The Friends of the Far North Line
Cairdean Na Loine Tuath
the campaign group for rail north of
Inverness - lobbying for improved services for the local user, tourist and freight
operator
At the end of March I was lucky enough to correspond with a computer. Having travelled from Glasgow to Swansea and back, and intending to write something about the train between Swansea and Crewe, I went onto the Trainline website to check some details. In passing I noticed that the distance given on the website for Swansea to Manchester (the train's final destination) was 147 miles. Having lived in Cardiff, and travelled frequently to Swansea many years ago, this distance seemed much too short. I searched for "distance Swansea to Manchester". This is clearly a difficult question as three random entries on the resulting page show:
This set me thinking about our railway, so I did a similar search for Wick to Inverness - sure enough the Trainline informs you that it is a journey of 78 miles. Worse than that, it states that there are "normally 8 trains per day travelling from Inverness to Wick" (Actually that's 4 in each direction).
So I found a contact form on the website and sent this:
I'm the convener of the campaign group for the Far North Line, the Friends of the Far North Line (www.fofnl.org.uk). When checking journey distances on the website we can see that you use 'as the crow flies' numbers. Inverness-Wick by train is 162 miles but 78 as the crow flies. The journey time is 4hr 22min. The train journey is slow but not 18 mph!!
A similar pointless distance of 147 miles is given for Swansea to Manchester. Why do you not give the distance by train? The information is readily available from Network Rail.
I fear that no-one will reply to this - please make me pleasantly surprised!
After a few hours I was delighted to receive a reply - but quite disappointed once I read it:
Dear Ian,
Thank you for contacting Trainline. I hope you are doing well.
In order for me to assist you, I request you to kindly elaborate your concern so I may check this for you in the best possible manner.
Awaiting your response.
Kind regards,
Eliphia - Customer Service Representative
Now, doubting the intelligence of "Eliphia", I wrote a longer message [reading it back now I fear it's tone was a tad patronising]:
Dear Eliphia,
Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.
The reason for my message was that anyone looking for information on the Trainline website is likely to believe what they read and to draw conclusions from it. In normal everyday conversation when we talk about how far away something is, we are referring to the distance you have to travel to get from your starting point to your destination.
There are many places in the UK, and indeed probably most other countries, where the land route between places is much longer than the actual distance they are from each other. Wherever there is a wide river meeting the sea there are places which may only be one or two miles apart but the distance by road or rail is far more, unless there is a bridge.
People using the Trainline website are planning journeys. They will look at how long their journey is and how long the train will take. If they look at the two figures the website gives for each journey they will see how long the train takes to do the journey, and they'll see how far apart the places are 'as the crow flies', i.e. the straight line distance.
On the railway from Inverness to Wick for example, they will see that the places are 78 miles apart, yet the train takes an average of 4h 22m - that is an average speed of around 18 mph. No trains on the UK network travel that slowly yet the Trainline website makes it look as though they do. The actual distance the train travels is 174 miles, not 78. OK, it's a pretty slow train, but not 18 mph!
We try to encourage people to use trains, but your figures are likely to give people a completely wrong impression and put them off.
As far as I can see, all the distances given on the website are 'as the crow flies' - a completely pointless number, probably gathered from a Google search. Network Rail has all the distances available, why don't you just use those so that people know how far they will really be travelling?
For a hilarious example try this: Sheerness to Shoeburyness by train. 6 miles apart, typical train journey is around 3 hours.
I hope you now understand what I was trying to say, and I hope I haven't laboured the point too much! Please let me know if you still need clarification.
Best wishes, Ian
Undeterred by my tone, "Eliphia" replied the next day with this masterpiece:
Dear Ian,
Thank you for response & valuable insights on our website.
We comprehend your findings and observation and would like to apologize for the inconvenience you faced while trying to purchase your tickets with us.
I'd like to inform you that Trainline is a ticket retailing company that sells tickets on behalf of the train operating companies. The fares, ticket types, journey durations are solely decided by UK Rail Industry & respective train operating companies.
Owing to the same, I will definitely pass on your valuable feedback in regards to transparency as we do want our customers to use our services without being hassled. It is our constant endeavor to meet and exceed our customer's expectations to make our App/Website more user friendly. I sincerely hope you will give us another opportunity to serve you better in the future.
We thank you for your kind understanding and apologize for any miscommunication from our end.
Kind regards,
Eliphia- Customer Service Representative
Apart from laughing at the American spelling of 'apologise' and 'endeavour', and the fact that the computer thinks they only have one customer ("exceed our customer's expectations"), my main objection to this nonsense is the cheeky sign-off: "Eliphia- Customer Service Representative". It would be better for the Trainline's credibility if it had been honest enough to write something like "You will appreciate that we are saving money by using AI to deal with all customer enquiries."
The Trainline's view of the importance of dealing with the public could not be clearer. And their use of some automated distance query, to a database of "as the crow flies" distance figures, shows breathtaking incompetence. How could anyone think that telling customers Sheerness and Shoeburyness are 6 miles apart serves any useful purpose?
I read the second reply on the train to Inverness whilst travelling to a ScotRail meeting. I described the correspondence to a ScotRail official who was as surprised and disappointed as I was. They said they would get in touch with the Trainline to try and get it changed.
There is of course a serious point in this article, and the previous one - in the mad dash to save money by having passengers do everything online, service to the public takes a hit. Not everyone wants to use computers, tablets and phones, and in any case these may be temporarily unavailable mid-journey. And as this story of lamentable AI shows, computer output is only as good as its human design and input. Alienating passengers is never a good idea and in many cases may deter people completely from using the railway.
I hope that by the time you read this the Trainline's nonsense will have been removed.