Gripes online get trains back on track (From Watford Observer)

Gripes online get trains back on track

11:01am Monday 25th January 2010

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I pay an eye-watering amount of money every year for the privilege of nestling into someone’s armpit while attempting to remain upright.

This isn’t some faddish, hippy dippy new-age health regime or even a bizarrely intimate muscle-toning work out session down at the gym. No, it’s an accurate rendition of my daily experience as a commuter packed like a sardine onto trains travelling into London and out again.

Being smaller than the average well-nourished 12-year-old, I tend to spend the entirety of my 40-minute train journey crushed in the midst of a throng of fellow commuters, most of them male and most them about two feet taller than me.

I have to be really careful where I stand for fear of being asphyxiated in the folds of a gabardine raincoat, overcome by the powerful aroma emanating from an unwashed overhead armpit or facially assaulted by a belt buckle.

Often it’s like being stuck at the bottom of a well, only with less light and more noxious smells.

And it’s not just the general crush that’s depressing. With so many people crammed into a tiny fetid space, it’s hardly surprising that most peak-hour commuter trains are little more than giant Petri dishes where bacteria spreading a range of horrible ailments are guaranteed a more comfortable and successful ride than the passengers.

Standing at the bottom of my well, my heart sinks at the sound of a sneeze above, because I just know that a shower of germs is about to fall about my head and shoulders.

I can’t remember the last time I managed to read a newspaper on a train, seeing as there’s never been enough space around me to swing a pygmy shrew, let alone a cat.

I honestly think I’d stand a better chance of tagging the Loch Ness Monster than getting a seat on the train at either end of the working day. Apparently these do exist, but sightings of such rare beasts have passed into commuter myth.

If animals on their way to an abattoir were subjected to conditions like these I’m pretty sure the RSPCA would be able to bring a successful prosecution, but although we commuters might feel like truck loads of condemned cattle, we actually continue to pay for the experience.

And if this shameful overcrowding isn’t enough, passengers on my line have recently been forced to endure delays, cancellations and frustratingly truncated journeys.

For the last few months my train journey into London has reached the nadir of inefficiency and discomfort. Like thousands of others I have the misfortune to rely on First Capital Connect - a company that has so consistently failed to deliver anything approaching a reliable service that it is currently the subject of a Number 10 e-petition demanding that the Government should terminate its franchise.

Last time I looked, over 3,500 disgruntled passengers had signed up and the number was rising steadily by the day. Elsewhere on the net, disgusted FCC commuters have given free range to their exasperation in a number of creative websites and comment forums.

I have to admit that after a particularly bad journey on a First Cr*pital train (that’s what we commuters have been calling the company, by the way) it’s positively therapeutic to read other people’s comments about this abysmal service.

My favourite passenger response to this apparent meltdown is a spoof weekly newspaper, ‘The Evening Stranded’. When I mentioned this and other similar sites to a somewhat cynical friend he remarked that these were obviously the work of people with a lot of time on their hands.

And, of course, he’s quite right. When you are trapped on a train going nowhere for upwards of four hours every day you have an awful lot of time to start plotting your revenge.

Things have reached such a head recently that questions about this line have been asked in Parliament and even Transport Minister Lord Adonis has stuck his head above the parapet.

To me it seems fairly obvious that FCC regarded its passengers as little more than cash cows from the day it took over the line.

I was interested to read in last week’s Watford Observer that MP Claire Ward has called on rail company London Midland to reverse its recently announced decision to increase and restrict off-peak rail fares between Watford Junction and London Euston.

All I can say to London Midland passengers is welcome to the club, mateys - because that was one of the first things FCC did when they took over the old Thameslink franchise about three years ago and despite massive opposition nothing has changed.

Or perhaps it has. In recent months the disgraceful service offered to FCC passengers has united and galvanised us. The many websites and forums devoted to this company are not only a place where people can let off steam, but I suspect that they have also brought pressure to bear in high places.

I have to admit that I’ve always treated the internet with a fair amount of caution, but in the case of passengers using FCC trains I hope it might just have played an important role in getting this dire service back on the right track.

*****

Reading last week’s story on the ’beast of Bedmond’ reminded me of my own sighting of something strange from the window of a hurtling FCC train a couple of years ago. If it wasn’t astonishing enough to be actually sitting by a window in a moving FCC train, the gods obviously decided to stretch my credibility to the outer limits by planting something in view that looked like a very large puma or very small lion in a field beside the track.

My sighting was confirmed by the man sitting opposite, who did a double take and asked me if I’d seen the animal, too.

When I wrote about the ‘beast of Hertsmere’ in this very column, I was given short shrift by the writer of the Watford Observer’s weekly diary who reckoned it was the stuff of fantasy.

Well, it’s interesting to see the stuff of fantasy making front page news and to read that the police refused to provide copies of “the large paw print photos” to the Watford Observer on the basis that they “did not want to cause hysteria”.

In that case, all I can say is that those paw prints must be pretty large, pretty scary and pretty…er…real?