Let me pick on Irish Rail again, masters of spin, who would put new labour and chemical Alli out of a job. One of their classics is "This service is delayed due to the late arrival of the incoming service."
So let us put it to the test. You will find discretely placed arrivals screens around Heuston Station, so when this mornings 0730 to Galway was missing in action at 0730, I went to see which incoming service we might be getting.
It's a bit blurry, because I am not fully used to using the camera on my smartphone, but, as you can see, all the expected arrivals are "on time."
This was taken at 07:34, and the train we eventually got, didn't arrive for a further 5 minutes or so.
Eventually, I saw some lights in the distance, predicted a platform and sneaked through the barriers. A train did arrive, and was promptly announced as the 06:20 from Portlaoise, and, guess what? It had a planned arrival time of 07:30! And, what's more, Irish Rail don't consider a train late, by their own charter, until it is 10 minutes late, so where is that excuse now?
Now, planning to use a train scheduled for an 07:30 arrival for an 07:30 departure is a type of folly which is probably even beyond Michael O'Leary of Ryanair's imagination.
To make matters worse, when Irish Rail did eventually leave at 07:58 (not the 10 minutes late mentioned on the departures board) the onboard information systems were set up for a Galway only train, and people who had booked seats for Galway found their bookings appearing in the Westport bound carriages (see a previous blog). Staff giggled at haughty businessmen and said that it was always like that!
Now how could Irish Rail have done things better?
First of all, they should have looked at their real-time data and estimated what time the Portlaoise train was due. They should also have data on how long it takes to get a train moving again. They could then have changed the departures board in Heuston, which should have read "Expected 25 minutes late" from about 07:00.
Next, they should have updated their realtime information (see here) similarly.
They should also have come clean as to why the set that would normally have been sitting at the platform from before 07:00 was not available for the run to Galway and Westport. Without that information, the experienced traveller assumes that it was just incompetence.
This would have allowed people to plan their day, and to make arrangements for those collecting them etc. It would also have allowed those that might have felt the need to, to go in to the Bar for breakfast (having the train posted as "on time" right up to 07:30 didn't allow this.
As a consequence of this, there were probably a number of passengers whose experience would never bother with the experience of taking the train again. Also, as this was the second time this week the train was late (and it's only Tuesday) they were treating regular customers very shoddily.
Irish Rail Twitter basked in the glory of inexperienced public transport users for the past week, citing people like the Irish Times (see article here) and the Indo (see here) who praised their staff (not their management it should be noted) for keeping the show on the road. Many many tweeters, normally unused to public transport, tweeted their delight at getting from A to B in the snow.
Such low expectations made for party time for Irish Rail.
Most of those tweeting were motorists for whom getting around was never going to be possible (or advisable) in last weeks conditions. However, the railways did not manage things well. Delays were put down to points failures, signalling failures and "technical problems" (a lovely catch all phrase) all week.
Where was the preparation? We had snow like this last year, and temperatures get low enough to freeze points every year.
As for signalling, that excuse is one they have 365 days a year to get worked out.
The reality is that once again Irish Rail failed to perform and failed to inform properly. The realtime information frequently signalled trained as having arrived when they were all lined up in a queue outside Heuston. In fact, worse still, the trains simply disappeared from the departure and arrivals boards, and from the realtime system, when they were still sitting waiting to pull up to the platforms.
Once again the excuse of bad weather was implied. In reality we should be told the truth. Let them have the credit if they can come out with figures. How many hours overtime was there? How early did they get extra staff in to make sure that their equipment was working in the extreme weather conditions. How many free cups of hot tea were given out to passengers in carriages where the heat stopped working? How many of the old "mark 3" carriages were brought out of retirement to deal with the shortage of rolling stock due to weather related breakdowns? How many of Irish Rail management worked overtime (for free) to make sure that their passengers were informed, that their information systems were accurate, and that passengers who were converted to rail users for the duration of the bad weather became more regular users?
The answers to these questions is probably underwhelming, but we will never know, because they had an excuse, snow.
Just like the HSE have an excuse to make blunt and unsustainable cuts, there is no money in the economy.
Just like FF love the excuse that we live in a small open economy.
Or the old excuse that that was what the market did to us.
Like the goverment have an excuse to cut the minimum wage (IMF told us) despite the evidence to the contrary that shows we don't have the highest minimum wage in real spending terms and that cutting it does nothing to improve employment.
Now I am going to be 45 minutes late for work, time that I will have to make up. I won't have the excuse to make to patients that I can't check that their medications are correct, because my train was late....
Just as I write, the driver of the train has just taken it upon himself to inform passengers that we are going to sit in Portarlington for 10-15 minutes. An excuse he could have used was due to years of investments in the roads instead of rail, there is only 1 line between here and Galway, and so we have to wait for the Galway to Dublin train to get out of this little rail boreen before we can get into it. What he didn't say was that we are probably holding up the Dublin-Cork Express which should be behind us, and that all the trains for the rest of the day will now be late.....
But these are never the excuses we hear. Irish officialdom likes the easy excuse, not the one that asks questions or the one that informs choices, or ones that invite constructive feedback. In fact, even if they did invite constructive feedback, most of official Ireland doesn't have a facility to receive it, and will probably refute it.
Mentioning my blog from July again, (see here) the information railroad has still not moved on, and the situation has still not improved, despite a promise by Irish Rail management, who I met at one of their "Meet the Management" PR exercises in Heuston Station that he would e-mail me.
"Sure aren't they great lads altogether"
Excuses.....
There is no excuse for not changing the system so that people are given accurate and usable information whenever anything does not go to plan for service providers in the public and private sector. Also, there has to be a mechanism in this country so that the end users are listened to and that we can stop putting up with the excuses.
