Transport Focus is monitoring passenger experience before and throughout, with a household ‘omnibus’ survey to gauge mood and opinion before the strikes, feedback from our Transport User Panel, mystery shopper visits to stations and website information reviews. We will use the findings to tackle specific individual issues like a lack of information online or at stations. We will also produce daily summaries to help the railway see how things are going for passengers. We share these with Government, the new Great British Railways transition team, and the rail industry itself.

We will publish these summaries here each day. You can also see a daily update on our dedicated rail strikes page.

If you need an alternative, accessible format please email communications@transportfocus.org.uk.

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One approach that some Government surveys had already been moving towards before the pandemic was ‘push to web’. This involves making initial contact by letter and encouraging people to take part in an online survey (although other ways of taking part are sometimes offered when reminders are sent). We decided to trial a push to web approach in the autumn of 2020 as it wouldn’t be affected by changing restrictions and it would allow us to contact a representative sample of households across Great Britain.

The report below provides details on how the survey was carried out, the responses we received and what we learnt from the trial.

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In order to help refine the creative and ensure that it was prompting the right reactions and
driving the right behaviours we shared five posters and an animation in the early stages of
development with our community.

The material was tested in March 2021 and feedback was taken on board before the final
campaign launched in May 2021.

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Every year Transport Focus speaks to almost 50,000 passengers in England and Scotland, with the Bus Passenger Survey (BPS), to produce a picture of satisfaction with bus travel. On the whole passengers are pretty happy – around nine out of ten are satisfied with their most recent journey. But beneath that headline figure the survey provides a wealth of data that is used by the industry to improve services.

Transport Focus will meet and talk through the latest results with many bus companies and authorities who then set out proposed action plans. The meeting with Blackpool Transport was different. They wanted a fresh understanding of their passengers’ experience, so took their results over four years. As well as looking at overall satisfaction, they analysed each aspect of the journey in terms of the change in the satisfaction categories. Details emerged of shifts between ‘fairly’ and ‘very’ satisfied and in dissatisfaction, highlighting passengers’ reactions to service delivery over time. A narrative against each topic told the story, leading to ‘red-amber-green’ status that was summarised across the results, informing these discussions.

The spotlight for Blackpool Transport is now on value for money and their July Board meeting particularly explored fares for young people. The graphs showed how passengers under 35 years old had falling satisfaction levels with value for money, but those over 35 had a growing level of satisfaction. This has been used to design their 2020 fares, product and marketing strategy. Finance and Commercial Director, James Carney, said; ‘this approach has turned data into knowledge and led to active consideration of our options and plans for improvement’.

The team there had really crawled all over the BPS results and set out exactly what they had learned over the years and what they are going to do about it: Look at the Blackpool Transport BPS Report 2018 to examine the detail.

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That’s the message from tourists and regular users on the Lakes Line, who also feel that their trust in Northern will take time to rebuild.

Widespread disruption on the Lakes Line got even worse following the introduction of a new timetable last month, leaving passengers with no Northern trains for more than three weeks.

Independent watchdog Transport Focus has been pushing for a return of reliable services and compensation. As part of this it has collected feedback from passengers to show the real-life impact of disruption. Download this report below with some of the initial findings.

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These proposals were presented to key stakeholders at an event in London in July  2015, and are detailed in the document available here. Following a period of consultation and feedback (collected via an online questionnaire) we have now published our feedback report. 

We thank those organisations that provided feedback on our proposals. We have taken care to balance the needs of the varied users of NRPS and the imposition it makes on passengers to achieve what we intend to be a better survey for passengers and stakeholders in the future.

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Tired and distressed, they asked the station staff what to do. They had an advance ticket for a specific train only, and worried they’d have to stump up for a whole new ticket. Instead, Virgin Trains staff at Liverpool Lime Street not only authorised their tickets for the next train, but also upgraded them to first class. They were overjoyed – all the stress taken away with one simple act. A textbook example of how to deliver outstanding customer service.

“The upgrade was such a lovely gesture and literally reduced us to joyous tears as our spirits were lifted and we realised all the hassle was nearly over. I’ve never felt so indebted to members of staff and hope they feel as valued by their company as they made us feel.”

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Transport Focus reviews the information and issues that passengers raise through its handling of individual complaints so that it can identify trends or issues which affect rail passengers.  This helps to shape the work that the organisation does in influencing change within the rail industry.

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