Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Feedback is welcome. Signals again!!!!!!!

THESE SIGNALS WORK FINE. FUNNY YOU DONT SEE THIS WHEN THEY BREAK DOWN DO YOU ??? IT WOULD KEEP THE SERVICE RUNNING


Tony sent me this feedback

"The London Underground wasn't built yesterday, just so you know.I'd like to see you try and keep the signals (a lot of which are probably older than you are) running. It's not just a changing a light bulb - points, train stops and all the other bits and pieces that come together to make 'The Signals' need to be safe before we let you lot loose on it. But enough about that.There is still morale on the combine, it's just not as visible as it used to be. It's a mixture of staff being annoyed with the attitudes of customers having changed (believe it or not, you lot actually used to be polite at some stage), as well as the attitudes of those higher up the chain. Many of the older, more senior workers still have their sense of duty, but I guess you'd rather concentrate on all the negative aspects.Who was there for the masses when the bombs first went off in London? The staff were. "

Thanks for that Tony and I agree with most of what you say. Especially the signals being older than me (im only 7 1/2). I also agree that some of the older staff do seem to be caring and have some pride and sense of duty. However it indicates that training a discipline these days are not what they were as I experience rudeness, ignorance and a not my fault attitude on many occasions. I realise that the staff are not personally to blame but when the inconvenience caused by whatever it may be is so severe then the staff are bound to feel the ire of paying customers as they are the front line. I think it would be a good idea to have a hotline to TFL senior management and that of the operator/owners but the queue for it would be down every steet in London. What we object to is declining service and customer facing staff and paying more for less than any other similar system in the world.

The main reason it seems for the problems are signals and have been for at least 7 years since I returned to live in London so why are they getting worse when this is a known problem.

I would appreciate it if someone could tell me the name of the person in charge of the signals that is the most senior person in whichever organsation is responsible for them.

1 Comments:

At 9:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with you 100%, mate.

The fact of the matter is, we've flagged up the same issues with our own management here within the company. What can you do when nobody wants to listen? When the guys at the top are so profit orientated that they've forgotten their roots of proper customer service AS WELL AS delivering a service that works? It seems that a lot of people have swallowed the TfL pill and Ken's promises to deliver this and that when really, it's just not possible with the age and complexity of some of the system that's already there (unless you want to compromise safety with speeding up and upgrade, which, whilst I agree is taking forever, needs time that the fat cats just won't allow).

If I could tell you who is in charge of all the signalling, I would, but I can't. Because of the way that the Infracos have been split up, the contracting and the sub-contracting, it's hard for even LU to blame anybody properly, let alone name and shame. At least when everything was in-house, we knew who to blame, and London Underground's managers were a little bit more humble because of that. But gone are the days.

We never used to have as many managers within LU as we do now. It's unbelievable - grades are being made up as we go along (they've renamed 'Station Assistants' to 'Customer Service Assistants' to make the frontline staff seem more 'customer service orientated'. Like a change to the name of a grade is going to make any difference when the current training these days is shit?)

As somebody who works for the Tube, obviously I can't agree with some of the comments throughout your blog, but I can still welcome your view as feedback. But it's not that we on the frontline are useless (though yes, some truly are), but we've whinged, moaned and complained enough ourselves to management that it has gotten to the point where we have no option but to give up.

Best wishes.

 

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