Barrier guy: Can I see your Young Person’s card?
Me: Sure, <rummages>, here
Barrier guy: <stares at the cards in my holder, takes holder, stares hard, gives me a look>
Me: Any reason for the Spanish Inquisition?
Barrier guy: It is kind of faded, you don’t need to be aukward
Me: Indeed. Neither do you. We do live in a “free country”
– A rough transcript of a conversation between me and a railway employee last night.
In this country, trains are often used by commuters and travellers in general as a semi-viable means of mass transportation. Many trains are consitently late or badly managed by privatised rail companies, who unfairly make profit for shareholders and have other interests besides running a railway (railroad) network – it’s simply not possible to run a good public railway infrastructure at a profit and do it right IMO. We need to think beyond initial returns and look into the great benefit a well run network would actually bring to this country. A minor issue which apparently also plagues the system is that of ticket fraud and people who apparently don’t want to pay their way. Now there are two problems here:
- Fraud doesn’t much offset the anti-fraud provisions in place – we should just accept a certain level of ticket fraud and be done with it rather than expensive barrier/staffing. Also, it’s worth looking at why people don’t want to pay – I don’t want to pay, mostly because I am disgusted by these companies and their profitering actions (at the expensive of quality) and don’t want to line their pockets. I however do buy a ticket because I’m not going to break the law over it, although I will find the cheapest ticket that might somehow screw them over.
- Anality. Too many of the railway staff I meet are rather too anal about the whole exercise. What they need to realise is that their job is to provide high quality customer service, not to treat each customer with suspicion and like they might be a witch on a broomstick (my term for the US style hysteria over terrorism) or even just a fair evader. I always pay for my tickets and in return expect as little hassle as possible – not routine nonsense from underpaid staff.
We actually have lists of people who don’t buy tickets now. Lists. That’s right, you can go into a station and look at a big printed “name and shame” type poster (though I’ve only seen this on certain parts of the network – not here in the South East part of the UK). There are a whole heck of a lot of other posters, signs, warnings, general demotivaters which are put there by overpaid and out-of-touch senior management who never actually take trains. Please please please, get a clue and make the system more enjoyable for those of us who are honest and just want to get from here to there with the minimum of hassle. No, I’m not of the “if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ll put up with any shit” inclination. I’m of the “innocent until proven guilty” conviction.
These are yet more reasons that I look forward to getting my driving sorted out and getting a car so that I can just not have to deal with some of these people and hassles on a daily basis. Before you make a quick a snappy judgement after reading this – just imagine you had many many years of daily rail travel behind you, rather than driving everywhere. It’s not exactly fun (but it really could be if they actually made a real effort – then it would truly rule to be able to work and do productive stuff on the train someplace).
Jon.