Penalty Fare Appeal Support

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A further brief has been issued in regards to the anticpated plan for Tuesdays services, it also contains an updated service plan for Tuesday.

Tonight 6th September 2010:

• Jubilee and Northern lines: will operate as normal until 22:00 with services winding down and stopping at 23:00
• Piccadilly line: will operate as normal until 21:30 with services winding down and stopping at 22:30
• Bakerloo: from 17:00, will only operate on the Queens Park to Elephant & Castle section, with service set to stop at 23:00
• Central: services will start to wind down from 17:00 and will stop at 23:00
• District: a greatly reduced level of service will run in the evening peak
• Hammersmith & City/Circle: services will start to wind down during the afternoon, becoming sparse after 17:00 with all service stopping at 23:00
• Victoria: normal service until 21:30; then only operating between Seven Sisters and Victoria.

Tomorrow 7th September 2010:

• Bakerloo: a reduced service will operate between Queens Park – Elephant & Castle ONLY
• Central: a greatly reduced service (train every 15 minutes) will operate at the western and eastern ends of the line. There will be NO SERVICE on the central section between Leytonstone and White City.
• District: a greatly reduced service between Barking – Wimbledon. No Ealing Broadway service.
• Hammersmith & City/Circle: a greatly reduced service, starting 30 minutes later than usual, prioritising serving stations between Hammersmith and Edgware Road but hoping to run services on the rest of the line as well.
• Jubilee: a reduced service operating over the whole line.
• Metropolitan: a very reduced service. Watford branch closed. Services running from Amersham/Uxbridge to Baker Street.
• Northern: a greatly reduced service operating over the whole line.
• Piccadilly: very limited services only between Heathrow to Hammersmith and between Arnos Grove and Cockfosters. NO SERVICE on central section.
• Victoria: a greatly reduced service between Seven Sisters & Victoria only.
• Waterloo & City: NO SERVICE

Following a further internal conference with Train Operators and London Underground a new revised service plan has been released. This information has been taken from an internal brief sent from First Capital Connect.
The full brief can be read on our strike update page.

This service plan is as follows.

London Underground currently anticipate being able to run the following levels of service:

• Northern line: 70% service
• Jubilee line: 50% service
• Bakerloo line: 50% service
• Metropolitan line: 40% service
• Hammersmith & City line: 30% service
• Circle line: 30% service
• District line: 25% service
• Victoria line: 25%

London Underground intends to prioritise running Tube trains to stations which have an interchange with First Capital Connect services.

We are having a planning discussion with London Underground on Monday and will advise of any updates following this meeting.

Latest information will be posted on this blog and on this specially set up page as and when we get it.

Please note that as with all strike plans, this information could change at very short notice, and has already changed several times, or even a completely new plan could be implemented without further notice. Check the TfL website before you travel.

Updated: With statement from East Coast.

East Coast, The Government owned train operator, is currently in the process of re-branding all of its trains, yet again.

East Coast was taken over by the Government because National Express refused to put any more money into the franchise and as such became in default.

Shortly after having been taken over by Directly Operated Railways (the Government holding company), East Coast went on a massive re-branding exercise, which according to a publicly accessible Freedom of Information request cost £156,229. This resulted in the following branding on the side of trains.

Now yet again it seems that East Coast (who claim its your East Coast, (where have we heard that before!)), want to waste even more of your public money and repaint the trains.

The new livery, which has already been dubbed “silver-link” by East Coast managers, has been received with mixed reaction from members of the various railway forums and newsgroups. Some have said it is basic because the taxpayer has funded it and as such must be cost effective. Someone else stated its basic so that the new operator can apply new livery easily.

The general public don’t really care what colour the train is. All they care about is, if the train will get them to their destination in a clean train, safely and on time.

When we asked East Coast about the new livery they replied with the following statement:

“The Mark IV carriages in East Coast’s fleet are being repainted in a new all-over silver base livery as part of the routine OH2 overhaul process. East Coast branding will be applied to this base livery before the set re-enters traffic.

