OK, so I’ve slightly altered Charles Wentworth Dilke’s saying, but I would so dearly love to know how Merseyrail (and presumably the other train operators) arrive at their PPM performance figures.
Tonight is the second night this week (and it’s still only Wednesday) that I’ve had my journey home ruined because one of Merseyrails 30 year-old piles of scrap wasn’t able to limp from one station to the next. Stuck at Birkenhead Borth on Monday night waiting for a train because the one I should have been travelling on had ”technical difficulties” and then stranded at James Street this evening because of the same sorry excuse. And it’s not like these are isolated incidents … anyone care to examine the Merseyrail Twitter feed to see just how often their trains are cancelled or severely delayed on the lines I have the blessing to have no need to travel upon?
Perhaps Jane is right – the reason they’ve apparently been spending so much on their stations recently is so we all have somewhere nice(ish) to sit while they try to find a train that still works.
And all this on the day that a Google Alert for “Merseyrail” threw up another of their sanctimonious press-releases about how sodding reliable they are. The internet is littered with these objectionable documents, normally a few every week. Either the figures are questionable, or we should have real worries about the state of the remainder of the countries rail services.
