Strikes – more info needed

03 October 2017

Many rail passengers up and down the country are once more experiencing the uncertainty of how they will get to work, home, to appointments – and more of the same is planned for Thursday.

Whether Southern, Merseyrail, Northern and Greater Anglia passengers support the strikers or not – and views differ just as they do in any large group of people – they will all be impacted and suffer the disruption. They will need to know what services will be running as well as information on whether they are eligible for a refund or compensation and how to claim.

This is the first time Greater Anglia has been impacted by strike and it is intending to operate a full, normal service on both days using staff it has trained up to cover the conductors’ roles. Southern also intends to run a normal service on most of its route. It will be interesting to see how this operates on the ground – we will be monitoring, and discussing with the companies afterwards.

Clearly the key thing is for operators and unions to get back round the table and try to hammer out a solution that will let people get back about their lives as normal.

But we also want to see more information from operators on the changes that are being proposed or considered. This should be set out in real terms that spell out what it actually means for people rather than ‘improving customer service’ or other such vague phrases. This is a good example from Merseyrail. More of the same please!

Like the blog? Please share on your social channels.