“The Class 91s, which, with the Mark IVs form our electric fleet, will be repainted in the all-over silver base livery as part of their separate routine maintenance exam programme, starting later this year. There are no plans to make any changes to the HST fleet livery.”

East Coast have sent us the following image by Email and given us permission to use it.

Updated: 23:45 with statement from South West Trains.

The Transport and Salaried Staffs Association union is claiming that a memo is stating that South West Trains (SWT) employees will effectively be banned from volunteering for London 2012.

The TSSA said SWT told its 5,000 employees that requests to volunteer for London 2012 will not be considered before January 2012 at the earliest, by which time the 70,000 vacancies will have been taken.

The union said all 70,000 volunteer vacancies were expected to be snapped up by this autumn at the latest, leaving staff at the rail firm “high and dry”.

TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty accused SWT, which is owned by transport giant Stagecoach, of preventing its staff enjoying a ringside seat at the London Olympics.

The TSSA said it had obtained a memo to all heads of department at SWT from Steve Bunce, head of employee relations, urging them to “stall” on all leave requests for the next 18 months because the company might want to run extra trains into London Waterloo during the games.

The TSSA said even staff who try to book annual leave to volunteer will be blocked because holiday requests for 2012 will only be considered in 2012 when all the volunteer vacancies will be long gone.

A spokesperson for South West Trains said:  “The union’s suggestion that we are preventing employees from playing a part in the London 2012 Olympics is ludicrous. Major train operators, including South West Trains, will have a vital role in transporting people to and from the Games. Many events are being held on our network, such as the sailing at Weymouth, and we may be required to run additional trains to help meet demand during the Olympics.

“Our drivers, guards, station staff and back office employees will all have a crucial part to play in delivering transport for the Olympic Games. It is plain common sense that we ensure we are in a position to have the right resources in place to make the operation run smoothly. Like many other organisations, once the detailed requirements for the Games are finalised, we will then be in a position to look at requests from individuals who wish to volunteer on top of the core role they will play in delivering transport for the Games.”

(Photograph: Dan Chung/Reuters)

The Coroners inquest into the Potters Bar train crash concluded today with the Coroner, Judge Michael Findlay Baker QC, raising fears that more passengers death could happen.

Today, after the jury concluded there were failures of inspection and/or maintenance of the points in the period before the crash, the coroner said he would file a report warning of continued risk of other deaths on the rail network .

The coroner also criticised the ‘indefensible’ len

Seven people were killed, Austen Kark, Emma Knights, Jonael Schickler, Alexander Ogunwusi, Chia Hsin Lin, Chia Chin Wu, Agnes Quinlivan, was hit by debris while walking nearby.

gth of time families of the victims had had to wait for an inquest to be held. “Whatever the causes, the passage of over eight years from the derailment to the conclusion of the hearing of the inquest is indefensible.”

Both the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have stated that they will be looking to see if any evidence came out of the inquest in order to look at criminal prosecutions.

Full transcripts can be found at http://pottersbarinquest.independent.gov.uk/

Penalty Fare Appeal Support – Advance notice of FCC Rail Offer.
First Capital Connect have decided to try and get more passengers travelling on their filthy grubby trains by bribing passengers with lower fares during the summer holidays.

During the school holidays (which FCC deems to be from 14th August – 5th September 2010), the current Super Off Peak weekend tickets will be extended to be valid in the week.
The offer will be available in the same areas as the weekend Super Off-Peak offer – the outer stations for journeys to London and for journeys from London to Brighton.

The catches that normal weekday restrictions will apply, such as you cant travel on trains arriving London before 10am or leaving London between 16:30 and 19:01.

During the same period, we are also offering customers the opportunity to travel to Brighton from ALL Thameslink and Great Northern route FCC-served stations North of London for 20% less than the normal Off-Peak Day Return fare (CDR). Again, this offer is only valid for travel on FCC services only.

