Transport Focus has been reviewing the online information available to rail passengers in the run up to this week\u2019s strikes affecting many train companies in England.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad to say that we\u2019ve found good practice in a number of places. Overall, though, the information is frustratingly in need of \u2018sharpening up\u2019 to make it as simple as possible for passengers to make informed decisions about what they do or don\u2019t do.<\/p>\n
On the good practice front we felt\u2026<\/p>\n
South Western Railway, Southeastern and West Midlands Trains continued to provide clear, easy to find and follow information
\nGreat Western Railway provided good information about Cheltenham services on strike days.<\/p>\n
Where could things have been better?<\/p>\n
Previous use of graphics to summarise the impact on different dates seems to have dwindled. It\u2019s a good \u2018at a glance\u2019 indicator of the impact, pointing up where passengers should delve further into the detail to see exactly how it will affect them. We\u2019ve highlighted issues to train operators and others where we found them. It\u2019s good to see that Chiltern Railways, Greater Anglia, TransPennine Express and West Midlands Trains improved their information as a result.<\/p>\n We will be looking at information again ahead of Saturday\u2019s strike and pressing for improvements if needs be. In the meantime, we encourage train operators and others to keep sense checking if the information they are providing about strike impacts is as clear as it possibly can be.<\/p>\n The post Rail strikes: improving information for passengers<\/a> appeared first on Transport Focus<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Transport Focus has been reviewing the online information available to rail passengers in the run up to this week\u2019s strikes affecting many train companies in England. I\u2019m glad to say that we\u2019ve found good practice in a number of places. Overall, though, the information is frustratingly in need of \u2018sharpening up\u2019 to make it as simple as possible for passengers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2654,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions\/2654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMaking information prominent on website homepages seems to have slipped a bit from earlier strikes. Make it simple for people to work out what\u2019s going on.
\nSome unaffected operators fall into the trap of assuming people know they will be running a full, or near full, service. Intending passengers will<\/em> wonder, so why leave them to wonder? Alerting passengers to the less good situation elsewhere is important too of course.
\nWhile some websites were clear about when strike timetables would be showing in journey planners, others were vague \u2013 asking passengers to keep checking and revisiting.
\nWhile many people will stay away today and Saturday, some have no option but to battle through. Helping those passengers find alternatives \u2013 rail, bus, coach \u2013 would be useful. Some do this, but it could be more consistent across operators.
\nA lot of good information on refunds was available, but having direct links to refund pages was inconsistent. Just make it easy for people.<\/p>\n