New Year's Honours List - Shocker

A Royal Warrant for the National Passenger Survey?


Or the Order of the Chop for cheeky Passenger Focus!

Open Access Operators Redacted!

Telegrammed by Ithuriel
Has Passenger Focus been nobbled?

Why are the open access operators not listed in its latest Passenger Satisfaction Survey?

Is it because their quality of service makes the state sponsored management contracts, aka 'franchises' look passenger-hostile by comparison?

UPDATE: This from The Globetrotter...

Whilst the relative success of the open access operators is to be welcomed, I fear that the soi disant 'veteran observer' and PR monkey Brennan-Brown may have been a tad over-enthusiastic with this press release headline:

"94% of passengers give Grand Central the thumbs up!"

Given the volumes of travellers using the former Southern Region, Scotland, West Coast, Greater Western etc, it is perhaps questionable whether “94% of passengers” have actually even heard of Grand Central…

Passenger Focusballs

Telegrammed by our Independent Expert
The good folk from Passenger Focus conducting the National Passenger Survey were doing the business on Preston station this afternoon.

Among the questions was:

"What alternative method of transport would you have liked to use to get to Preston Station?"

One option offered by the interviewers was "By Underground Train"

Over to you Boris

Is there a Doctor in the house

More mutterings about the PassengerFocus National Passenger Survey.

Regular readers will recollect that publication of the survey was delayed for two months to allow figures to be massaged and that when published National Express cried foul when it's East Coast franchise with spanked with other dire operators despite a claimed 4% improvement in NEEC passenger satisfaction.

The saga gets murkier still.

The Fact Compiler has received the following note from a TOC source:

"NPS is somewhat flawed as they hang-around stations giving out surveys indiscriminately to people - a certain percentage of whom actually work for TOCs.

"The easiest way to get your score up is to find a survey team, flood the station with people in suits from HQ and pretend to work for the NHS!!"

The Fact Compiler awaits the PassengerFocus press release celebrating the record numbers of NHS staff travelling to York with interest.