 President: The Rt Hon Lord Jones P.C.  Appendix 4: Reflecting the Passenger Experience
What follows are a couple of essays by our Chairman which will soon be added to a special section on our website devoted to accounts by our members of their experiences on The Borderlands Line and beyond.
Malcolm Wright
Appendix 4a: More of the Chairman's Experiences - Part One.
An Account of Engineering Arrangements at Bidston For the above date, Merseyrail advertised that trains on their Wirral line service were to be replaced by buses between Birkenhead North and West Kirby; in fact the engineering information at the entrances to stations is generally excellent these days, but only about Merseyrail services. Unfortunately, it can be very easy for passengers to miss these notices if they are not actually using the station entrances: for example, at Bidston station where passengers have to change from the electric trains on to Wrexham diesels and vice-versa. None of the notices or advertisements placed by Merseyrail or Merseytravel mentioned any consequences for Borderlands Line passengers, despite the Sunday service to and from Wrexham being newly supported by Merseytravel with connections at Bidston optimised for all Merseyside destinations. It is also true to say that many Sunday passengers would not have used any trains during the week and that those who lived in North Wales are highly unlikely to have seen the weekly Merseytravel advertisements in the Wirral News Group of local papers. No notices about the bus replacement from Bidston station were to be seen down the Borderlands Line on the day itself. The booking clerk at Wrexham General was to be found explaining very patiently to the passengers heading for Liverpool (mostly foreign visitors) just how they should get there - but she had been left totally oblivious to the fact that her information was incomplete... ...until the interfering chairman of the Wrexham - Birkenhead Rail Users' Association stepped in, that is. It is such a shame that those at the sharp end, who "interface" with the public, are so let down by their middle management. The clerk at Wrexham was clearly very anxious to please and she appeared very grateful for the information that I had given her. I had already told the first passengers who arrived at Bidston in the morning that they needed to get a bus from beyond the footbridge, having driven down to the station to check that the Borderlands trains could actually get into it. (See the next account for why.) The conductor-guard on the diesel willingly agreed that he would have told them about the bus himself if he had been kept informed and promised to do so subsequently. What I could not bring myself to tell anyone was that while the Wrexham trains were due to arrive at 11 or 41 minutes past the hour (every 2½ hours), the half-hourly buses to Birkenhead North were timed to leave at 10 and 40. I just hoped that a lack of punctuality would make them lucky and, indeed, some were. In the opposite direction, the replacement buses were timed to arrive two minutes after the departure of the train to Wrexham. The telephone enquiry bureaux and the internet journey planner were telling passengers to catch a Merseyrail train half an hour earlier than usual - but anybody travelling from the Liverpool direction who had relied on the accuracy of the timetable booklets was going to be in for a wait of two hours and twenty-eight minutes. At Bidston station, the rather noisy diesel unit tended to drown out the booking clerks' only announcements as it pulled out of the platform towards the siding. With each arrival from Wrexham some people, usually foreigners or i-podded teenagers, were to be found waiting for the non-existent train to Liverpool. Some missed the bus as a consequence. Did I say "non-existent train"? In fact, although the passengers from Liverpool were being turfed off at Birkenhead North, the electric trains were coming through to Bidston to turn around. The engineering work was all west of Bidston. I could NOT believe it when I saw the first EMU arrive. The passengers who had missed the bus did not understand what was going on at all. Was it really not possible in these circumstances to get the electric and diesel trains to meet up with each other complete with passengers? The diesel was already in the siding each time an electric train arrived. Admittedly the Merseyrail units would have needed to shunt somewhere too before their respective departures 26 minutes after arrival. But let's face it, they did have 26 minutes in which to do so... As it happened, all-but-two of the passengers from Liverpool for the four Arriva diesels that I monitored had arrived on the previous buses. Maybe they had phoned for times and, let's face it, those who had encountered problems going towards Birkenhead and beyond were not going to take any chances on the journey home. As for the two exceptions, one lady was only going to Upton and took my advice to get the 118/119 bus there from Bidston Village. The other - from Iraqi Kurdistan - opted to take a taxi to Shotton for £22 rather than wait for well over two hours. If it really was impossible to carry passengers to and from Birkenhead North by train then a dedicated bus should have been provided for Borderlands Line passengers with the southbound train journeys from Bidston delayed by a couple of minutes. Even better, could somebody have arranged for the Wrexham trains to use their 16 minutes of turnaround time to run through (with a Merseyrail pilot) to Birkenhead North just three minutes away? There is a spare platform there and when the line to Hamilton Square was closed for weeks last August I saw many a procedure from eastbound to westbound platform also completed in three minutes via the crossover just outside the station in the Liverpool direction. In one case the train managed to beat some of its own disembarked passengers who were still making their way over the footbridge. Although my instinct as the WBRUA's former long-serving PRO has left me aching to promote the new Sunday service on the Borderlands Line, my personal experience of it so far has left me very glad that we chose not to publicise it until the passenger experience improves. As for the 29th of January, there were several ways to improve the traveller's lot with just a modicum of concern which sadly failed to materialise.
