Arriva rant

This year, I have traveled on Arriva Wales trains maybe 8 times (if it was

more reliable I would use it a lot more). I can only think of 2 occasion when

the train between Birmingham and Machynleth has not been non-trivially late. The

early service seems to be OK, but deteriates through the day. If you

want to get to London for 6pm, leaving on the 5.45am service seems to

be wise. How does Green George cope?

It seems to now be common practise to stop a late train at Shewsbury,

making rail passenger up to an additional hour later. "You are late,

so lets do the 1 thing we can guarrantee will make you later". I must

admit to an internal Victor Meldew moment. Safety related issues which

delay a train and when the reasons are explained are fine by me, such

things happen. Little communcation and stopping a late service before

its destination I struggle with. Restrictions on ticket routing mean

you can't get the next train to Crewe or Stafford and travel ( without

buying a new ticket ) from there as the ticket issued by Arriva

explicitily requires travel via Brimingham.

The newly refusrbished rolling stock are still sheds on rails. Arriva need to focus on basics, i.e. trains

which complete their journey. I would rather travel in a open coal

truck that completed its journey according to the expected schedule

than what is curently on offer from Arriva.

I thought 3 hours contingency would be enough to get from Machynleth

to London to catch a Eurostar, but it seems not. The service is in my

recent experience now so unrealiable that it is useless for any

business use or same day connecting travel such as Eurostar or

flights. A lad infront of me in the "what the hell do we do now" queue

at Shrewsbury station missed a flight from Birmingham International airport.

I did find out that there are international conditions of travel where

on a delayed by one rail provider, if you produce evidence of such,

follow on rail proiders have to accomadate you on the next train at no

cost and Eurostar is included in this. Lesson is if one train operator

has a delayed train, a connecting operator can't charge you for a new

ticket.

For the very helpful Arriva staff at Shrewsbury this was news, but

they did write me a short letter and stamp it which proved helpful with

Eurostar who were very accomadating.

I wish Arriva management had experienced the dearly departed Wrexham

and Shropshire service which I can only remember being more than a few

minutes late once. I don't see evidence of Arriva shaping up under

their new ownership, instead of granting a long franschise, its time

for WAG to point its very generous subsidy elsewhere.

Arriva virdict -> on the ground staff are great, but that is about it.

Have what seem to be routine serious delays been root caused? Are

there clusters of reasons? Have these questions been asked, but Arriva Wales management are either

ignoring the answers or not in a position to do anything about root

causes. I would be interested to know which as a lot of money has been

spent on this service.

Now Arriva Trains Wales is far too unreliable for even well planned business travel, this means more miles on the car to drive to Stafford Station.