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.

Interesting to note in this latest load of verbiage from Merseyrail Towers that they are also apparently claiming credit for keeping their trains running while there was a couple of inches of snow lying on the ground. Well, excuse me for sounding ungrateful, but isn’t that kind of what a modern transport operator should be capable of doing, without expecting to be congratulated for it? Just because all the buses stopped running – in itself  inexcusable – doesn’t mean that we ahould therefore judge Merseyrail as being some kind of great success. They did what they are paid to do.

Talking of paying, I found out last week a little ‘quirk’ of their fare system – you can’t buy a return ticket unless it’s for the same day. I had to travel to London last week, out one day, back the next. I had to buy two singles, so my return journey from home to Liverpool Lime Street to catch a proper train cost £5.50 instead of £3.65. Bloody cheek.

I also saw tonight, while I was sitting waiting at James Street that they have a train called “John Peel”. Personally, I would regard that as the ultimate degradation. If I ever end up with my name on the side of one of their trains after I’m gone, I’ll leave instructions for my estate to sue for defamation of character.

Unless of course the late Mr Peel was regarded as an unreliable sort of person …

“We are well used to dealing with crowds at underground stations.”

This is from a Merseyrail spokesperson, Rudi Boersma, referring to the chaos at James Street yesterday. You can read about the incident here.

… and before I have Merseyrail’s legal team on the blower, this is obviously a joke. This platform is far too clean to be James Street No.2.

Merseyrail have announced record pre-tax profits for last year, of £9m. (source) & (source)

The figure that caught my eye was that they invested a whopping £800,000 of that in improvements over the period. That’s a lot of yellow and black paint!

But then, I thought, I wonder how many passengers use the network, and how much does that turn out to be (roughly speaking) per passenger, over the year?

First of all we need to work out how many trips (approximately) are made over the network on a yearly basis … (source – Merseyside Route Utilisation Strategy, March 2009 – PDF 3MB )

(I’m only including ‘local’ traffic here, the actual passenger figures are higher)

I make that just over 21.9 million trips. Let’s call it 20m to keep it simple.

Assuming that the majority are ‘returns’, that’s 10m people that made a journey to/from work, shopping, court etc etc ….

So they sold (at a very conservative estimate) 10 million return tickets in the period, and invested £800,000 in ‘improvements’. That doesn’t sound quite so good now,does it? 8p each, it works out at.

Still, almost anything that doesn’t run away is yellow and black nowadays, so at least we can see where it went. They could have tried spending some of it on platform 2 at James Street station mind you, which at the moment is a total disgrace.

This photo doesn’t really do the scene at James Street this evening justice. The platform was totally chock full of passengers, and that was BEFORE the train arrived.

Sadly, thanks to taking the photo with a CrapBerry, I missed the best shot as they arriving passengers attempted to squeeze through the waiting throng.

I really should have bought an iPhone!

And the chaos at James Street.

I stood yesterday evening for a couple of minutes in the passageway outside the underground lifts at James Street, and the number of confused passengers was shameful. There is NOTHING to tell people what platform to use, unless you happen to be lost at the same time as a tannoy announcement is made.

It is totally ridiculous. I might try and get a video of it later in the week, if they don’t try and throw me out for being a terrorist!

I’m not entirely au fait with the layout of James Street station, I only use it if I’ve been out for an after-work tipple or two, by which time it’s usually pretty quiet. But I think I might get to know it a bit better over the coming weeks.

It’s like a warren in there!

Mind you, the confusion (not just for little old me) was considerably added to by the almost total lack of any information as to which platform to use for your chosen destination. I had to ask in the end, as did a number of people that I saw.

Ridiculous, and guaranteed to p**s people off.

And the queue for the lifts (one of which was ‘out of service’ when I trundled through) had to be seen to be believed. And that’s with a lot of people still on holiday …