Northern - is the bad PR unfair?

LowLevel said:

I once had one, kindly enough, help an old lady put her bag on the train. He then walked down the platform to where he thought her seat was to start pounding his fist on the window and pointing up in the air that the occupants should jump up and move immediately (she was in a queue about 20 long in the aisle). I told him to chill out, stop banging on the window and I'd make sure she was OK and he muttered a profanity to himself and started walking around in circles shaking his head.

Absolutely totally unsuited to customer facing duties in what can be a fast paced and tricky environment.

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Precisely. There was a professional way to deal with that situation, and this wasn't it.

Keep security guards for security. They should not be used for any other purpose, ever. This job should be being done by fully trained, permanently employed professional railway platform staff.

Bantamzen said:

Investment

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What investment? Arriva haven't paid for the new trains, Eversholt have.

"Small margins" are a great percentage return when you've not put any of your own money in.

Tetchytyke said:

What investment? Arriva haven't paid for the new trains, Eversholt have.

"Small margins" are a great percentage return when you've not put any of your own money in.

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You think that companies are given franchises for free?

When Arriva took over the franchise they had such high hopes and good intentions. A team of interim managers introduced new branding and uniforms and employees were exhorted to be 'Proud to be Northern '.

Alex Hynes was full of enthusiasm as he introduced all the goodies that were to come in presentations to user groups and internally. He soon left for Scotland. The short term interim managers moved on and reality has set in.

On Sunday mornings crews signing on to take trains out of Piccadilly find them in the state they were left on Saturday night. They're left with a decision, fault the train and effectively cancel that service (and probably the next on the diagam) or let it run with blocked toilets, litter and worse down the train. There aren't enough cleaners, or time, to check units between trips but it should be possible overnight.

(I note TPE have travelling litter collectors who patrol between Sheffield and Doncaster on South Pennine. They too have many faults as a TOC but at least they seem to be trying.)

'Proud to be Northern' seems to have taken a beating.

The new and refurbished trains are behind schedule, but are almost here. The timetable fiasco has had time to get smoothed over. The DOO issue has been kicked into the long grass. More Sunday services were promised in the franchise agreement so concentration on how they're to be operated has taken too long to reach the front burner. Overcrowding is a major challenge, most services with plenty of space but a critical number of sardine specials!

Is the bad PR unfair? On balance, no, but the media is shallow and leads politicians to make ill informed public statements based on anecdotal comments rather than facts. But when things go so badly wrong facts are hard to establish. Even rail professionals and enthusiasts have enough difficulty deciding what is and isn't true!

Djgr said:

So tell me which of these fundamentals do you disagree with?

a-The railway industry exists solely to serve its customers.
b-Without customers there is no railway.
c-For these reasons ultimately everything that the railway industry does should be focused on meeting the needs of the customers.
d-The railway industry is not doing customers a favour by transporting them.
e-Indeed, those who work in the railway industry should be grateful to their customers, for without them they would not be within the railway industry.

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I don't agree with E

Passengers use the train because they have to or want to travel, they're not using the train to keep the workers in a job. It works both ways; customer facing staff should do their best to help and be polite to their passengers, likewise the passengers should be polite and respectful to the customer facing staff, and listen/adhere to reasonable instructions. This kind of view assists some passengers in believing they can be rude or unpleasant to workers.

Bantamzen said:

You think that companies are given franchises for free?

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Yes, they are, there's no upfront fee.

The franchise bid costs aren't "investment".

Killingworth said:

Alex Hynes was full of enthusiasm as he introduced all the goodies that were to come in presentations to user groups and internally. He soon left for Scotland

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...where he's continued to overbluster but underdeliver - it is very much a specialism of his.

The present management may be worse, but that's not saying an awful lot.

Tetchytyke said:

Yes, they are, there's no upfront fee.

The franchise bid costs aren't "investment".

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Of course they are, companies don't bid for them for a laugh.

Bantamzen said:

Of course they are, companies don't bid for them for a laugh.

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No, they bid for them because it's a free ride on the gravy train.

