Two Examples Why CIE Will Never Be a Professional Railway Company.

Transport21 Fan

Exhibit A:

Letter to the Indo Today (unprofessional paddywackery treating a modern transit system in a major European capital like a joke ala Quiet Man station scene):

Having crossed the iron footbridge at Booterstown Station the other day to get to the strand, the driver of the just-pulled-in Dart, obviously thinking I was a displaced commuter, called from his cab window, "If you climb over the wall, I'll hold the train for you." That's good nature for you!
OLIVER MCGRANE,
RATHFARNHAM, D 16

Exhibit B:

Same old, same old...

Rail cancellations in Co Cork dispute

28 June 2006 13:50

Two early morning trains from Cork and Kerry to Dublin were cancelled because of an unofficial dispute involving two railway staff attached to Mallow Station in Co Cork.

All passengers on the 5.30am train from Cork to Dublin and the 6.55am train from Tralee to Dublin were transported by bus from Mallow.

Other services today will not be affected by the dispute.

It's this carry on which often makes me beleive that the Motorway programme represents more of a social investment than giving money to CIE/IE.

A Dub in Glasgo

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Exhibit A:

Letter to the Indo Today (unprofessional paddywackery treating a modern transit system in a major European capital like a joke ala Quiet Man station scene):

I have had train drivers go out of their way to accommodate late running passengers. I have also had train drivers who would not accommodate anybody that is outside of their process. As a passenger, I know which one I prefer.

Diaspora

T21

Unfortunately I have the opinion that your objectivity in relation to IE has evaporated and that these constant assualts on IE are starting to wear a little tedius.

This is a pity because your sense of humour and wit in relation to unrelated topics is entertaining and well focussed.

I will leave you with a personnal experience of the RPA

Wet Sunday a few months ago I decided to do a reverse rovers moverment and took Luas from Tallafornia to Charlemont; at red cow my ticket was checked and punched a took the I then took the 'a pied' interconnector from Abbey to the Green boarded the green line at Harcourt; my ticket was checked and I was told I was in breach and would have to buy a ticket I told the foreign gent that I was alighting at my stop Charlemont and that he was in fact incorrect. He persisted publicly in front of a tram of people with a raised voice telling me I didn't have a valid ticket.

Off at charlemont to the machine to show him that the ticket was valid to all central 1 stations; neither him or his superior had a clue of how the system worked. I offered to accompany them to Harcourt Terrace Garda station they declined; I never received an apology.

Piasos

bryanw

Diaspora wrote:

I will leave you with a personnal experience of the RPA

Wet Sunday a few months ago I decided to do a reverse rovers moverment and took Luas from Tallafornia to Charlemont; at red cow my ticket was checked and punched a took the I then took the 'a pied' interconnector from Abbey to the Green boarded the green line at Harcourt; my ticket was checked and I was told I was in breach and would have to buy a ticket I told the foreign gent that I was alighting at my stop Charlemont and that he was in fact incorrect. He persisted publicly in front of a tram of people with a raised voice telling me I didn't have a valid ticket.

Off at charlemont to the machine to show him that the ticket was valid to all central 1 stations; neither him or his superior had a clue of how the system worked. I offered to accompany them to Harcourt Terrace Garda station they declined; I never received an apology.

Piasos

Would that not really be Connex you were dealing with...?

murphaph

Did anybody else see those goons in Mallow being interviewed on th news? "we just want to talk to the company" they reckoned. Eh, well you have a HR dept. and if you get no joy there then go talk to your poxy union, don't just walk out on unofficial action and fcuk over two trainloads of passengers! Tossers. By the way, the two were father and son :rolleyes:

MarkoP11

The frst example of Booterstown is completely fine, its nice to see a positive attitude

There are strikes in privitised companies too, there are several disputes ongoing in the UK at the monent. The ownership is irrevalent the staff hold safety critical postiions they know they can't be replaced quickly hence they have a much stronger position. That said things are still moving very limited effect on services since the other staff are crossing the picket line

bryanw wrote:

Would that not really be Connex you were dealing with...?

Connex are agents acting on behalf of the RPA

Dub13

I agree T21s anti CIE rants are wearing very, very thin.

shltter

Transport21 Fan wrote:

POST 403 will this time...absolutely be my last to boards.ie..

We live in hope.

BuffyBot

POST 403 will this time...absolutely be my last to boards.ie..

..on this name, at least.

