If First Capital Connect can't get back on track the Government must step in (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

If First Capital Connect can't get back on track the Government must step in

10:17am Tuesday 19th January 2010 in

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IT went down like the proverbial lead balloon.

“More snow is due on Wednesday,” the ad rep said as she waltzed through the editorial department.

With people still gazing happily out of the window at the sight of wet pavements and roads but no snow, it would appear that we are not ready for more of it.

By tomorrow we will know whether or not the weather forecasters got this prediction right.

However, the reaction to another snow shower was nothing compared to how commuters must have felt after reading our First Capital Connect article on Thursday morning last week.

Commuters were no doubt still breathing a huge sigh of relief after hearing that train drivers’ union Aslef had accepted a revised pay offer from the rail operator.

You can imagine what they must have been thinking: ‘The pay dispute is over, surely now FCC will get this service back on track, right? This news means the revised timetable will be ditched, right?’ Er, wrong.

On Monday the operator said it was working a ‘near normal service’, but the pay dispute was settled days before and the snow had melted by Friday. So, pardon the pun, why the delay?

Also, the recent weather may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the camel that is FCC had been struggling for weeks beforehand. If a ‘normal service’ is anything like that on offer to commuters during November and December we will have to forgive them if they do not suddenly burst into a frenzy of excitement and anticipation.

This ‘normal service’ involved drivers not working overtime or rest days and, as far as I know, not a lot has changed.

So having sorted out the pay dispute, the employers and the union have now moved on to the hot potato that is drivers’ working hours.

A union representative told this newspaper: “The real solution is for the company to continue recruiting the additional drivers it needs. Restoring the full timetable may be some way off yet.”

Just the news that commuters want to hear.

As far as I can see there are two possible solutions: one is for FCC to be stripped of its franchise and the other is for the company to back down, give its employees the deal they want by recruiting a suitable number of drivers before providing an acceptable service.

I am sure if the latter was going to happen FCC would have done it by now.

While the two options are obvious it now seems that FCC needs to also start thinking about its beleaguered passengers.

Last week we were inundated with complaints about the service, but one critic in particular stuck out.

It was from a commuter who was simply livid that FCC had not updated its website by the middle of last week which was incorrectly stating that ‘a fast and reliable service’ was in operation.

I am not sure if that has ever been the case, but to suggest so last week was a step too far for some.

There may well have been ice on the track and services may well have been cancelled, but according to FCC’s site trains were running.

Even when St Albans City Station had closed and no services were available, FCC was simply advising commuters not to travel – crucially, however, it did not tell them they could not.

And so it continues.

Whatever the situation and however bad the service gets FCC should at least offer its customers the correct advice via its website.

Sadly it seems that even this is too much to ask.

Announcing the appointment of a new managing director is unlikely to make much a difference in the short term unless he can improve the service immediately.

Small tokens may be a step in the right direction but commuters are justified in demanding a larger gesture from FCC…or the Government if it fails again.