Friday afternoon: train from London to home, journey should take about 3 hours. A fire by the track meant that the train was delayed by 1.5 hours - OK, that's understandable. What wasn't so understandable was that, a good hundred miles on from the fire site, the train was put out of commission so everyone needing to get further had to wait another 1.5 hours on a station platform for a very short, very crowded train to be made available for the last section of the journey. There were no announcements about this, no explanations. Everyone just expected to stand there sucking it up. South West Railways.
Saturday morning: dd had booked return coaches from Bristol to Birmingham, then Birmingham to Edinburgh back in June. She arrived in Birmingham to be told that the Edinburgh service had been discontinued, along with both return trips, and she would have to call the helpline for advice. Forty five minutes of hanging on the phone later while her battery ran down she was booked on to a coach to Glasgow but there was no offer to get her from there to Edinburgh. Return journey has been rebooked Edinburgh to London with no offer to get her back to Bristol. National Express.
What on earth is going on with public transport in this country? 'Delay Repay' is not adequate to compensate for the disruption and upset these situations cause. Why do we just put up with it? Is anybody running a good public transport service and what are they doing differently?
(sorry, I have to go out now so I'm not posting and running but really interested to hear views on this - I will be back)