back to article Southern awarded yet another 'most moaned about rail firm' gong

Grumbling Brit commuters are more likely to moan about Southern than any other train line, according to the latest national passenger survey (PDF) from the UK's transport watchdog. Southern retained its top spot for most dissatisfied passengers in Transport Focus's survey of more than 27,000 passengers – a fact that will come …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Of course they are, but blame the unions.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      "Of course they are, but blame the unions."

      Yep. Blame the unions as always. Blame them for the holiday pay, sick pay, the rights you have as a worker.

      Don't be a complete idiot all your life.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Blame them for insisting the tax-payer funding non-jobs. Blame them for going on strike in order to maintain that. Blame them for withdrawing their labour because they don't like a political decision about who runs the trains rather than anything that actually concerns them as workers.

        1. Alister

          Blame them for insisting the tax-payer funding non-jobs. Blame them for going on strike in order to maintain that.

          Or possibly you should read how Southern have been basing service levels on their staff having to work every off-day they have, and do double shifts as well, instead of Southern employing sufficient staff to support the service levels properly.

    2. gandalfcn Silver badge

      The unions between the Tories and foreign governments?

      Or the unions between the Tories and big business?

      Or both?

  2. Alister

    If you want good trains, go to Hull

    But do they run Exeter to Penzance regularly?

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    Joke

    "If you want good trains, go to Hull"

    Come on, no one wants to go to Hull. Ever.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's like Liverpool. Go there for the ferry.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Trollface

      If you want good trains, leave Hull.

    3. Solarflare

      True, but then why not say that they are truely spectacular trains as, not only are they highly rated by passengers, but they can also take you away from Hull?

    4. Adair Silver badge
      Happy

      Yes, please don't come to Hull

      We like to have reliable, fast, uncrowded trains, and affordable family homes, and all the other benefits that come with living in an area that the easily prejudiced and terminally ignorant prefer to avoid.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yes, please don't come to Hull

        My experience of Hull, living on the Anlaby Road and working at BP Saltend Plant was:

        1. My car window was smashed and my tax disc stolen

        2. Armed robbery, purse taken

        3. Tooth chipped on kerb when tackled to the floor by 3 men who stole my laptop case

        4. Cars blaring horns when I stopped at red lights

        5. Open drug dealing

        6. Good trains

        7. Halfway decent broadband

  4. Daedalus

    Life is tough

    Must be hard to keeping millions of moaning Williums and NIMBY's happy. It probably takes a month to get permissions to change a light bulb, let alone run better track. But let's face it, if you had convinced yourself that it was worth all that money to live in the sticks and work in the big city, wouldn't you feel like moaning if things didn't go right all the time?

  5. 45RPM Silver badge

    Greater Anglia used to piss me off every day until I got so fed up that I moved house to Chilterm Railway's patch. The service is now excellent, but I concede that my solution was rather extreme and not remotely practical for most.

  6. Tom 38

    Hull is a statistical outlier

    The survey had to be filled in online

    1. Stevie

      Re: The survey had to be filled in online

      So? The commuting has to be done on lines as well.

  7. tiggity Silver badge

    random luck

    "We consult more than 50000 passengers a year"

    "Passenger opinions of train services are collected twice a year from a representative sample of journeys..."

    So, might not be 50000 unique passengers, and with all surveys, depends who can be bothered to fill in and return them

    Disclaimer, I & partner have commuted for many years (we travel to different destinations & typically at different times), neither of us have ever been asked to fill in a survey

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: random luck

      "Disclaimer, I & partner have commuted for many years (we travel to different destinations & typically at different times), neither of us have ever been asked to fill in a survey"

      For my sins I've been taking the thameslink on the wimbledon loop for the best part of 20 years now and in the last ten years of a huge swelling of commuter numbers I've only ever seen the survey monkeys handing out the forms between 10:00 and 15:00 - i.e. the times when none of the regular commuters are on the trains, there are seats available and air temperature and humidity has finally dropped below that of a brothel in the middle of an Alabama swamp.

      In the hours that the majority of customers care about - the 07:00 to 10:00 and 16:30 to 19:30 rush hours where you need a scrum forward to help you get on board the cattle truck - survey monkeys would need a bulldozer to a) make any progress through the train b) give them a sporting chance of not being lynched by passengers when the automated voice on the tannoy says "please make sure you use all the doors!" for the umpteenth time as if that'll magically solve all capacity problems.

      My station actually dropped from 4 trains an hour in the morning to 3 trains an hour last year because southern couldn't make them run on time.

      1. David Glasgow

        Re: random luck

        "please make sure you use all the doors!"

