Arriva Strikes Again

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CrossCountry Trains’ Twitter feed recently claimed that a  “recent survey commissioned by CrossCountry shows First Class is more productive for business travellers (http://bit.ly/1stclassxc).”  The link seems to be broken (the CrossCountry website is terrible) so I don’t know how the survey was conducted, but I’m not surprised that First Class is more productive than their Standard Class.  Anything would be, frankly.

I took the above photo of Standard Class on my way home on Saturday.  I could have photographed any number of the empty seats, and the picture would have been similar.  The fact that there were free seats will come as a shock to some, but don’t get too excited because it was quite late at night.  It’s the amount of litter I want to highlight (just be thankful I spared you the pool of vomit outside one of the – closed – toilets).

Worryingly, I understand that this is not an unusual experience.  The rumour in the rail industry is that Arriva have avoided linking their name with their CrossCountry franchise because of the poor image Arriva Trains Wales has.  I understand that this poor image also stems from overcrowding, and problems with litter and one wonders why they spent the money on rebranding rather than employing a cleaner or two.

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