Elimination of SuperSaver Discount Service to and From Londo

Fri 3 Feb 2006, 11:02

On Wednesday,Feb 1, I was taking a train to London for a lunch meeting when I was confronted by a handwritten sign at the Charlbury Station informing me that the value-for-money Supersaver Return to and from London that included a 3 Zone Travel Card was now restricted so that passengers cold no longer return from Paddington Station in
the late afternoon but would have to await the evening trains.

Fortunately, there was a rail service Public Relations executive on hand to 'take customer feedback'. Of course 'take' can be a relative term, as my mentioning that the consistent increase of ticket prices was matched by the consistent delcline in reliability and service over the past five years was not met with a smile. And that further restricting the one discount package that actually offered real comparative value for money was adding insult to injury.

I was informed by the very polite PR (obviously chosen for his upbeat demeanor), that he didn't have any control over ticket pricing but that the logic was that too many people coming out of London were using the SuperSaver to take cheap trips to and from Reading.

More power to them, I thought, considering we pay the highest ticket prices for one of the least efficient and undersubsidised transport systems in Europe. Fair pricing for fair journey lenghts would reduce the number of fare dodgers overnight.

But when I pointed out that the restrictions on SuperSavers coming into Oxford (only if you go north of Oxford, is your discount ticket valid), could easily been applied to the Reading-bound passengers without having to curtail the travel privledges of London commuters, was this taken on board.

I hope Great Western will honestly take on board customer feedback and that this isn't yet anotehr public realtions exercise designed merely to demonstrate that 'something is being done'.

Rail passengers don't just want to complain, we do want to find solutions to the problems and work with the rail companies to achieve a better service, worth paying for.

As with cycling, effective, efficient and supported train transport is one of the easiest means of getting cars off the road, limiting car emmissions, improving our air quality and ultimately slowing down the impact of global warming.

If you're concerned about the environment, then you're defacto concerned with improving rail service both in terms of efficiency and affordability so that we can ALL rely on our transport infrastructure to connect us to the entire country.