        Oooh! Quantum!

  8. Digitall
    Coat

    If you want good trains

    If you want good trains, go to Hornby

    1. Christopher Reeve's Horse

      Re: If you want good trains

      Actually, there's some quite nice trains in the museum in York, especially the super cool 1960's Bullet Train.

      If you want a good train service however, that's a different matter...

      1. Stevie

        Re: If you want a good train service however, that's a different matter...

        Indeed it is.

        Such may be encountered only in the restaurant car of the Venice Simplon Orient Express.

        Mind you don't get murdered on your way to dinner, though.

      2. Sgt_Oddball

        Re: If you want good trains

        For good train service you want the Keighley and worth valley railway.

        A proper train pulling decent well maintained caridges, manned by happy staff complete with on-board bar (serving between 2 to 4 handpulled pints depending on what they've managed to get in)

    2. Stese

      Re: If you want good trains

      no, Roco, Bachmann, Jeco, are far better

  9. Anonymous Custard
    Trollface

    Go to Hull and back...

    If you want good trains, go to Hull

    I'd love to, except that as I live in the south-east I'd have to go there by Southern or Thameslink.

    So I'm rather stuck on the starting blocks...

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Angel

    Surely the subtitle of this article should be:

    "You have to go through Hull to get to railway heaven." Or something like that.

  11. wolfetone Silver badge

    If you want good trains

    Then drive a car.

    1. Stevie

      Re: If you want good trains

      Is that you, Clarkson?

      1. Down not across

        Re: If you want good trains

        Is that you, Clarkson?

        No. Clarkson does trains. Kind of. Although the inspector wasn't that impressed with his Sports Train based on a XJ-S.

        1. Stevie

          Re: If you want good trains

          But in Japan Clarkson commented that the others believed trains were better than cars and "They just aren't".

          1. wolfetone Silver badge

            Re: If you want good trains

            Public transport isn't anywhere near as good as a car.

            I can drive door to door to London from Birmingham for about £30, in the comfort of my own car, my own company, my own tunes. I can take whatever route I wish, I can stop off where I wish.

            On a train it cancost less, but quite often can't. Not for four people anyway. Even then I have to get some sort of transport from my home to the train station, and then get some other method of transport when I get the train to London. Plus you can't choose who you share a carriage with, you might get lucky and get quiet people or you could end up with a bunch of clowns who are shouting and laughing and generally being dicks.

            The time saved even isn't that much. It can take about 2 hours from Birmingham to London, on a fast train it'd be 90 minutes but then you pay more for that. For the cheaper trains it's 2 hours.

            So yeah, Clarkson's right. The trains just aren't better than the motorcar.

            1. FlossyThePig

              Re: If you want good trains

              @wolfetone

              ...I can drive door to door to London from Birmingham for about £30...

              What does the £30 cover? fuel, insurance, tax, servicing, capital cost/depreciation, general wear and tear, cost of parking, etc.

            2. strum

              Re: If you want good trains

              >I can drive door to door to London from Birmingham for about £30

              But you can't park at either end.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think you will find that putting Hull trains at the top is actually an art installation forming part of its year of city of culture.

  13. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    People who've used Southern Trains

    Know hos s**t they are.

    I've had to use them a fer times on business in the UK and I've never found a buffet service. Ever.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I quite like the trains and would use them more often if it wasn't for the Northern rail "dead zones"

    Last two places I've lived have these dead zones in the evening when for some unexplained reason the trains skip an hour making it nightmare to get home early in the evening.

    1. Colabroad

      A friend of mine commuted from Leeds to Halifax via Northern rail and was therefore semi-frequently late.

      Punctuality wasn't critical to the job so his manager didn't mind as long as the time was made up and he was notified in the form of a haiku ending "Fuck You Nothern Rail"

  15. gandalfcn Silver badge

    Tories

    Interesting the Tories are ideologically opposed to public ownership of public utilities whilst happily encouraging foreign governments to profit off the UK taxpayer. I suggest there is something going seriously wrong in the UK and people have not yet woken up to having been suckered by snake oil sales people.

  16. teebie

    Not overall satisfaction

    Looking at the report on the transportfocus site, sections 3.1 and 4.1 are labelled 'Overall satisfaction'

    If you look at the section this is short for 'overall satisfaction with the journey'.

    I have been asked to fill out these surveys several times, but never on a train that was late, or on a day when the station was having problems.

    So, "overall satisfaction" doesn't mean overall satisfaction with the train company, and the measure they use is easy to game to make the company look better than it is.

  17. Jove Bronze badge

    That is what you get for being soft on the Unions.

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