I’ve been following recently #elonmusk’s #tesla’s attempts to tell other countries with different approaches to #labourrelations how they must conduct their businesses.
I’ve been reporting on it, too. Sometimes gleefully, as you’ll have noticed I’m sure:
Today, at #manchesterairport I supported two people as they flew to foreign climes. I had booked a train ticket well in advance to make the return journey directly back to #chester on a #transportforwales train.
There’s a strike today by #aslef, the trades union, on #transpennineexpress trains. I wasn’t taking a #transpennineexpress train, but my beef today is nevertheless still with the people working at the airport’s railway station who work specifically for this company:
Not because of the fact of the strike, mind. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t know the details of this particular one, but train people are generally hugely responsible professionals: I’ve worked with them on station platforms and concourses in #liverpool for months in a #securitylight role. They combine #security with #customerservice roles, often immensely intuitively. And therefore, seamlessly.
I’m still not with#elonmusk on this one, as you can see.
🙂
So the problem wasn’t the strike at all. Not for me. What was it, then? And what is it?
The splintered nature of the #uk train network, which a long time ago used to be called #britishrail. Now it’s a mishmash of competing operators. It was broken up in the interests of introducing competitive dynamics into a system that did need a shakeup, it’s true. But the result these days is serious problems with information flow across operators, and accountability amongst them when there’s no desire to duly deliver on it.
The way it works is that each major station enables the arrival and departure of trains from all the operators which want to use it. But it’s not as simple as it could have been. Because each major station is not run by a common separate body across the country. No. It’s run by one of the operators on behalf of the rest. And where you are determines which one runs your station.
What happened today was how the system manifestly doesn’t work. The #tfw operator wasn’t affected by the strike, but it was. Because the #transpennineexpress personnel were only interested in getting bodies out of THEIR airport’s station: the one, that is, that they are responsible for overseeing and running.
The one who was controlling the flow of people onto the platform said to me at one point he worked for #transpennineexpress and couldn’t offer information on any other operator and the validity of tickets except those of #northerntrains.
Their interests as overseers of the station clearly didn’t coincide today with the interests of #tfw, and therefore its passengers too: people just like me.
For this reason, he wasn’t interested, either, in whether half the madly grouped passengers he finally let en masse onto the platform had tickets or not, and thus clearly didn’t care whether or not they were just taking a short hop improperly to get to #manchester centre on another operator’s trains, squeezing legitimate passengers off the rest of this journey.
To make things worse, the trams — usually #manchester’s most exemplary part of its #publictransport network — were also delayed by disruption at just about exactly this time. The only way out for a while was an hour-long bus journey or onto a platform not being marshalled correctly IMHO, by a station operator which had no intention of supporting travellers who legitimately were going with a competing operator.
In the end, I waited for the trams to be up and running again, went to #manchestervictoria station where I received exemplary #customerservice from a #northerntrains employee, and was then redirected by the same to #piccadilly where I got equally brilliant service from two #avanti employees. One wrote me the ticket you see below:
So even in a stupidly splintered service such as the #uk’s good #customerservice can be delivered, when the will and professionalism chooses to exist.
One final observation: the only person at the airport railway station prepared to offer a categorical assurance that I would be able to travel without cost on another train, whatever the operator in the end, was a #security professional I am very grateful to and whom I was sure to thank — even whilst myself unsure whether anything would turn out right.
It shouldn’t be like that: but that’s how it was.
In the end, #security was compassionate, the strikers’ cause was just, and the man who was there acted only out of self-interest, and not on behalf of all parties involved.
What really puzzles me, though, is why a power like the #uk, once I am sure world-beating in so many respects, now settles so often for being proud of a self that doesn’t work … or at least, maybe worse than not at all is, simply, not quite …
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