People pay a lot of money to travel on trains, in some cases, quite a high percentage of their salary. Regardless of the ticket price, passengers are entitled to expect a good, reliable service. We're now in the 21st century, so people also have a reasonable expectation that the service will be delivered promptly and reliably. They see it as the railway industry's job to get it right, but at the same time, at least partly due to previous train stranding incidents, I suspect they also have less confidence in the railway industry's ability to get it right, so they are far more likely to walk away.
As I and I think others have said previously, people seem to have lower stress tolerance these days, so the point at which they will bail out of a clearly failed service is likely to come sooner rather than later. For a lot of people now, they lose interest as soon as they realize they are not getting the service they expect, and which they've paid for. It's easy to dismiss the people factor in situations like this, but I'm not surprised people got off some of those trains. I know of 2 people who did, because they had somewhere they needed to be, and they'd set off in what would normally be considered to be plenty of time given the time of day. I'm not trying to agrue the rights or wrongs of this, just pointing out the reality.
I used to be extremely patient and understanding, but as the years have gone by, my patience has been reduced and now if I'm in situations where I know something isn't working, or I arrive at a conclusion that I need to change course, then that's it. I won't waste any more time deliberating about it. I had a spare half hour recently so I called into the local motor factors one day last month, wanting to buy about £150 worth of car service parts. The company has recently changed hands. Prior to this, a customer could almost guarantee being served within about 20 seconds of walking through the door, but on that occasion, nobody came out of the office. Another customer was waiting too, and several employees were in the office, none of whom appeared too busy to come out to earn some money. I waited for a few minutes, and even selected some of the items I wanted, and put them on the counter. Then I realized I was wasting my time, so I went to Halfords down the road instead. Unfortunately they didn't get the money either, because there was only one lad on the shop floor, and he was running in and out of the shop, trying to fit a dashcam for a customer. There was no-one on the parts desk so I went home and ordered what I needed on ebay. I'm not the only one who hasn't got indefinite time to wait. We've got things we need to do, and places we have to be.
I don't think I would have even waited beyond 30 minutes on a stopped train in a situation like that, because basically, I don't have to. I think that's a view shared by a great number of people, as evidenced by incidents like the one under discussion here.
I've had conversations where people have said those who get off broken down trains are part of the problem, but I disagree. The problem has already happened, and people getting off trains to so they can get on with their day is just one of the inevitable symptoms of the problem. How the railway companies address the causes of problems like this and prevent them in the future is a matter for them, but until they do it in such a way as to actually reduce the incidence of passengers being trapped on trains, then incidents like the Lewisham one will just keep on happening. Simply trying to blame passengers goes absolutely nowhere towards preventing this type of situation happening.
