For 3/4 of a year I’ve commuted from Rickmansworth to central London. On a good day it can be passable and tolerable. On a bad day it can be extremely long, awfully crowded and thoroughly uncomfortable. Now, I’ve commuted from a good few places in London in the past and have become used to busy, basic inner-London commuter trains. However, moving beyond the boundaries of London made me hope that a better commute would accompany the other improvements in living standard. So far I’ve not been impressed.

My feeling is that the service could and should be better. While changing the status quo with large transport operators is unlikely to ever be easy, this does not put me off trying. After all, if we don’t make our grievences known, why should we expect anything to change? Action may not produce quick results, but fighting our corner and arguing for a decent service can only help going forward.

A big part in making an argument is to be informed and empowered. Most commuters may be all too familiar with their own commute but are likely unaware how it compares with commutes on other, similar routes. Perhaps if they did they’d feel all the more compelled to taking action. Many facts and figures that would assist a campaign aren’t made very public friendly, however they are out there if you know where to look.

In this series of blog posts I’m going to try to better empower other commuters to make their views known and hopefully also reveal just how good or bad commuters in Rickmansworth and the local area actually have it.

Looking into the story further, the Londonist website sheds further light onto the details, indicating support for Oyster won’t be quite as universal as might have been hoped as South West Trains isn’t joining in. SWT it seems have their own smart card system in the offing, which they want to stick with rather than Oyster. Hopefully if SWT’s system does take off more widely, a dual-system card will become available, as the Oyster’s ease of use as a single means of bus, tube, tram and some rail travel is simply excellent.

A slight fly in the ointment is that that TfL is shelling out for the installation of machines at national rail stations within London due to the complaints of the cost by the train operators. This means of course public money and or that of the London commuter.

The Londonist highlights problems with the implentation of ticket barriers, which I’ve heard is being a considerable issue at Waterloo at peak times presently. However as they also note use of the swipe points is a more sensible option than full blown barriers. After all, barriers check all tickets are are essentially a replacements to checks on trains or manual checks at a terminus. They are not necessary just solely for Oyster checks. Indeed if anything Oyster works more efficiently with ticket barriers if – and this is the issue at Waterloo I’ve heard – there are sufficient gates for the volumes of passengers passing through.

Although the spread of Oyster to national rail within Greater London has been a long time coming, it will mark another star on Mayor Johnson’s report card when it comes into effect.

December saw what we all hoped would be the turning of a new leaf for the line. Years of engineering would be all but complete and a new timetable would come into effect offering a greatly enhanced number of services. Rejoice! If only it was so…

Engineering works continued over Christmas, leading to our trip to the family being less conveniently timed than we might otherwise have liked. On both legs, either side of New Year, there was slow going out of London as the line continue to be worked on, but this seemed to have been accounted for in the schedule. We returned on the 2nd January and things were looking okay, looking forward to these final works to be complete and still quicker trains to come into effect.

It seems in hindsight, however, that I was for once fortunate in my timing, as less than an hour after passing through Staffordshire a light aircraft tragically crashed into the line with the loss of 3 lives. Accidents like this are thankfully rare (although I can account for many delays due to bridge-strikes). The sequence of events which occured in the following days were less than excusable, however. As the line was being repaired after the plane crash lines came down at Watford for as yet unexplained technical reasons. Yesterday Rugby befell the same fate and today a power cable collapsed on the way out of London. All in all 6-days of delays and cancellations with 70% of Virgin’s services delayed this year.

It’s time like these I feel glad not to have to commute on the line, as anyone who does must be experiencing a hellish time of things so far this week. I’ll be intrigued to find out just why the line has proven so hopelessly unreliable after so much work, however moreover I do hope beyond hope that eventually I might – just might – be able to visit the North West on a weekend – and do so quickly and without delay each way.