JFC Travel Blog

In my last post I said that I’d list some of the ways that NXEC has lowered the standards of service lately.

The main changes have affected passengers who liked to take advantage of the on-board catering particularly those who liked to make use of the restaurant.

In January National Express laid off large numbers of their staff which has meant a poor on-board service on busy trains. Until January 2009 over 80 trains a day used to offer a restaurant service to both standard and first class ticket holders, this number has now been reduced to 15.

On selected other services you now have an at seat menu for those in first class while those in standard will have to make do with what’s in the buffet. The first class at seat menu offers freshly prepared hot food but not to the same standard as the restaurant. There’s been complaints that serving meals throughout the train rather than the restaurant is making some services smell like a transport cafe.

The restaurant is not the only thing missing on-board, staff cuts also make the probability of the standard class trolley operating much smaller meaning longer queues at the buffet car.

Staff cuts are also planned at the ticket offices with many offices having reduced hours.

It is planned to install ticket gates in most stations in order to lay off some of the on-board ticket inspectors.

The first class lounges are going to be converted to self-service (the ones that aren’t already), this is in order to further cut costs.

So, if you don’t travel first class or use the restaurant you may think these changes don’t affect you. These changes are just the ones that are publically visible, it wouldn’t be surprising if maintenence budgets were cut meaning less reliable trains and I’ve already heard many complaints about the reliability of the toilets recently.

Also remember the prices of fully flexible tickets. A business traveller buying a flexible first class return from London to Edinburgh will be paying a massive £373, these travellers contribute a large portion to the operation of the service, if these customers decide to switch to flying then that’s a lot of lost revenue and yet more cutbacks.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 1:27 am and is filed under Rail, GNER. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.