Good grief. Are they still not going back to normal working. Nothing like keeping a good time going is there? They'll be tears when redundancies come along, and come along they will.
There's a word I'd like to use in response to this, but it will probably get me banned. So instead I'll stick with "nonsense".
Does that include the Heart of Wales line? Last time I was there (late 2019) no stations (except possibly Llandrindod) had ticket machines or offices, and there's no phone or data signal at most either.
When I stay in the area I use the trains regularly for short trips and have always bought on board. If I'm on a day walking trip I may well not know in advance which station I'll be coming back from. I'm going back there in a few weeks time, if this policy is still in place I can't see how I'll be able to pay for my journeys.
Llandrindod has an agency run ticket office (or at least it did 2 years ago, I've got worked that line since then). The vast majority of passengers at the North end are traveling to Shrewsbury which has barriers
All TOC's are effectively nationalised, and yes, they seem very good at spending taxpayers money on unnecessary restrictions. Probably why the rest of the UK has rejected a Labour government. But lets not go into politics, it's not what the thread is about.
The fact of the matter is every TOC has been working normally for months. So why is Wales different? Is there some kind of viral strain waiting to pounce from the depths of the valleys, or is it that it is in someones vested interest to keep this going. The fact is most of us are getting rather tired of this hiding away and pretending there's a legitimate excuse for not doing the job. It is at the end of the day us who are paying for it.
Unlike every other TOC, TfW follow the Welsh rules on Covid rather than the English, which in general have been more strict from day one. It might sound silly, but there you are.
I suppose they have a lot more request stops than most. At my TOC all request have become booked stops since this whole malarkey began.
That is indeed part of the issue! It's not so bad on the Crewe - Shrewsbury local where with only 3 request stops and lots of padding most services are stopping at all stops anyway, but all stops on the Heart of Wales or Cambrian Coast is at best tedious and at worst delay inducing.
As I mentioned above, comission from onboard sales is pretty low these days. Not because of stinginess on the part of TfW (unlike at some TOCs, guards earn a set percentage on every ticket they sell) but because there just really aren't that many people buying on board. The vast majority of journeys are to barriered stations, and more and more people buy tickets through apps or other online sources. TfW have also stepped up revenue checks at non barriered stations, including at the likes of Grangetown and Cardiff Bay.
Yes there's going to be a loss compared to under normal times with certain journeys between unbarriered stations, especially when you consider that under normal circumstances TfW conductors are some of the most diligent in the industry when it comes to revenue protection, but I think that loss might be getting overblown just a wee bit.