WelshBluebird
Established Member
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Messages
- 4,924
So the journey I had today has thrown up a couple of questions!
Travelling from my parents in Wales back home to Bath, had to take a replacement bus from Cardiff to Bristol Parkway. Didn't think much of it because with the electrification work going on, this has happened a few times over the last couple of years now and that leg usually isn't too bad.
However we had some fun because there was a planned closure on the M4 around the Newport area which caused total chaos. The leg was in the timetable for 70 minutes, which sounds about right (in the past I think it has been around the same, maybe ever so slightly less but roughly right, and Google Maps says the journey by car should be around the same amount of time). But because of the road closure and resulting traffic chaos, it actually took 150 minutes. Fun times!
So, based on that:
1 - Who decides on the amount of time given to a rail replacement bus on the timetable? Network Rail or the ToC running the replacement bus?
2 - Shouldn't planned road closures be taken into account when deciding the time given in the timetable?
3 - Are planned road closures usually not taken into account when it comes to doing works that will require replacement buses? (I understand that the rail works may have been planned in advance, but surely a rethink should have happened at some point?).
4 - Am I being unfair in expecting the ToC's involved to have actually informed passengers that there was a road closure that would throw the timetable out of the window?
5 - For ToC's who run older compensation schemes that only apply if the issue is the fault of the railway (opposed to Delay Repay which always pays out), would something like this generally qualify? Because technically the delay was because of the road closure!
ps - apologies if this sounds like a rant, I am genuinely not trying to rant, I am actually interested to find out how something like this is organised and the reasons behind decisions that seem odd from a passenger point of view!
Travelling from my parents in Wales back home to Bath, had to take a replacement bus from Cardiff to Bristol Parkway. Didn't think much of it because with the electrification work going on, this has happened a few times over the last couple of years now and that leg usually isn't too bad.
However we had some fun because there was a planned closure on the M4 around the Newport area which caused total chaos. The leg was in the timetable for 70 minutes, which sounds about right (in the past I think it has been around the same, maybe ever so slightly less but roughly right, and Google Maps says the journey by car should be around the same amount of time). But because of the road closure and resulting traffic chaos, it actually took 150 minutes. Fun times!
So, based on that:
1 - Who decides on the amount of time given to a rail replacement bus on the timetable? Network Rail or the ToC running the replacement bus?
2 - Shouldn't planned road closures be taken into account when deciding the time given in the timetable?
3 - Are planned road closures usually not taken into account when it comes to doing works that will require replacement buses? (I understand that the rail works may have been planned in advance, but surely a rethink should have happened at some point?).
4 - Am I being unfair in expecting the ToC's involved to have actually informed passengers that there was a road closure that would throw the timetable out of the window?
5 - For ToC's who run older compensation schemes that only apply if the issue is the fault of the railway (opposed to Delay Repay which always pays out), would something like this generally qualify? Because technically the delay was because of the road closure!
ps - apologies if this sounds like a rant, I am genuinely not trying to rant, I am actually interested to find out how something like this is organised and the reasons behind decisions that seem odd from a passenger point of view!
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