On 15 Dec 2006 10:06:41 -0800, wrote:


Paul Corfield wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6182027.stm

Seems the government have kicked GNER off the East Coast franchise and
are going to retender it.

What a mess and in some ways a shame as I've found GNER to be a pretty
decent operator - admittedly from a small sample of journeys. I know
there have been lots of issues with delays and overhead problems which
may colour some people's views.

I've used them a fair bit KX-Durham.

My only gripe is that, on any Sunday that is going to be very busy
(e.g. weekend of Great North Run) the seat reservation printer has
"broken" and there are no reservations.

[snip story]

I have to say that your experience is not at all good. If I was booked
in first class and was unable to get a seat I'd be a tad livid.

I also suspect that whoever takes over the line will drop the
restaurant car. AFAIAA, you can no longer eat on the west coast line.
The restaurant car is usually full on a Friday evening (infact it's
often limited by the number of meals they have available rather than
the number of seats which seems to indicate bad planning)

There is no dining service (or any form of supplementary first class
service other than the seat) on VWC at weekends. It makes it utterly
pointless to pay first class unless the space and relative lack of noise
are highly valuable. You even have to pay for items at the "shop" which
I think is a disgrace.

On weekdays I understand Virgin have just upgraded and revised their
entire dining offer but you can still get breakfast, lunch, afternoon
tea and dinner and many of the services. It is Great Western who have
dumped much of their catering which I think is stupid for long journeys
to the West Country. However GW seem to believe they are operating a
commuter railway on their entire network and not an Inter City service.
Colleagues at work are extremely unimpressed with the new timetable and
have had dreadful journeys this week including GW completely forgetting
they had to run a train on Monday morning!

I would be surprised if GNER(revised) withdrew the catering service in
the short term. I have not used it very much when I have it has been
excellent and from what I read it has a very good reputation. If First
win the retender then god help us - might get interesting if National
Express or Virgin / Stagecoach get it though. I can imagine there will
be great stakeholder interest in the future of the East Coast franchise
as it is so critical to the economic health of several (labour voting)
regions!

The current (and fairly new) system where you can mix and match cheap
singles has been fantastic. I suspect that this will disappear.

I would be surprised if this sort of change was made short term. Longer
term it entirely depends on how the replacement franchise looks. I would
expect the premium profile not to be quite so steep this time as surely
people must be learning the lessons of the process by now.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!