Arriva's bid costs are not investment in the railway.

Tetchytyke said:

Yes, they are, there's no upfront fee.

The franchise bid costs aren't "investment".

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They have to lodge a performance bond don’t they?

But are all their refurbished trains complete? Let's not forget Northern promised a raft of promises including USB charging.at every seat.

Many of the refurbished sets don't have this, and Northern have admitted that they will be added at 'a later date'. So how can Northern claim nearly all their trains have now been refurbished, when further work still has to take place?

syorksdeano said:

But are all their refurbished trains complete? Let's not forget Northern promised a raft of promises including USB charging.at every seat.

Many of the refurbished sets don't have this, and Northern have admitted that they will be added at 'a later date'. So how can Northern claim nearly all their trains have now been refurbished, when further work still has to take place?

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Because they are happy to tell lies

Staff attitude on Northern also doesn't help. Real world example from tonight. Traveling from MCV to DWN and the first train was cancelled due to a train fault. There was zero information given to passengers by station staff and information screens. Everyone was understandingly a bit peeved by the situation and a couple of ladies were discussing the poor situation while waiting to use the toilet on the next train before it left MCV.

The guard heard this conversation and says he's sick of hearing people slagging off Northern, prevented the train from leaving MCV and called the travel safe officers to remove one of the ladies off the train.

To be one hundred percent clear there was no threatening behaviour, swearing or anything else of that nature. The guy just had the hump and tried to flex his muscles.

Travel safe told him to jog on but ultimately the train was delayed due to the actions of a train guard having the hump.

If the guy had just been professional the train would have left on time and the pax would have been slightly less annoyed than they ended up being due to an employee with a chip on his shoulder..

Tetchytyke said:

No, they bid for them because it's a free ride on the gravy train.

Arriva's bid costs are not investment in the railway.

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You really think its a gravy train? That might sound good in the headlines of a tabloid newspaper, but the reality is far different.

syorksdeano said:

But are all their refurbished trains complete? Let's not forget Northern promised a raft of promises including USB charging.at every seat.

Many of the refurbished sets don't have this, and Northern have admitted that they will be added at 'a later date'. So how can Northern claim nearly all their trains have now been refurbished, when further work still has to take place?

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SteveM70 said:

Because they are happy to tell lies

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If you have followed the Northern refurbishment thread closely, you will know that Northern have prioritised the necessary PRM modifications over WiFi / USB installations. I think getting their fleet up to a required accessibility legal standard far outweighs sticking in some USB sockets for passengers to bicker over. Once these essential mods are done, and all the new fleet rolled out I'm sure the rest of the enhancements will come along.

Bantamzen said:

If you have followed the Northern refurbishment thread closely, you will know that Northern have prioritised the necessary PRM modifications over WiFi / USB installations. I think getting their fleet up to a required accessibility legal standard far outweighs sticking in some USB sockets for passengers to bicker over. Once these essential mods are done, and all the new fleet rolled out I'm sure the rest of the enhancements will come along.

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I get what you are saying, but is that how the public are going to see it? Trains have been taken out of service and short formed for the refurbishment to take place, only to find that it's going to happen all again to add the bits that they have failed to do the first time.

Bantamzen said:

If you have followed the Northern refurbishment thread closely, you will know that Northern have prioritised the necessary PRM modifications over WiFi / USB installations. I think getting their fleet up to a required accessibility legal standard far outweighs sticking in some USB sockets for passengers to bicker over. Once these essential mods are done, and all the new fleet rolled out I'm sure the rest of the enhancements will come along.

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I didn’t make any comment about their reasons. I just pointed out that repeatedly they tell their passengers stuff that’s untrue.

Some of the time, like your example, it may well be that their intentions were in line with what they said, and circumstances then forced them to do something different. In these cases they tend to just go very quiet about their previous promises, and politely asking about them on social media normally results in getting blocked.

On other occasions it’s just telling lies, plain and simple. Such as a fortnight ago on the evening it flooded, their platform staff at Victoria were telling passengers for the Calder valley to travel to Rochdale for a replacement bus. On arrival at Rochdale there were no buses, and not had there been any for the whole of the previous five hours of disruption. And checking with someone i know who works for Northern, none had ever been booked either.

