Good service? HUH!

IIRC there was a signal failure at Acton Town during the late morning - I checked my bus/tube journey into work at about 10:30 and was told about the suspension, with good service on the rest of the line. When I checked again shortly before midday it reported the severe delays due to a signal failure at Acton Town. Looking at the timings you give it's *possible* you were caught up in it as the situation began, which means that either staff were not aware of the problem, or had not yet realised the extent of the problem. Without being there at the time and knowing the details of the situation (ie, the exact problem, how quickly the nature of the problem was determined and therefore what could be done to work around it) it's hard to answer the question any further.

Claiming that lines currrently have a "good" service, when in fact they have a normal or scheduled service, really doesn't earn LU any brownie points with the passengers. In any case, surely it's for the recipient of a service, rather than its provider, to determine whether it is "good" or not.

Many's the time I've been stood on Shepherds Bush H&C platforms to be told over the long-line PA that the H&C has a "good" service, when clearly it's nothing of the sort. The groan from fellow platform-dwellers is audible each time.

THC

However in the experience of many people here, a service that is suffering significant delays is still being described as "good".

But hey, the managers want their "customer service" points... if they actually cared about their passengers/customers/wage-payers, they would care less about ticking boxes and more about what people actually want.

Certainly not me, who a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday evening round about 23.00 was trying to catch an EB Central line train at Holborn to find myself with a 14 minute wait - and the gap was clearly bigger than 14 mins as there were quite a few people on the platform when we got there. The published frequency at that time of night (travelling to Leyton so disregarding which branch the train eventually went to) is every 5 mins. The Central line was advertising a good service.

Pity my companion for the evening, who was treated to an extended rant about headways and advertising a good service when it is not. The truly amazing thing is he actually wants to go out with me again ;D

The customers who answer surveys and say that information isn't good enough? Because the things like service updates every four minutes are brought in because customers say they want them. At that frequency there is not much time for service control to react to reclassify the service (especially when dealing with the incident at the same time!) and station staff to react to a change of status (bearing in mind that the supervisor may well not be sitting next to his computer, or even in the same room as it).

Within the company, it's the usual answer: every station *ought* to have a poster with details of how to contact the customer services department, as well as London TravelWatch. If you can't find it at your local station, ask the station staff or look on the TfL website's contacts page.

Likewise, don't forget positive reinforcement: if there's a station which *does* generally keep on top of service status, puts out clear and accurate information during disruption, etc, then think about saying thank you in some way - it could be something as simple as letting a CSA know you appreciate the help.

As with a lot of things, you're relying on individuals (a large number of individuals in LU's case) to all work as a cohesive unit. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Stuff doesn't always go to plan, either, meaning you can give information in good faith only to have something unforeseen crop up. You've got an awful lot of steps where it can fall down: the Line Controller (and possibly signallers) have to deal with the incident and try to work out what the problem is, how to solve it, and how long it'll take to resolve. Line Information Assistants have to try to get the information out. That information has to be cascaded down to station staff by supervisors or control room assistants. And the information can be constantly changing during this - situations do not stay static. LU could probably do better - just as most companies could doubtless stand to improve in at least one area - but until telepathic communication is brought it, completely accurate information is never going to be 100% attainable. Connect radio can help - *if* used correctly - because there is a facility for group broadcasts. The intranet can be useful *but* most stations don't have someone constantly monitoring it because there are other things to do. The recorded service message takes a while to update (and relies on staff to call it). Service status messages are broadcast to the control room over a loudspeaker, but it can occasionally be hard to make out the information - and again, there will not always be someone in the control room at smaller stations, because the supervisor will be out attending to station checks and other such tasks.

I've rambled! Sorry!

With regards to the radio: yes and no, from what I've observed - bearing in mind this is one station group on one line. Firstly, if they have it tuned to Line, they aren't then tuned to their own station - kinda pointless. They can set it so that the service controller interrupts their radio, but this isn't always much use - sometimes it 'sticks' to the controller's channel and if they need to put out a station message during the broadcast, they have to wait for the L/C to shut up because the radio is temporarily on his channel - likewise, they don't receive messages from their own staff until he's done. They could have a second radio tuned to service control, which some do, but at some stations there may not be a spare radio - Arnos was always a bad example of this, with some CSA's doing spare duties occasionally having to *share* a radio. Some stations may have a computer in the control room that can be left tuned to service control, but again that does require someone to be sitting there to listen to it. Bear in mind that Connect is actually still a work in progress so not all features are ready, working correctly, or even fully understood by all members of staff.



This comes down to the supervisor - see all the above comments about individuals, which were partly an attempt to answer this. Some of them will turn it straight off. Some of them won't. Sometimes it may be laziness, some of it may be that they're busy and out of the office - I'm sure we've had this discussion before - and a great many SS offices are (or are supposed to be!) kept locked, and/or the computer will be password protected, so it's not as easy as saying "Someone else should turn it off!". I know at stations where the message has been left, I've had access to the office, and the computer's been logged on, I have gone in and turned it off... but then I'm not on the gateline for five minutes or so, leaving plenty of opportunities for someone to get stuck in a gate or what-have-you and scream about there being no-one to help.

The trouble with this debate, from my point of view, is that it echoes the Oyster-is-rubbish one. We remember the bad examples because they stick in our minds. Commuters don't remember the dozens of journeys where nothing disrupted them - they remember the handful where things went wrong. A CSA can look at Oyster tickets and whine that they spent all day dealing with broken or malfunctioning cards and forget that countless people tapped in and tapped out with no trouble.

I'm conscientious, listen for the service updates over the train radio and, if we're approaching an interchange to an affected line, I make an announcement. I have no way of knowing if that information's correct - for all I know it's cleared up in the last five minutes, or worsened, or the line controller was bored and making stuff up. I simply pass it on in good faith. The station staff may give you other information, also in good faith. I don't think anyone deliberately sets out to misinform because, quite frankly, it's bloody pointless and makes our own lives harder...!