Following on from the truncation of their East Anglia rail franchise, today saw a question from Baroness Hanham, seeking to find out what the current position is. Luckily, a clutch of their regular victims were there to kick the company whilst it is down.
From the Liberal Democrat benches, Baroness Scott of Needham Market (usual journey Stowmarket to Liverpool Street) commented, "As a poor benighted passenger of National Express East Anglia, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware of the steady deterioration in services with regard to cleanliness, refreshments, repairs to carriages et cetera, which is making the travelling experience pretty miserable? Can he assure passengers that in the new franchise more attention will be paid to ensuring that the new company operates a decent service?".
Lord Walpole (Norwich to Liverpool Street) was less scathing from the crossbenches. "My Lords, like the last speaker, I use this service regularly. I could not agree more about the lack of service, which is getting worse and worse. The punctuality is not too bad, but the service suffers from Railtrack problems, such as level crossings that do not shut so that we have to wait for 10 minutes, which meant, I am afraid—addressing the right reverend Prelate—that I missed Prayers the other day."
In response, the Secretary of State, Lord Adonis, acknowledged that, whilst punctuality levels were improving, he was keen to see improvements to the service. He does make the mistake of believing that running the trains on time is what really matters, a point which I mostly agree with. However, if you're paying for a service, you expect clean trains, a decent refreshment service and satisfactory levels of information when things go wrong. That's a fail for National Express on all counts then...
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