The vast majority of their customers - who won’t frequent this forum - are fed up to the back teeth of having promises made to them that aren’t met. I work in central Manchester and many of my colleagues use Northern to get to work and hand on heart (a) they are a popular topic of conversation and (b) nobody trusts a word they say anymore. It’s this that the likes of Burnham are tapping into.

SteveM70 said:

. It’s this that the likes of Burnham are tapping into.

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And this is where the bad PR issue stems from.

Management have gone to the press claiming that short term disruption will benefit everyone in the long term, yet the promises have resulted in nothing.

I have travelled on a few Northern trains on the North West Side, and if that's their refurbishment attempt then something is clearly wrong.

Yes the trains are brighter, but all that does is identify more faults and issues.

The old argument usually comes out that this would never happen in the south, and I'm afraid on this occasion I have to agree. If Northern had promised a refurbishment programme down south and moved the goalposts to only do half the refurbishment, then they would be uproar.

But as usual those in the North have to just put up and shut up.

syorksdeano said:

I get what you are saying, but is that how the public are going to see it? Trains have been taken out of service and short formed for the refurbishment to take place, only to find that it's going to happen all again to add the bits that they have failed to do the first time.

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How passengers see it is not the discussion, it is if the passenger perception is unfair. And frankly most of the public have no idea how long units are out for refurbishment, just that their services are short formed. But unless there is a whole fleet of DMUs lurking around somewhere, how else can you refurbish units other than taking them out of service?

SteveM70 said:

I didn’t make any comment about their reasons. I just pointed out that repeatedly they tell their passengers stuff that’s untrue.

Some of the time, like your example, it may well be that their intentions were in line with what they said, and circumstances then forced them to do something different. In these cases they tend to just go very quiet about their previous promises, and politely asking about them on social media normally results in getting blocked.

On other occasions it’s just telling lies, plain and simple. Such as a fortnight ago on the evening it flooded, their platform staff at Victoria were telling passengers for the Calder valley to travel to Rochdale for a replacement bus. On arrival at Rochdale there were no buses, and not had there been any for the whole of the previous five hours of disruption. And checking with someone i know who works for Northern, none had ever been booked either.

The vast majority of their customers - who won’t frequent this forum - are fed up to the back teeth of having promises made to them that aren’t met. I work in central Manchester and many of my colleagues use Northern to get to work and hand on heart (a) they are a popular topic of conversation and (b) nobody trusts a word they say anymore. It’s this that the likes of Burnham are tapping into.

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Most customers don't care one jot about most of the franchise commitments (keeping in mind that these can, and do change, they are not necessarily set in stone), just that they can get from A to B and back again. Which they have had serious problems with the North West, although not of the issues that have plagued your region in recent years are the fault of Northern, as has been discussed in many threads on these forums.

But the reality is this, the Northern franchise has been hamstrung for a very long time by successive governments unwilling to invest properly into it. So no matter which company won the franchise, they would have likely run into the same problems. Mr Burnham may gather some political gain from pointing the finger, but the truth is he and his predecessors are as much to blame for not putting the pressure on the real problem in Whitehall & Westminster.

carlwi said:

Staff attitude on Northern also doesn't help. Real world example from tonight. Traveling from MCV to DWN and the first train was cancelled due to a train fault. There was zero information given to passengers by station staff and information screens. Everyone was understandingly a bit peeved by the situation and a couple of ladies were discussing the poor situation while waiting to use the toilet on the next train before it left MCV.

The guard heard this conversation and says he's sick of hearing people slagging off Northern, prevented the train from leaving MCV and called the travel safe officers to remove one of the ladies off the train.

To be one hundred percent clear there was no threatening behaviour, swearing or anything else of that nature. The guy just had the hump and tried to flex his muscles.

Travel safe told him to jog on but ultimately the train was delayed due to the actions of a train guard having the hump.