Appendix 4b: More of the Chairman's Experiences - Part Two. Not my responsibility...
by Malcolm Wright Sunday, 12th June 2005: On my way to monitor the patronage of the new Borderlands Line Sunday morning service which was to start that day, I saw on the engineering work notice at my local Merseyrail station that the line from Birkenhead North to West Kirby would be closed until 1230 on the following Sunday. However, no mention was made of the Wrexham - Bidston service, despite its northern terminus being on the affected stretch of track. I groaned. When the same section had been closed the previous year, I had found myself stuck for well over an hour on a train north of Upton because Arriva Trains Wales had not been told that the 0901 train from Wrexham - then running only in high summer - would be unable to get into Bidston station. Not long before, the WBRUA had spent £500 on a press advert for three day-tours which all used specific connections from this very train's next journey in the opposite direction. I mentioned all this to the ticket clerk at Birkenhead North. As usual I got the reply that the Wrexham line was "another company" and nothing to do with them. As always, I retorted that it may not be "your company", but it IS "your business"... ... and as usual, THAT particular seed fell on stony ground. On the Wrexham train as I was about to alight at Heswall, I told the guard that the train might have problems the following week and he volunteered to try to notify someone about it. Wednesday 15th June: The weekly Merseytravel advertisement in the Wirral News group of papers also failed to mention the Borderlands Line to Wrexham in the information regarding the Sunday morning closure west of Birkenhead North. Thursday 16th June: E-mail sent to Arriva's North Wales boss:
From: WBRUA@aol.com Hello Ben, Last year when monitoring the effect of our advertising, I found myself stuck on a train between Upton and Bidston for over an hour because the engineers' possession of the line from Birkenhead North to West Kirby included the westbound platform at Bidston - and nobody seemed to have told your people. This coming Sunday, the same stretch is closed once again until 1230 and like last year, the internet journey planner is showing our 1001 train departing from Bidston as normal, with bus connections from Birkenhead North reaching Bidston at 0928 and 0958. Is Bidston really exempted from the engineers' possession this time? If not, what are the arrangements for that train? Regards Malcolm
Malcolm Wright, Chairman * * * * * * * * * E-mail sent to Merseytravel regarding their advertisement:
From: WBRUA@aol.com Hello Rob/Iain: What is happening at Bidston on Sunday morning? Last year I was stuck on a Borderlands train for over an hour between Upton and Bidston when it turned out Sandhills control wasn't expecting us: Bidston had not been exempted from the engineers' possession of this stretch.
