Peak capacity on Southern trains poster

[infobleep]

There is a poster at Haywards Heath station listing the number of coaches, chances of getting a seat and whether you'd have to stand for 20 minutes or more in the morning peak.

It's a great idea but it only covers Southern services. Wouldn't it make sense to do one for all Govia Thameslink Railway services. They share each other's own brand rolling stock so why not posters! They are no posters covering Thameslink or Gatwick Express separately either.

Currently it gives the impression that on most services you will have to stand and to London Bridge you will stand for over 20 minutes.

It lists 15 trains here you'll have to stand for over 20 minutes and 10 where you don't. I imagine with Gatwick Express and Thameslink added in, the number where you have don't have to stand for over 20 minutes would decrease.

Travel more comfortably? Get the 4.23, which hopefully won't be a bus for engineering works or get the 9am. In between no chance it seems.

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[DarloRich]

or move away from prime commuter land and get o nthe train earlier

We have similar posters on LM

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was going to say...LM have been doing this for years (it was their idea I believe). LM of course are also Govia.

Next stage is to get this stuff onto the Journey Planner as the Swiss do.

 

[yorkie]

Yes these posters have been around for years.

VTEC have had this information on their website for ages too, and I'm sure other TOCs do too.

.... I imagine with Gatwick Express and Thameslink added in, the number where you have don't have to stand for over 20 minutes would decrease.....

No; the company's trains branded "Express" (which are no faster than their other limited stop trains) are included in the poster. The text under "Train operator" at the bottom of the poster is erroneous; it should read 'Govia Thameslink Railway' instead. These sort of brand confusion mistakes are rife on GTR.

I can assure you that the company's "Express" branded trains listed on the poster are already "standing room only" from Haywards Heath. Don't be fooled into thinking they have seats for airport passengers, and certainly don't be fooled into thinking the journey time from the airport is timetabled to be 30 minutes (timetabled journey times are greater than this before you add the inevitable delays).

 

[Robinson]

ScotRail have these posters available online, although only for certain stations. Their website has been telling us "we'll be adding more routes shortly so please check back" for quite a long time without anything actually being added!

 

[Deepgreen]

All very well, but the shambles of GTR's 'service' is such that these bland statistics will change so frequently as to make them almost useless. Late trains, cancelled trains and short formations all completely scupper the point of the information. On top of this, most peak time travellers have little option available to them as to which trains they travel on, within a train or two, and anyway, as the poster shows, all the peak trains are standing room only with standing time likely to exceed twenty minutes (Southern quietly dropped their 'Customer Charter' pledge about >20 minutes standing years ago).

Essentially, it it simply stating that all the peak time trains are crowded - genius!

Incidentally, I see that the 0851 GX departure is shown as comprising five cars. Assuming this refers to a single 442, is this really still the case - I thought all these had now been replaced by 387s, except the peak Littlehamptons? Perhaps more to the point, it is shown as going to London Bridge, whereas it is actually a Victoria train!! Southern's information machine at its standard setting of 'abysmal' again.

 

[Deepgreen]

This becomes more confusing as I have just glanced at RTT for Haywards Heath, and there is no 0851 to either London Bridge or Victoria listed! Unless I'm missing something obvious (not impossible!) I cannot see what train is being referred to here - the Southern/GX timetable says it runs to Victoria (arriving 0939), their HH station poster says it runs to London Bridge and RTT says it doesn't run at all.

 

[yorkie]

Incidentally, I see that the 0851 GX departure is shown as comprising five cars. Assuming this refers to a single 442, is this really still the case - I thought all these had now been replaced by 387s except the peak Littlehamptons?

Substitute Littlehampton for Eastbourne and you are correct.

 

[Andyh82]

I can see the point where certain peak trains have spare capacity due to following closely behind another service or because it comes from a less popular origin, or something along those lines.

When all services between 7am and 9am are shown as standing room only, it's pretty pointless.

 

[infobleep]

or move away from prime commuter land and get o nthe train earlier

We have similar posters on LM

The 4.23 is the earliest train I believe.

South West Trains also do posters. However with South West Trains, if its the lines into Waterloo, they are the only people running trains.

I guess with London Midland, there is also Virgin for parts of the route. Do Virgin have similar posters?

The thing with the Southern poster is that Southern is part of the Govia Thameslink Railway company owned by Govia. That company also have the brands Thameslink and Gatwick Express. Given they own all three brands under the one company roof, I think it would be worth having a poster covering all three. Passengers to Victoria in the morning peak probably don't mind if they are on a Southern or Gatwick Express train if one has more space than the other.

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Yes these posters have been around for years.

VTEC have had this information on their website for ages too, and I'm sure other TOCs do too.

No; the company's trains branded "Express" (which are no faster than their other limited stop trains) are included in the poster. The text under "Train operator" at the bottom of the poster is erroneous; it should read 'Govia Thameslink Railway' instead. These sort of brand confusion mistakes are rife on GTR.

I can assure you that the company's "Express" branded trains listed on the poster are already "standing room only" from Haywards Heath. Don't be fooled into thinking they have seats for airport passengers, and certainly don't be fooled into thinking the journey time from the airport is timetabled to be 30 minutes (timetabled journey times are greater than this before you add the inevitable delays).

Thanks for that. I'd not spotted that. It does indeed include Gatwick Express. It doesn't however include Thameslink. For example the 6.42 isn't shown. I can't remember off hand what the seating is like on the 6.42. I would tend to get the 6.34 if travelling before 7.

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I can see the point where certain peak trains have spare capacity due to following closely behind another service or because it comes from a less popular origin, or something along those lines.

When all services between 7am and 9am are shown as standing room only, it's pretty pointless.

The thing is, it's not showing all services. The Thameslink ones are missing. Some of those have free seats. I don't know if they are green or amber though. I couldn't find a Thameslink poster with the information on where I was stood.

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[Bald Rick]

This becomes more confusing as I have just glanced at RTT for Haywards Heath, and there is no 0851 to either London Bridge or Victoria listed! Unless I'm missing something obvious (not impossible!) I cannot see what train is being referred to here - the Southern/GX timetable says it runs to Victoria (arriving 0939), their HH station poster says it runs to London Bridge and RTT says it doesn't run at all.

RTT shows an 0851(ex HHE) BTN - VIC GX service. Just not this week - but it is in next week and in the new timetable also.

There may be short term alterations this week because of, well, anything.

 

[Deepgreen]

Substitute Littlehampton for Eastbourne and you are correct.

Did you mean the other way round? I wrote Littlehampton.

 

[Deepgreen]

RTT shows an 0851(ex HHE) BTN - VIC GX service. Just not this week - but it is in next week and in the new timetable also.

There may be short term alterations this week because of, well, anything.

Deleted.

 

[Class377/5]

I'd suggest it's rather hard to do Thameslink right now while they are in the middle of a cascade meaning it can change. Remember these sorts of info are done by data from multiple days so right now Thameslink would be wrong and no info is better than false info.

Long term this info is coming on the app as well.

 

[infobleep]

I take it the point about the cascading changes. May be more reference needs to be made to the trains that don't exist and why. At the moment the information is only half useful as there is a load of trains not included or even referred to as actually running.

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[Deepgreen]

The poster at Redhill is wrong (like almost all other information at Redhill!). It shows the 0840 to London Bridge as four cars - it is eight, combining portions from Tonbridge and Reigate.