Official customer notification will be made via local press, online advertising, posters at stations and email marketing from the 9th August, so you heard it here first!

We have been contacted by another site requesting publicly. We at PFAS are always happy to help fellow sites, that share the same beliefs as us, in getting extra traffic to their relevent websites.

The site in question, www.faresmanual.co.uk, has a lot of great resources which are available to anyone to download.

The site owners have also told us by e-mail that they are planning to do a lot more with the site in the future months ahead.

NFM06

BBC to film on the Kings Lynn to Ely mainline.

The Kings Lynn to Ely train line is to be shown in the new 2nd series of the popular BBC Two series, Great British Railway Journeys. This historic line serves stations from Kings Lynn to Ely and Cambridge. Downham Market and Ely will feature prominently in this episode.

We have been informed that the BBC will be filming on the following dates, and the presenter Michael Portillo will be in attendance on the July listed date below.
21st June and 16th July:
13:48 Train departs Ely and arrives 14:04 at Downham Market.

22nd June  and 17th July:
09.10 Train departs Downham Market 09.25 at Train arrives Kings Lynn.

23rd June and 18th July:
08.59 Train departs Kings Lynn 09.29 at Train arrives Ely.

In what can only be described as heaven for most Thameslink commuters, Connex has been reported as expressing an interest in taking over the Capital Connect franchise, reports are saying.

Connex has approached the newly formed Department of Cockups, Railways and Passengers (DCRaP)

A spokesperson for Connex told us “If First can get away with the delays, driver shortages, lack of information, ignoring customers and major screw ups that they currently are getting away with, then we thought we might as well have a go as well.”
When asked about Connex South Eastern and Connex South Central the spokesman replied “We weren’t as bad then as First is now, yet we were stripped of our franchise, and First gets away with it! Hardly fair you think? We at Connex think the reason First are allowed to get away with it, is because a lot of back handers are being given to various people!”
“We will pretend to listen, will come up with some slogan that we think the passengers will want to hear. We will tell the drivers to work or else they will find themselves out of work and we will replace them with our European drivers.”
“We will actually run to a timetable, it may not be one that you’ll like but at least our trains will not be late.”
“We will pretend to claim that we are investing in whatever is the best thing at the time, but actually we wont.”

PFAS thinks that if Connex is allowed to take over the running of the Capital Connect franchise it wont do any further harm to an already poorly run franchise.

The new National Railway Passenger Survey was released today and makes interesting reading.
Overall most passengers are getting more satisfied with their rail journey. 83% of the 31,000 rail users questioned were happy with their rail journey this is a 2% rise since spring 2009.

The worst train company in the UK ‘award’ went to London overground with an Overall satisfaction of 72%.
First Capital Connect had the second worst satisfaction of 76%. Every other train company bar London Overground scored better. The average score for London Train Companies was 82%.

First Capital Connect performed worse in 19 categories.
Ticket buying facilities, Provision of information about train times/platforms, The upkeep/repair of the station buildings/platforms, Cleanliness, The facilities and services, Overall environment, The availability of staff, How request to station staff was handled, The frequency of the trains on that route, Punctuality/reliability (i.e. the train arriving/departing on time), Connections with other train services, Sufficient room for all passengers to sit/stand, The comfort of the seating area, The ease of being able to get on and off, Your personal security whilst on board, The cleanliness of the inside, The cleanliness of the outside, The availability of staff and How well train company deals with delays.
The worst category, which they lost 7 percent was, How well train company deals with delays.

FCC’s Customer Service Director Michelle Smart, has already released an internal misleading document, which says that they have only performed worse in 17 categories and then goes on to explain how they think that by giving select staff new blackberry phones, improving their website and improving their own internal website, it will help improve their figures next time. Truth is it wont, as passengers are getting sick and tired of FCC.

We have asked FCC to comment, but based on their past history of ignoring us, we don’t expect any response soon.