My 2004 journey logs
I'm using a 'card system' so that you can see at a glance just how bad it is.
Green
Card - If a train is on time, or within two minutes of it's scheduled
time.
Yellow
Card - If a train is between 3 to 9 minutes late than its scheduled time.
Red
Card- If a train is 10 minutes or more later than advertised. Double red
cards will appear in situations where they've really fucked me off
See my journeys for:
[ January 2004 ]
Summary: During January, SWT scored 15 Red cards, 12 yellow cards and 5 green cards. Only 15% of my journeys were on time during the whole month. That's quite disgusting, especially when you consider that the cost of my monthly travelcard has just gone up by 12%! A twelve percent increase in price for a service that is on time less than 1 in 5 times.
Total time wasted this month: 7 hours, 32 minutes
[ March 2004 ]
Total time wasted this month: 3 hours, 25 minutes
Summary: During March, SWT scored 2 Red cards, 30 yellow cards and 12 green cards. So an improvement of up to 27% of my journeys being on time, and lots less red cards.. but they all become yellow cards instead!
[ April 2004 ]
Total time wasted this month: 2 hours, 46 minutes
Summary: During April, SWT scored 8 Red cards, 4 yellow cards and 2 green cards!
[ May 2004 ]
From June 2004 onwards, I've stopped daily blogging as
it does take up too much of my time.
But you can rest assured that at least once a week there is a major foul-up,
usually going home out of Waterloo in the evening peak, and that every
train home to Epsom is always a few minutes late. I simply cannot remember
the time that a train home arrived at Epsom on time as per scheduled.
Instead, I have now taken to logging individual events as and when the annoy me. (Should still be quite frequently updated then!)
Friday 18th June
The 1756 ran 34 minutes late (my girlfriend got this train), and when I got to Waterloo after her, then 1826 was cancelled completely, and the 1837 was packed because of the cancelled train, and eventually got to Epsom 13 minutes late.
Wednesday 23rd June
I read in the news today that Stagecoach (the owners of South West Trains) is to hand out a share of it's £250 Millions profits to it's shareholders after it's business on SouthWest Trains improved "Significantly"... You WHAT!? So their shareholders get rewarded for running a shit service?
Thursday 24th June
South West Trains are having a "meet the managers" session tonight, on the concourse of Waterloo between 4.30 and 7.30pm .. on the same evening that a lot of people will be rushing home to watch the England v Portugal game which kicks off at 7.45pm! Coincidence? Cynical .. moi ?
July 2004
Wednesday
7th July
Ok, I know it's not their fault per se but bad weather conditions across the whole of England today meant that strong winds brought down trees - onto railway lines, and Waterloo was a nightmare this evening when going home!
Trains cancelled, loads more delayed and it took me over two hours to get home. Not happy!
Friday 9th July
Have you noticed how trains are never late when you want them to be?
I rushed to get to Waterloo this evening after having a couple of drinks and made it to the concourse at 2215 and 36 seconds - to find that the
2215 had left bang on time to Epsom. I'd been hoping that it might be a few seconds late and maybe I could just catch it - but no, it had left on time, meaning I'd have to wait half an hour for the next one.
Except that the 2245 of course - ran late! It didn't leave Waterloo until 2252, and then lost its usual couple of minutes on the way down, and then due to an 'incident' at Stoneleigh (some pissed kids causing trouble), I rolled into Epsom a whole 16 minutes down on the timetable .. sigh ..
August - October 2004
SWT passengers found out that a brand new timetable is being introduced in the second week of December of 2004. It's been completely written from scratch - with almost everysingle train being re-timed, as a complete overhaul to try and get trains to be more reliable.
The upshot? For me, as far as I can tell is that journeys will officially take longer (As they've re timed Waterloo to Epsom to take 40 minutes instead of 34). So there's progress for you. Services are officially getting slower, and they've taken away a lot of the weekend and off-peak fast services to Epsom.
On the eMotion Magazine website you can see where everyone is up in arms about the fact that trains are simply now timetabled to take longer to get to places.
Also I can't but help give mention to the 09.05 from Epsom to Waterloo which in the fifteen times that I travelled on it during September, it left at:09.07 (twice), 09.08 (once), 09.09 (once), 09.10 (three times), 09.11 (four times), 09.12 (once) and 09.13 (twice) - and never was it once on time!
November 2004
This
is the publicity that SWT are banding about at the moment -
"Will make your life easier".
I'd still like to know how canceling all off peak and weekend trains from Epsom(when I often travel as I don't work regular 9-5 hours) is going to make my life 'easier'.
No, it's going to make it more tedious having to stop at every single stop all the time.
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