Thought this worth its own thread given so many of you rely on them.
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Unsurprising given the number of strikes.
Like the whole of December
Aren’t the strikes all about the lone drivers and crap conditions?
I do not know. I am not local anymore.
I am interested in seeing if nationalisation improves your service.
Gives a brief summary of issue re strike
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Strikes are about changing the role of guards. Drivers would be responsible for closing doors in future. Guards would have more time to help passengers. No guards will lose their jobs or hours or pay. Unions say, predictability, it will harm safety. I think, though I am not sure, that some other lines have been operating with drivers closing doors for some years.
Go figure!
There was a bit of chat about this in the 2019 GE thread too.
In what version of reality does a bloke looking put a window take precedent for the health & safety of people over a bloke with a whistle?
World’s gone mad…
Since South Western have taken over I’ve not really enjoyed my trips back and forth to Southampton from London. Wifi never works (top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). The last time I got a train back there were only 5 coaches at peak time when it should have been 10 and a lot of people had to stand until Winchester (me included). It just keeps getting more pricey. £48 return. Not sure it’s possible to get a cheaper ticket. I didn’t notice any of the holiday deals i.e. £15 singles etc.
The thing with guards - I don’t know re whether it’s best for the driver to check doors or for a guard to. I’ve not been explained the merits etc. But i get the feeling if that goes then what next for the guard? Just check tickets? Well the barriers sort of do that mostly if they are on all stations. When do they get rid of the guard as being obsolete? Who is then available in an emergency? I’d quite like a couple of guards on a train and a way of contacting them via text etc if I was being harassed or something dodgy is going down in a carriage.
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The Union have an issue with the new rolling stock having the capability that the drivers can close the doors
Once the stock has turned up then they are worried than management could change their mind in the future
It does feel a bit car production line in the 70s where any change was resisted regardless
Not sure I would want to see guards removed from trains, but I couldn’t give a fuck who closed the doors
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£48 for a ticket to London?? That is insane. British Rail was pretty crap, but at least it was cheaper to get on a train cattle class than it was to drive myself there and back in my own car. I got the whole privatisation thing back in the day, the unions definitely had far, far too much power, but privatising the railways was probably the biggest mistake of all the denationalisations. It simply wasn’t appropriate.
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It is more like £92 peak return to London
That said with a weekly ticket is £124
So for the regular traveller £25 return peak is pretty good value imo
It’s only if you rock up on the day of travel, you get butt fucked
A bit like the airlines
I’ve never found a cheap advance ticket London to Southampton.
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Ditto.
Tried to get from any London Airport to Salisbury or Southampton by train was double the cost of the most expensive flight option on my last trip.
Cheaper to tent a car - insanity.
And yes that was a month in advance
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