takes 24 hours.
Is that within the state or into a neighbour?
I checked the time of the run from North Greenwich to Paddington, it’s 26 minutes with one change, so in order to get back to Paddington for the 11.32, I’d need to be out of the O2 and onto the tube by a bit before 11.00, preferably by 10.50. I don’t want to miss any of the performance, it’s costing me enough as it is, so I’ll be doing as much checking of performance length and start times as I can before making my mind up how I travel.
I’d much rather go by train, it takes about the same amount of time, but I don’t have to concentrate on the driving for two hours.
Having said that, I’ve got a thirty minute walk home from the station at around 1.30am. Not much fun if it’s raining.
Oh well, I’ve got until near the end of June to decide.
its just in Victoria, but lots of other states are looking at it.
Well I'm sat on the train - which is now two trains as they cancelled the one in front but I digress - and lner have put a smile on my face.
"the next stop is Grantham, change here for trains to
Skegness"
Skegness being said in the sort of mock erotic voice that suggests it was recorded by joanna lumley mid way through an M&S add. This isn't just ness, this is Skegness .
I thought their timetables and performance numbers were misleading but they've nothing on a pronunciation that can make you think of Skegy as the sort of picture perfect idyll promoted in breathy awe by beautiful YouTube travel influencers.
Train home £80 on the 15.33 about two minutes in advance - had to smile nicely at a staff member to let me through the gate at kgx whilst the payment spooled on the app for fear of missing my train. A non advanced ticket was £180. So that would have been £100 to use the machine in the station.
The next service was 16.00 & showing at £170 a ticket.
🤷🏻♀️
So advance tickets are available right up to departure time are they now? (But not available at ticket machines by the sounds of it!) I remember you used to have to buy by 1800 the day before.
Subject to the limited numbers of course, so if all the advance fares have gone when you turn up 2 minutes before, you're paying full whack.
The fare price increase was supposed to be 5.9% at start of march. I don't know what's happened but since mid April my commute has gone from ~£13 to ~£18, which is more like 40% and takes it from cheaper than driving to more expensive than driving. Quite frustrating
5.9% across an operators network, I think someone said that a few pages back.
You're obviously on a cash cow line.