Malcolm Wright, Chairman WBRUA Website: www.wbrua.net * * * * * * * * * It should be stated that Merseytravel's publicity department do work very hard to get information out of Arriva Trains Wales, but there were no replies to either e-mail that day or the next morning. So... Friday June 17th: At approximately 3.30pm, I telephoned the Liverpool Traveline service whose information turned out to be the same as that of National Rail on the internet: the Wrexham train would leave at 1001 as normal. I was given Merseyrail’s phone number and on explaining the situation again, I was put directly through to Network Rail’s Sandhills Control. Someone apparently quite junior answered the phone and was soon out of his depth. At first he relayed my questions to his manager, but soon handed me over to talk to him directly. The latter told me that he had already started checking the situation on another phone and that he would contact the planners of Network Rail engineering in Leeds. I also asked him who I could contact over the weekend to find out what alternative arrangements had been made. Shortly afterwards he phoned me back to say "you’re absolutely right, they had completely overlooked the Wrexham line." He had also phoned what he called Arriva "Control". THEY said that they would refuse to talk to "the public" - that is, ME - so instead he gave me a number for Arriva’s "Customer Services" in Cardiff. You will see the reason for all the quotation marks later. I assumed at that point that Network Rail in Leeds would contact Arriva to inform them of the engineer’s possession, over part of the weekend, of Bidston Station. However... Saturday 18th June: At about 3.45pm I phoned Arriva "Customer Services" in Cardiff, but they knew nothing about the next morning’s situation at Bidston and said they would inform "Control". I asked them to call me back when they had done so. In fact when they did return my call, it was only to tell me that they had checked with the ticket clerk at Wrexham General who had told them that the train was running as normal. "But he wouldn't know!!" I retorted with all the politeness I could muster, which, I regret to relate, was not very much. The person I was speaking to was about to go off duty but left details with his colleagues. When I phoned them shortly before 8pm. an embarrassed "Customer Services" man had to tell me that "Control" had absolutely refused to do anything. "They do not take information from third parties," he said, and would do nothing until Network Rail contacted them - even though the information from this third party was that "Network Rail" had FORGOTTEN to contact them. The quotes in this case are because Network Rail at Sandhills HAD phoned them the day before... ...and had apparently been ignored. The "Customer Services" man then gave me a couple of Network Rail’s phone numbers and told me I should get them to phone Arriva "Control". I mean, really!! Can you credit it? Left with little choice, I did as he had instructed. At Network Rail's head office, I finally got through to someone who really seemed to want to take action. She was quite astonished by the attitude of Arriva "Control" and when she phoned me back having confirmed their oversight, promised to make sure that Arriva "Control" were notified of it. "I want to thank you for your persistence in getting this sorted out, Mr Wright," she said. Sunday 19th June: At about 9 a.m I phoned Merseytravel Information (Traveline) to see what they knew about the 1001 from Bidston. As far as they knew they it was still running. I told him that Network Rail had told me that it would not be doing so. After failing to get an answer from National Rail’s enquiry line - other than a recorded message that ensured our phone bill would rise as I hung on - I phoned the ticket clerk at Bidston Station. What information did he have? Nobody had told him anything and he would check with the Dee Marsh signal box. I called Merseytravel back and luckily got through to the same person, who had checked with Arriva "Control" to find that the journeys in question had been cancelled north of Shotton and that a replacement bus service had been arranged. Arriva "Control", however, did not know the times of the buses because they had not arranged them. Neither had they offered any way of finding out. National Rail’s live information on the internet was now showing that the 0901 from Wrexham to Bidston had been cancelled beyond Shotton. I phoned Bidston Station again to tell the clerk what I knew, before driving first to Birkenhead North and then Bidston to monitor the situation. Nobody at North Station knew that the Wrexham train was cancelled or of any replacement buses other than the one to West Kirby. There were no takers for stations to Wrexham, but that was no surprise because National Rail’s information had been that the bus half an hour earlier was the official connection. At Bidston, to my great surprise the 1001 to Wrexham was purring contentedly to itself in the south platform with passengers already aboard. "They only told me it was coming five minutes before it arrived" said the clerk About eight people - mostly with heavy luggage - had got off the train and were waiting over the footbridge for the replacement bus for Birkenhead North to arrive from West Kirby. (They would, anyway, have had to wait for about twenty minutes for a Merseyrail train if it had been operating, so bad are the normal evening and Sunday connections.)* Arriva had evidently got permission for the train to enter the prohibited stretch, something which had taken about an hour and a quarter of delay to achieve last year. It had taken a lot of effort and initiative (at least on my part) to avoid another fiasco as far as the blissfully unaware passengers were concerned. But why was it someone from the WBRUA, the official "bunch of amateurs", who had to get things done? * Note: In 2006, Sunday connections at Bidston are superb in all directions |