Thu 3 November - All over the shop...
Looks like the rails may have got a bit wet and slippery or something. Heat problems yesterday evening, today it's the storm that seems to be causing chaos on the trains. The 07:14 is OK, but the 07:29 is cancelled. No SMSes going out by the looks of things.
Some are telling stories of more than an hour to get from Caulfield to the city, with no information being conveyed to passengers. Haven't heard of anybody having to resort to eating their fellow passengers in order to survive, but keep your eye on A Current Affair/Today Tonight!
As Sam pointed out, where were the SMSes? Just think about it... there's thousands of people turning up at stations hoping to catch their normal train. They get there and it's chaos and nobody knows what's going on - why on earth did they not send out SMS alerts telling everybody their trains were stuffed? This is the problem we keep coming back to with Connex time and again... they have no concept of keeping their customers informed.
Now if somebody at Connex could explain why this morning's problems have spilled over to this evening, that would be really helpful! We are on platforms 12 & 13 because of the Flemington trains using platform 8. At 17:26 I ask the Connex guy in the little shed on platform 13 when he thinks the 17:27 will be there. He tells me a couple of minutes. Five minutes later I go back and ask him - he rings control and it's clear nobody knows. I enquire why they don't just ask the guy driving the inbound train where he is - surely somebody knows exactly where he is, otherwise we don't really want to think about trains wandering around willy-nilly!
Our train finally departs 10 minutes late and arrives at Ripponlea 12 minutes late. Another sardine run with more hot bodies, fortunately not quite as hot as yesterday. And once again Connex gave us no information while we were waiting. Pathetic!
Some are telling stories of more than an hour to get from Caulfield to the city, with no information being conveyed to passengers. Haven't heard of anybody having to resort to eating their fellow passengers in order to survive, but keep your eye on A Current Affair/Today Tonight!
As Sam pointed out, where were the SMSes? Just think about it... there's thousands of people turning up at stations hoping to catch their normal train. They get there and it's chaos and nobody knows what's going on - why on earth did they not send out SMS alerts telling everybody their trains were stuffed? This is the problem we keep coming back to with Connex time and again... they have no concept of keeping their customers informed.
Now if somebody at Connex could explain why this morning's problems have spilled over to this evening, that would be really helpful! We are on platforms 12 & 13 because of the Flemington trains using platform 8. At 17:26 I ask the Connex guy in the little shed on platform 13 when he thinks the 17:27 will be there. He tells me a couple of minutes. Five minutes later I go back and ask him - he rings control and it's clear nobody knows. I enquire why they don't just ask the guy driving the inbound train where he is - surely somebody knows exactly where he is, otherwise we don't really want to think about trains wandering around willy-nilly!
Our train finally departs 10 minutes late and arrives at Ripponlea 12 minutes late. Another sardine run with more hot bodies, fortunately not quite as hot as yesterday. And once again Connex gave us no information while we were waiting. Pathetic!
posted by Connex Whinger at 7:45 pm
3 Comments:
grrr .... it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to get in from carnegie (normaly 20 minutes)...every time it rains the signals at Caulfield fail!!!
Maybe if they spent some money and fixed them properly or perhpas Melbourne commuters should take a leaf out of the book of the Argentinians!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4399362.stm
Connex is lucky we are so mild mannered!
Same time here from Glen Huntly - trams packed to capacity. I guess the constant failing of the Caulfield signals is one subject, but Connex completely and utterly FAILED this morning in responding to the crisis as a whole. NO SMS AT ALL so the missus and I turned up at 7:45am to be told by nervous looking staff that this was indeed the Apocalypse, Satan himself was returning to Earth to smite us all down, and oh there are NO trains running at all. Now an Age article said that a driver first noticed at 6am so for fuck's sake why didn't they use the system already in place and send a mass SMS??? I certainly wouldn't have wasted my first half hour finding out the extent of the problem (Dandy line was no good, but Sandy line was supposedly ok) and then figuring out what the options were and what to do, if I had known. It's a disgrace. Oh and no buses had been organised by then either so us passenegers were pertty much on our own. As the missus rightly said, it was like they simply had no contingency/emergency plan. God help them if this sort of stuff up happens come Commonwealth Game time next year...
I got an SMS just before 7am, although it gave little clue to the extent of the dramas. "Frankston line trains delayed at Frankston due to service cancellation".
How could I predict that the train I caught at 8am would be so affected by this simple message.
The message also fails to explain trains were suspended between Moorabbin & Caulfield at one stage.
To be fair Metrol were probarly tearing their hair out over the problem facing them, and couldn't find the time to let us know.
Instead of leaving Mordialloc at 8:12 on an express and arriving Flinders St (via loop) around 8:55, I ended up on a stopper that left Mordialloc just after 8:20am and didn't get me there to after 9:30am.
Ride home uneventful though - 6pm down almost dead on time arriving my stop.
BTW, the one-way movement at FSS worked OK in my option, although arriving at 9:35 or so meant I missed the big crowds. A bit of paper wasted with all those leaflets showing a map. I hope they recycle the remaining ones at least.
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