The date is 31st December 2018 - New Year's Eve - and a problem has occurred on the busy line between Southend and London Liverpool Street. A replacement bus service has been 'arranged'. This is where the fun begins:
At Southend Airport (where I started my journey after a flight from Switzerland), there was no advice about how long a bus journey might take - and certainly no advice about taking the alternative rail route from Southend Victoria - a bus ride away.
From Southend Airport to Liverpool Street takes 58 minutes, and costs nearly £17.
From Southend Victoria to Fenchurch Street takes 63 minutes, and costs the same, plus a short bus ride. Read on, and see which would have been the better choice ...
In the circumstances, the jobsworth in the ticket cabin could have made the choices a lot clearer. Instead, he doled out the tickets at full price.
The bus then turned up. A standard red double-decker, with no special provision for airport travellers. No assistance to disabled passengers (my wife has just had a replacement knee operation), and most had to lug their cases upstairs.
The uncommunicative driver then set off, and spend the majority of the journey map-reading from a computer printout he held in his left hand. Unbelievable? I was sitting in the very front seats, and have a high-res video of him struggling to manipulate the steering wheel, the map, and his other controls. When darkness fell, he just switched on the interior lights so he could carry on reading his map.
Clearly the railway company had not bothered to check on whether their sub-contractor (actually, Abellio, who have a majority ownership of the Greater Anglia outfit) who ran the buses on the behalf had route knowledge.
At one point, in some forgettable place in Essex, the driver took a wrong turning, and added 15 minutes to our journey.
The total journey time? Over 2 and a half hours - on a packed London bus, with passengers standing.
We heard that one of the 'coaches' had not turned up - so this was a skeletal service. Every operator involved was clearly on the make, and the 'customers' (as they like to call us) were pawns in their cash-saving game.
Dereliction of duty? - Here is the list, and I hold 'Greater Anglia' (as they like to call themselves), guilty on each count:
- Failure to advise 'customers' of the options for travel available to them
- Failure to engage a bus operator who could provide a satisfactory vehicle, given the time of the journey, and the amount of luggage that would inevitable be boarding at an airport
- Failure to engage a bus operator that could employ drivers with adequate route knowledge
- Failure to engage a bus operator that could employ drivers who would drive with due care and attention (ie without a map in their left hand for the bulk of the journey)
- Failure to engage a bus operator that could employ drivers who knew that standing passengers were not permitted on certain roads on the route
This is the most cynical dereliction of duty I have seen in compiling this blog.