Anyway, it's very easy to select out some "bad" things which happen. It's easier to ignore all the positive stuff that CIE employees do (such as the driver I encountered on the 748 the other day, who couldn't do enough to help the tourists with luggage, figuring out where they needed to get off, ticketing etc). Perhaps people should start some threads for each positive encounter, balancing the karma a little.

lostexpectation

T21 Pfo

aliveandkicking

POST 403 will this time...absolutely be my last to boards.ie..

Don't mind them Thomas, some of us like reading your posts.

monument

Can any one say CRUSADE?

T21 wrote:

POST 403 will this time...absolutely be my last to boards.ie.

:rolleyes:

Schuhart

Transport21 Fan wrote:

POST 403 will this time...absolutely be my last to boards.ie.

All the Western Rail Corridor needs to be economic is a spur to Achill Sound.

Sarsfield

monument wrote:

Can any one say CRUSADE?

Not without risking a Fatwah

And isn't Connex now known by it's parents name Veolia?

Transport21 Fan

murphaph wrote:

By the way, the two were father and son :rolleyes:[/QUOTE

Naturally. How else are the semi-state unions going to defend us against the "race to the bottom" without their own nepotism and looking after the boys (literally).

Transport21 Fan

Schuhart wrote:

All the Western Rail Corridor needs to be economic is a spur to Achill Sound.

Get thee behind me Satan!

Transport21 Fan

MarkoP11 wrote:

The frst example of Booterstown is completely fine, its nice to see a positive attitude

Bull****. Absolutle and utter bull****. The DART is a timetabled, mass transit system (apparently) and not a taxi or bus. This would not be tolerated in Germany or Switzerland - the drivers would be in trouble. Jesus christ are you have to be ****ing ****ting me! What's the point of a timetable then.

I am simply amazed how you can defend this! This is the very height of unprofessional conduct. Being a nice bloke is not what DART drivers are paid for.

A Dub in Glasgo

What hyperbole. A mass transit system should rely on frequency rather than strict timetables for operation. If there is a train every 5 minutes, not many people really care if it is at xx.05 or xx.06

shltter

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Bull****. Absolutle and utter bull****. The DART is a timetabled, mass transit system (apparently) and not a taxi or bus. This would not be tolerated in Germany or Switzerland - the drivers would be in trouble. Jesus christ are you have to be ****ing ****ting me! What's the point of a timetable then.

I am simply amazed how you can defend this! This is the very height of unprofessional conduct. Being a nice bloke is not what DART drivers are paid for.

But this is not Germany or Switzerland we probably could not organise to gas 6 million people to death or hide the gold for the people who did either. But hey we are not perfect.
I can only suggest that you go off and live with your beloved Germans most people in this country would be very happy that a train driver would hold the train for a few seconds rather than the jack boot atitude you would prefer.

Diaspora

bryanw wrote:

Would that not really be Connex you were dealing with...?

I stand corrected but it was no less uncomfortable regardless of who they were; Sunday hangovers are bad enough without dealing with total idiots

paulm17781

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Bull****. Absolutle and utter bull****. The DART is a timetabled, mass transit system (apparently) and not a taxi or bus. This would not be tolerated in Germany or Switzerland - the drivers would be in trouble. Jesus christ are you have to be ****ing ****ting me! What's the point of a timetable then.

I am simply amazed how you can defend this! This is the very height of unprofessional conduct. Being a nice bloke is not what DART drivers are paid for.

At first I agreed with you. Then I remembered that the DART is not like the paris metro where there will be one in two minutes. There is also the huge padding that IE put in so they will still be on time. If the driver doing this was holding up trains behind I would see your point. However this is Ireland and that is the best level of service you can get from the DART in it's current form.

lostinsuperfunk

Bull****. Absolutle and utter bull****. The DART is a timetabled, mass transit system (apparently) and not a taxi or bus.

Maybe it was - gasp - ahead of schedule and there was time to spare?

dmeehan

lostinsuperfunk wrote:

Maybe it was - gasp - ahead of schedule and there was time to spare?

sounds a bit like Ryanair: "Welecome to XYZ, 10 minutes ahead of schedule"

they are always "ahead of schedule", or have i just been lucky?

Hobart

T21 and sh1tter take a fews hours to cool down. This type of crapola is not really on.

SeanW

I agree with the above points - what's the big deal? The driver offered to wait a short time (what, like 10 seconds) if yer'man would take a shortcut. This when there probably won't be another DART for 20-30 minutes. Dart =/= S-Bahn, Subway, Tube, <insert hi-spec Metro system name here>.

