Robbie started ranting as soon as the latest edition of Rail magazine went on sale last week and he is still ranting. The cause of his irritation is Barry Doe – nothing new there! By Friday I was so sick of hearing about it that I thought I better read the article, and I could see why Robbie was so vexed. Robbie gets cross when anyone has a pop at Cross Country but when someone doesn't bother to get his facts right it is even more annoying. The main thing that had caused Barry Doe to get his knickers in a twist was the Cross Country fare restrictions on their cheap day return tickets. He had a scandalous headline which I will not repeat because I hope someone will sue him!
He sited one example where a senior conductor apparently made an error about the validity of a ticket. He may (perhaps) know about ticketing (he is not always right) but it seems he doesn't have much idea about anything else, he called the senior conductor a guard – what century is he in? He made the valid point that commuters find restrictions hard to understand and it is not clear from the tickets who sets the fare or what the restrictions are. But he then went on to blame all the wrong people, in particular he called the Cross Country management stupid. He has obviously been contemplating his own navel for so long that he is too myopic to see the bigger picture! What he doesn't seem to understand is that the franchise was awarded to Arriva by DFT in a competitive process. You can not blame Cross Country for railway privatisation, they have to fulfil the terms of the franchise agreement an they have to act in the best interest of the company (just like every other TOC). With regard to cheap day returns, they are free to set whatever restrictions make sound business sense, so if you want to blame anyone blame the government for allowing unregulated tickets! As for ticketing, yes we all agree it is out of date but you can't blame Cross Country for that either, ticketing is the responsibility of ATOC under the rail settlement plan – but of course being such an expert he knows that already!
As for his complaint about the Voyager shop not being open between Glasgow Central and Edinburgh, if he'd bothered to check he would have known that this was also the case when Virgin had the franchise. So why blame Arriva?
He's a bit like a wasp really, very annoying, not much of a sting and absolutely no practical use! I suggest that the next time he wants to have a rant he should grab his bicycle clips and ride around the block a few times to get his thoughts in order before committing a lot of inaccurate rubbish to print!
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