If the guy had just been professional the train would have left on time and the pax would have been slightly less annoyed than they ended up being due to an employee with a chip on his shoulder..

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Good grief. That merits a disciplinary.

Departures from Greenbank today towards Chester, bearing in mind it’s a two-hourly service: 37 minutes late, 16 minutes late, cancelled. Considering Northern’s one job is to run trains, it’s pretty appalling.

Bantamzen said:

You really think its a gravy train?

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Yes. It's money for old rope.

Bantamzen said:

Most customers don't care one jot about most of the franchise commitments (keeping in mind that these can, and do change, they are not necessarily set in stone), just that they can get from A to B and back again.

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I disagree. If a franchisee comes in promising USB chargers and WiFi- neither of which are complex things to fit- and then doesn't deliver, people notice.

If the service is otherwise excellent then people won't notice so much, but when the service is as poor as it is, passengers do care and do see it as yet another broken promise.

Arriva have promised all sorts and have, so far, failed to deliver on any of them.

Bantamzen said:

But unless there is a whole fleet of DMUs lurking around somewhere, how else can you refurbish units other than taking them out of service?

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Taking them out of service makes sense. Short term pain and all that, although quite why Arriva have been handing 142s back whilst short on stock is beyond me.

But the refurbishment hasn't been done properly, so the trains are going to have to come out of service again. Or Arriva will just forget their promise and hope nobody notices, like they did with the Wi-Fi commitment on XC.

The story about the guard having people thrown off for calling Northern sounds absolutely ridiculous. I cannot actually believe it if it's true. Which train was this as I'd love to know who it was!

In regards to buses from Rochdale during the floods this was the official message passed to station staff. It's not a case of lying, it was York control who were supposed to arranging them. The fact they never turned up doesn't surprise me though.

Tetchytyke said:

Yes. It's money for old rope.

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Another old cliché....

Tetchytyke said:

I disagree. If a franchisee comes in promising USB chargers and WiFi- neither of which are complex things to fit- and then doesn't deliver, people notice.

If the service is otherwise excellent then people won't notice so much, but when the service is as poor as it is, passengers do care and do see it as yet another broken promise.

Arriva have promised all sorts and have, so far, failed to deliver on any of them.

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That last statement is not true, but anyway....

Passengers care about one thing more than any other, that is being able to get a train on time. That is the ultimate priority, and something Northern are not doing for a variety of reasons, some of theie making, others not. After that getting a seat is the next most important facet, with pretty much everything else being incidental. It may come as a surprise to you, but most people don't hang onto the exact wording of the franchise, even the bits about WiFi and USB power. New trains (now arriving), more capacity (starting to happen) and punctuality (not so good in the North West) yes, pops, bells & whistles like charging their phones during their 30 minute commute, not so much.

Personally speaking I couldn't give two hoots if the franchise commitments for WiFi & USB power are not fully met. The former was much more a politically driven one anyway, from a government that committed to high speed broadband for every major city yet can't even get high speed connectivity into it's own buildings (this message is coming to you via a 10Mbs wired connection in a large public sector hub building). So if the government can't even keep to it's own promises, I'm not holding out on them making franchise holders do so either. And frankly even if they did, train WiFi is often so flaky regardless of TOC as to render it all but useless for anything other than light browsing / push messaging.

As for USB power, frankly the thought of hundreds of peak time commuters squabbling over those precious blue LED lit sockets, well I'd rather not bother.....

Tetchytyke said:

Taking them out of service makes sense. Short term pain and all that, although quite why Arriva have been handing 142s back whilst short on stock is beyond me.

But the refurbishment hasn't been done properly, so the trains are going to have to come out of service again. Or Arriva will just forget their promise and hope nobody notices, like they did with the Wi-Fi commitment on XC.

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The subject of refurbishment is somewhat subjective to say the least. Frankly for the most part I think most of the units done are adequate, particularly the 333s. And generally speaking most people seem to be OK to meh about them, again its not as high up the priority list as punctuality & getting a seat. And many people don't even distinguish between refurbished units and new ones, I've heard people talk about "this new train" on a 150, 158 & 333 so far. Of course we all realise that RUK as a community are not as impressed, but then this community rarely agrees on anything cosmetic. But these forums are something of a walled garden, and don't necessarily always reflect the general opinion of the public.