Dub13

Seems like a catch 22 situation,if he waits some will moan if he drives of having seen the passenger some moan about CIE staff been ignorant.

DerekP11

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Bull****. Absolutle and utter bull****. The DART is a timetabled, mass transit system (apparently) and not a taxi or bus. This would not be tolerated in Germany or Switzerland - the drivers would be in trouble. Jesus christ are you have to be ****ing ****ting me! What's the point of a timetable then.

I am simply amazed how you can defend this! This is the very height of unprofessional conduct. Being a nice bloke is not what DART drivers are paid for.

I'm going to disagree with my P11 colleague (MarkoP11) on this one and not on the basis of the DART being a mass transit system or the timetable or whether it would be tolerated in Germany or Switzerland.

What was described in the Times letter was a gross breech of rules. "Climbing over a wall" is not proper access to a station. While the DART driver can be described as "helpful", he can also be described as "careless". If the person was actually a passenger and decided to "climb" over the wall and fell and broke a bone, we can only imagine the resulting court case. "The driver told me to do it." Health and Safety folks.

Im stunned by the general acceptance of this story. Are we that short of customer service on the rail network (I can already hear the voices screaming, "yes") that we are prepared to accept an IE staff member, encourage a perceived customer to climb over a wall into a station, while he holds the train?

I second T21s reaction. Its nuts and as a representative of P11 I could not accept this episode as an example of "staff being helpful". It gross negligence. Full stop.

spacetweek

shltter wrote:

But this is not Germany or Switzerland we probably could not organise to gas 6 million people to death or hide the gold for the people who did either. But hey we are not perfect.
I can only suggest that you go off and live with your beloved Germans most people in this country would be very happy that a train driver would hold the train for a few seconds rather than the jack boot atitude you would prefer.

I don't see how WW2 is relevant to this situation. According to that logic, nothing the Germans ever did right could be copied on the grounds that under Hitler they also committed atrocities. You have to move on.

I'm with T21 fan - I think this "ah sure I'll hould on a few minutes for dat fella" crap belongs in the 1930s. Gimme efficiency and professionalism any day over that.

aliveandkicking

It's a tough one, if a driver (bus or train) done that for me I'd be singing his praises but at the same time I can see the unprofessionalism in it thats prevalent accross our entire transport network. As I said its a tough one and I can't quite make up my mind, fence sitting on this one

shoegirl

MarkoP11 wrote:

There are strikes in privitised companies too, there are several disputes ongoing in the UK at the monent. The ownership is irrevalent the staff hold safety critical postiions they know they can't be replaced quickly hence they have a much stronger position. That said things are still moving very limited effect on services since the other staff are crossing the picket line

There is a particular problem in Cork with wildcat strikes and one-man industrial mayhem. Its a problem that probably includes some kind of problem at regional management level, I think its fair to guess that if this were not the case the problem would not be concentrated in Cork. However this is something that both CIE and employee representative bodies need to iron out. Having been left stranded at Cork stations several times, on what is now a quite appalling and delapidated service, its very discouraging to use rail in Cork for anything but leisure. The passenger figures reflect this: I have been the only person on an early morning train (more than once)! The trains between 8am and 9am (so-called peak times) are often half-empty.

Yet incredibly people in Carrigtohill and Midleton wait excitedly to share in this shambles of a service. Cancellations are commonplace and lateness the norm. There is a problem and it needs serious troubleshooting from both sides.

Yes strikes have happened in the UK, but you have to remember that over there many of the longer standing staff are ex-British Rail TUPEd into the private operators and well represented. The problem in the UK in recent years have been that operators have sometimes chosen to deliberately fail service levels and pay the cash penalty if it will save them cash as opposed to spending to improving the service. Connex were particularly notorious on their south eastern routes: I remember getting on a train towards Hastings about 3 years ago that was the filthiest I have ever seen. Again a lot of this is down to local management.

Diaspora

shoegirl wrote:

)! The trains between 8am and 9am (so-called peak times) are often half-empty.

Yet incredibly people in Carrigtohill and Midleton wait excitedly to share in this shambles of a service. Cancellations are commonplace and lateness the norm. There is a problem and it needs serious troubleshooting from both sides.

You should start a thread recording each problem as it happens and make a complaint through the European rail passenger complaints network when you have assembled a number of complaints. No single incident will get action but a catalogue of issues and occurances would be a useful way of pursuing what appears to be an ongoing pattern.