It’s frustrating that Stagecoach was basically banned from running for franchises when they were probably the best private operator ever on the UK rail network. South West Trains, East Midlands Trains, Virgin Trains (maybe not the east coast franchise) all were very successful and it seems extremely short sighted by the DFT to ban Stagecoach over a pension dispute.
SWT were far from perfect. They started by letting too many drivers go, and then wondering why they had to cancel so many trains. There were also some strikes in the early days.
Their new (2004) timetable promised much that it didn't deliver: far from an increase in services on our line the peak hour service was cut from six trains per hour to four, and because of the poor timing of the Kingston Loop services Strawberry Hill now sees two trains to London every half hour - two minutes apart, and the extra Shepperton services in the evening peak are similarly useless as they leave Waterloo just one minute after the regular services.
Their remodelling of our local station was predicated on everyone passing through the booking hall, making the journey longer for the majority of passengers, who have no need to buy a ticket as they use Oyster, contactless, season tickets or the return half of a return ticket, or because they are leaving the station having arrived by train. The coffee shop which replaced the original main entrance had to close its street entrance because the "desire line" for most intending passengers still went through it. They did install a lift, after my complaints about manhandling my children's buggies up and down the stairs (and the staff's refusal to help). I did, however, have to point out that it had taken so long that the child in question had recently passed his driving test.
The remodelling of the 455s was not popular in our area, as the reduction in seating capacity meant we now had to stand for the 30 minute journey to Waterloo, (in breach of PIXC standards). They claimed that in the old layout "the middle seats were the last to be filled" - maybe, but they were filled.
But, most egregiously, was their policies on fares. They dragged their feet on all aspects of Oyster, inisting on passengers buying "extension permits" if they intended to travel out of the zones of their Travelcard, even though the system would automatically add the fare when they got to the other end.
They also seemed to think it an outrageous suggestion that station staff should be able to advise about local buses when, as so often, we got chucked off the trains and expected to fend for ourselves. The CEO with whom I was speaking remarked "Why should we advise on our "competitors'" services?" - very revealing that he saw them in that light, rather than as complementary to their service, or indeed a fallback.
And they refused to countenance any adjustment to resolve zoning anomalies, mendaciously claiming it was out of their hands as it was a TfL matter - although TfL have responded positively to approaches from other operators to rezone stations. SWT claimed it would have to get the agreement of "the other operators", despite the fact that at the stations in question they were the only one - they suggested bus zones would have to be modified, apparently ignorant of the fact that bus zones were abolished when Oyster was introduced in 2003 - or that the boats were competition (the first boat from Hampton Court does not arrive at Westminster until after the last one back has left, and there is no service at all until Good Friday. And of course the argument that they would "have to" increase fares somewhere else, if they reduced them for us.
No names no pack drill, but at my observation that the latest fare increase, ratrher than being used to improve (or even maintain) services, was instead being shovelled into shareholder dividends, another CEO said he regarded 2% not, as I had thought, a reward for competence but as an entitlement.
And the fact that some of the revenues from my Season Tickets were being used to fund the homophobic campaigns of Stagecoach's Chairman (specifically his opposition to the repeal of "Clause 28") stuck in the gullet too.
So yes - SWR were not paragons - and I was initially glad to see the back of them. The moral being "Be careful what you wish for"
This is, broadly, what happened with the East Coast franchise as well when Stagecoach won it.
DOHL won no friends in my circle when they took over East Coast the first time, and immediately allowed themselves to scrap some of the services that would, supposedly have made the franchise uneconomic for National Express - but weren't allowed to scrap themselves. In particular, the restoration of direct trains between London and Lincoln was put back by 11 years, but in the meantime the ECML timetable was otherwise set in stone, so connections at Newark were poor - in particular because the trains which should have gone to Lincoln sat in platform 3 at Newark until it was time to return to London - meaning any connecting services to and from Lincoln could not use that platform at the same time - so no train from Lincoln could have arrived until after the London train had left, and vice versa. And as these trains were HSTs, they were perfectly capable of going to Lincoln.
And EC never honoured connections at Newark anyway - I have experienced a dispatcher waving a London-bound train away even as a full-and-standing 153 was disgorging its contents on the opposite platform. "We have to keep to the timetable" doesn't wash when over 70 people have been denied what the timetable promised.
The alleged savings of £9m per annum were allegedly necessary to prevent EC running at a loss. It made a profit of £200m in its first year.
The direct services woulod have been very useful for my teenage children to visit their grandfather and vice versa. Sadly, the services were not restored until it was six months too late.
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