Robin Mayes wrote:
There's been a 'push' on providing "Quality Service Information"
recently, hence the amount of information boards everywhere. There
are lots of office-based staff who are auditing these things, who
only rely on pagers telling them what lines are running normally/
delayed/ suspended and mark the boards accordingly. However, what
goes out on the pagers isn't the reality that occurs. Instead of
allowing staff to decide when a delay turns into normal service we
have to change it once we're told the service is normal, despite what
we may see in actuality. I'm getting increasingly fed up with having
to tell people there is a normal service when I know it isn't so, for
example, normal service on the Circle Line, then a 20 minute gap. If
that's normal I'm Alistair Campbell!

We seem to be heading for a completely centralised information system, which
is fine if the centre knows what's going on everywhere and has the manpower
to fine-tune the information. But currently, I agree it's daft to impose
centralised info when local people know better.

I had an example today at High Street Kensington, with a message saying that
the "westbound Circle line" was suspended. How are passengers meant to know
whether "westbound" at HSK means the northbound track or the southbound
track at that point? Presumably it was a message broadcast to some subset
of the Circle stations.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)