Geeves said:

In regards to buses from Rochdale during the floods this was the official message passed to station staff. It's not a case of lying, it was York control who were supposed to arranging them. The fact they never turned up doesn't surprise me though.

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From memory, the railway closed about 1pm/2pm that day. I left Victoria at about 650pm. Are Northern really such a shambles that after all that time, during which thousands of passengers had gone up to Rochdale, nobody had corrected the official message?

Geeves said:

In regards to buses from Rochdale during the floods this was the official message passed to station staff. It's not a case of lying, it was York control who were supposed to arranging them. The fact they never turned up doesn't surprise me though.

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And there is a major problem. Why on earth is someone in York in charge of finding and co-ordinating last minute replacement buses in Rochdale?

notlob.divad said:

And there is a major problem. Why on earth is someone in York in charge of finding and co-ordinating last minute replacement buses in Rochdale?

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Why does it make any difference where they are physically located? One presumes they have access to Google and a telephone. It's not like they have to drive round and knock on the door!

Bletchleyite said:

Why does it make any difference where they are physically located? One presumes they have access to Google and a telephone. It's not like they have to drive round and knock on the door!

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Two reasons, firstly it is evidence of the over-centralisation of this kind of work and the loss of the command and control structures within an organisation. Whilst centralisation can reduce fragmentation, over-reliance on it as a source of money saving (as is clearly happening here) leads to poor overall perfomance. Workload increases for the centralised people, whilst communication to those on the ground is often the first brdge to fall.
Secondly, personal contacts. Arranging emergency transportation (rail replacement coaches, taxis etc) at short notice, will be heavily reliant on good will and relationships between the TOC and local transport providers. Being distributed gives the organisers more opportunities to build up these relationships with these businesses as well as the staff on the ground at the stations. Having Google and a phone is all well and good to make initial contact with someone, or even to arrange long term contracts for provision during blockades etc. However when it comes to short term emergency replacements, nothing beats having personal connections, having previously met the owner face to face and developing proper inter company relationships. A centralised manager in York, can not possibly know on a one-to-one level, all of the potential transport providers across the whole of the North of England, and all of the station staff in order to keep the flow of accurate information during times of disruption.
Basically in times of disruption the workload is too high and too remote from the point of need for it to be useful.

notlob.divad said:

Two reasons, firstly it is evidence of the over-centralisation of this kind of work and the loss of the command and control structures within an organisation. Whilst centralisation can reduce fragmentation, over-reliance on it as a source of money saving (as is clearly happening here) leads to poor overall perfomance.

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Worth noting that I'm not aware of any major differences in control arrangements between Arriva and Serco-Abellio so you'd need to levy the same complaint at the door of old Northern too...

Bantamzen said:

pops, bells & whistles like charging their phones during their 30 minute commute, not so much

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If passengers didn't care about Wi-Fi and USB charging, bus companies wouldn't install it on their buses and use it as a promotional item.

It's mad, Arriva can install this stuff on a 15yo ex-London bus to get more passengers, but suddenly on a train it is too difficult and nobody cares anyway.

ainsworth74 said:

you'd need to levy the same complaint at the door of old Northern too

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Serco drove the race to the bottom in the first place.

Bletchleyite said:

Why does it make any difference where they are physically located? One presumes they have access to Google and a telephone. It's not like they have to drive round and knock on the door!

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it makes absolutely no difference. What does make a difference is speedy decision making.

notlob.divad said:

. A centralised manager in York, can not possibly know on a one-to-one level, all of the potential transport providers across the whole of the North of England, and all of the station staff in order to keep the flow of accurate information during times of disruption.

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but what happens in the modern world is a central list of approved suppliers that will deliver the required support within the agreed timescale. That said local staff should have an agreed level of delegated authority to contact Daves taxis to get someone home in extremis.