At long last, the Connex franchise has been revoked.
I live near a train station “serviced” by Connex, and have suffered a whole swathe of problems:
the “1 in 5 trains delayed” statistic is pretty damn accurate
Until very recently the staff at the local train station were complacent in the extreme with regard customers buying tickets. There’s now a girl on the staff that – shock! – is considerate and interested in making sure you are aware of the options available.
The ticket machine is invariably out of order even now, and I’ve not seen the “permit to travel” machine working for months.
Connex figured it was better to install a car-parking ticket machine rather than another train ticket machine, despite only having about 10 parking spaces available.
The trains themselves are hopeless. Internal LCD displays giving the stations the train will be visiting are invariably not working.
Only a couple of weeks seem to pass between trying to get on trains with “out of order” signs on the sliding doors
Half the trains that seem to come into London Bridge on the non-metro lines seem to be slam-door trains, which were supposed to be retired years ago.
All said and done, Connex are a superb example of everything that is wrong with the railways at the moment. Unreliable, poorly serviced, old rolling stock, with staff who rarely seem to care about the service they provide.
I just wish the franchise was being revoked immediately, and given to a company (preferably non-profit) that put customer concerns at the top of their priority list, genuinely invested in the operation, and encouraged it’s staff to care.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2003 at 1:40 pm and is filed under The world. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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June 1st, 2006 at 2:46 pm
[...] Feel free to take a wander through the archives – It’s certainly interesting to see what I was up to or thinking about: June 2004, we were travelling in Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand, June 2003, I hated Connex, Booked tickets to see Eddie Izzard, and re-read Animal Farm. Last but by no means least, my first weblog posting from January 2002… [...]
April 13th, 2007 at 12:44 am
[...] Pas bien malin parce que c’est oublier qu’une compagnie française a été, il n’y a pas si longtemps, présente sur le marché britannique: Connex. Elle n’a pas laissé un trés bon souvenir. [...]