It’s not who controls the doors; on Southeastern it’s whether they work at all
This evening’s chaos on Southeastern was caused by a door not closing properly on the 1722 from Charing Cross when it stopped at Waterloo East. After 30 minutes the train was eventually taken out of service. Following trains had to reverse to Charing Cross, and Platforms 1-3 were taken out of action, Waterloo East was clogged with passengers and trains. It was bad.
When I eventually got back to Charing Cross – 50 minutes after I’d left – I found the one useful train was going from platform 5 not platform 2 as advertised on the Southeastern app. I missed it by about ten seconds. I eventually made it out of the very crowded station to find Embankment tube overwhelmed with passengers trying to get to Cannon Street or Victoria. I walked to Temple and caught an emptyish tube train to Cannon Street.
There is only one company to blame for this: Southeastern. Its failings?
- its inability to maintain its trains properly.
- its inability to take quick, simple corrective action like just locking the failing doors shut (and, if necessary, isolating the carriage).
- its inability to respond quickly and effectively to anything going wrong. If the train really did need to be taken out of service, why did it take 30 minutes to do so?
Today the Department for Transport have invited Expressions of Interest for the next Southeastern franchise – on very much the same basis as the existing one. The nightmare for long-suffering Southeastern commuters seems likely to continue.
Why settle for simply locking the offending door, popping a sticker on it and switching on the Door Not In Use sign when you can delay thousands of people and ruin their evening instead?
Much more fun than going on strike and losing pay !
Oh, you shouldn’t have pointed us at the EoI documentation – from Part D:
“We are looking for an operator who can put the passenger back at the heart of operations and deliver a step change in customer satisfaction over the life of the franchise.”
Yep, just like the present operator promised at the time of the franchise extension. Excuse me if I don’t expect the successful bidder to deliver on this.