One man's perspective of the daily grind on board the Connex Melbourne metropolitan train system.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Mon 7 November - Off to Perth again...
This week starts like last week - a late train and no information. I'm on the 08:49 and it's about four minutes late. For some reason the platform enquiry system declined to guess when it would arrive, even though it was only three or four stops down the line. No doubt this problem is linked to the lack of SMS alerts. One of the PDP-11s must be very sick.
Thankfully I'm going to Perth for a few days. Let's hope it's all sorted by Friday.
While I applaud the idea, in practicality it simply will not work. Why? For the simple reason that the people most likely to subscribe to the idea, are the frequent users who purchase weekly or monthly tickets. Just like yourself. The average user that would normally pay for a daily, or 2 hourly ticket simply won't be interested. That is why I like Phil's idea. If we can get as many people as possible complaining to Connex via their own methods, and asking for follow up responses and real answers, then the extra work caused them will be a constant reminder that they need to improve the system. If you want to hand out flyers, then talk to Phil and do the saem as he does with handing out the complaint forms, telling people to make sure they ask for a response.
It is good to see The Age champion the commuter cause though. The PTUA are too useless to actually represent us so we should all back The Age and see if we can make a difference now while it's on the agenda. I fear the road lobby, and useless "studies" will win the day though.
I'm not sure how successful it will be, but I had an inclination toward giving this a go myself - http://connexwhinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/wed-25-may-sydney.html - I met Rebecca Turner and discussed tactics. Their situation was far worse than ours - ten times so, in my view, so I ended up putting on the back burner for now.
Email me at phil@connexwhinger.com and we can take this offline. Happy to get involved.
An extract from my first post best sums up what this is all about.
"Perception is reality" was one of the many glib phrases my ex-boss used to regularly use. Well my reality is that I have never had a full week of the train that I want to catch running on time. Let me rephrase that somewhat inelegant sentence - I don't believe that of the ten scheduled trains that I would wish to catch in any given week, all ten have ever run as scheduled. Ever. In over four years of commuting on the Sandringham line, my perception is that at least one train per week is either delayed or cancelled.
That's probably a pretty bold call, so to turn my perception into reality, I plan to keep a diary for a while and we'll see how often Connex can deliver me a full week of reliable services. Yes, I know that's a little self-centred, but isn't that the whole point of blogging?
3 Comments:
James,
While I applaud the idea, in practicality it simply will not work. Why? For the simple reason that the people most likely to subscribe to the idea, are the frequent users who purchase weekly or monthly tickets. Just like yourself. The average user that would normally pay for a daily, or 2 hourly ticket simply won't be interested. That is why I like Phil's idea. If we can get as many people as possible complaining to Connex via their own methods, and asking for follow up responses and real answers, then the extra work caused them will be a constant reminder that they need to improve the system. If you want to hand out flyers, then talk to Phil and do the saem as he does with handing out the complaint forms, telling people to make sure they ask for a response.
It is good to see The Age champion the commuter cause though. The PTUA are too useless to actually represent us so we should all back The Age and see if we can make a difference now while it's on the agenda. I fear the road lobby, and useless "studies" will win the day though.
Sam
Speaking of which, an excellent editorial piece
(The Age - subscription required.
Try BugMeNot if you don't have one)
Tunnel Vision: a victory for the road lobby
Sam
Hi James
I'm not sure how successful it will be, but I had an inclination toward giving this a go myself - http://connexwhinger.blogspot.com/2005/05/wed-25-may-sydney.html - I met Rebecca Turner and discussed tactics. Their situation was far worse than ours - ten times so, in my view, so I ended up putting on the back burner for now.
Email me at phil@connexwhinger.com and we can take this offline. Happy to get involved.
Phil
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