Hi there, we know how important it is to give out clear concise information.

We have developed an app for staff to receive information that is station specific to them. The messages are updated within service delivery centres and pushed out through the app this has been rolled out and we are in the process of embedding this.

When we go in to major service disruption, which is normally when services are delayed over 20 minutes ore more, an industry standard called Customer Service Level 2 kicks in. When this happens (and all other operators know we have go into CSL2 disruption because they receive an automated message to say that we have) ticket acceptance on other Train Operating Companies comes into play.

East Midlands trains should accept passengers for Luton and Bedford stations during severe service disruption (we will look at why they didn’t)

We are also looking at developing SMS messages for customers we do have an idea open about this.

If you have any other ideas please feel free to leave them on this site.

Hi there, and thank you for your suggestion

We appreciate that this is a difficult time for many of our customers and no one wants to see an increase in fares.

Fares have always been set against the Retail Price index (RPI), the rise was RPI +1% This forms part of the government’s wider strategy of moving the cost of running the country’s railways away from the tax payer and towards those buying tickets. In the longer-term, the industry is working together to keep on cutting costs as a way of helping to limit future fare rises and offering better value for money for taxpayers.

We do aim to set unregulated fares at a level which encourage people to use our trains and we have kept most of the fares the same or set them even lower this year.

It is worth pointing out that all of the money raised through these fares increases is not kept by the train operators. Train operators also pay the government large premiums for the right to run the rail franchise. Over the length of the franchise, First Capital Connect will pay over £800m.

These funds will pay for, amongst other things, major investment projects such as Crossrail and the Thameslink Programme. The Thameslink programme alone is set to cost over £5.5bn and will see a more reliable route, a massive increase in capacity as well as an entire fleet of brand new trains.

I’m really sorry the amount you pay has increased and I hope this explains why.

If you have any further ideas, please feel free to leave them on this site.

Hi there and thanks for your suggestion. We expect all of our drivers to make regular announcements when we are in service disruption. I will say that when the train is moving the drivers will only make an announcement when they feel it is safe to do so.

It’s a bit of a hard one for us to police to be honest, as we have to be on a train at the right time during disruption to listen to what a driver is or isn’t saying. T

the other thing i will say is it’s very hard sometimes for the drivers to get the information from Network Rail signal box, as the box are so busy fielding calls to trains that are caught up in disruption, sometimes that can be unto 20 or 30 trains they have to call one by one. So sometimes it does take a while for info to get through to the driver.

We do have a service quality team who access, but again they have to be on the right train at the right time. I know you are one of our very valued Twitter followers, can i ask that you keep us informed if you don’t hear announcements during disruption and we can deal with it accordingly.

We do have a Customer Relations Department for general complaints, which your posting does seem to be as we do expect drivers to keep you informed, even if they don’t know how long or what the delay is. Or contact us on twitter to let us know when this doesn’t happen

For any tangible Ideas you might have that we can implement please leave suggestions on this site.

Hi there,

Thanks for your suggestion

First Capital Connect prepares its fleet for winter by carrying out a series of additional maintenance checks in the depot during autumn. Each of our 6 train types requires a slightly different engineering approach to ensure that the heating is fully operational during the colder months.

During the recent cold spell, it has come to light that because of a new issue, on some of our trains the heating is not working effectively. This is more common on the class 319 trains operating between Bedford and Brighton and to a much lesser extent on the class 365 and 321 operating on the Great Northern route.

The additional checks in the autumn specifically test thermostats, heating elements and the rest of the control and protection system. Any components that were found to be defective were repaired, replaced or reset. The work involved was significant and we are confident that any failed units apparent at the time were addressed.

The heating system on the 319 trains includes a safety protection system, this isolates the power supply to the element if they become to hot for an extended period of time. When this occurs the system can only be reset when the train returns to the depot as the reset mechanisms is located on the underframe of the train. The newer class 377’s have a different heating system and can be reset if necessary but from inside the vehicle.

Our engineers are working through the affected vehicles in the fleet during the planned maintenance examinations and when notified of specific problems.

Customers can help our engineers to locate the affected trains sooner by telling us which train they are travelling on if it seems to have had no heating operating. Please Tweet the information firstcc, tell a member of staff or email the Customer Relations team on customer.relations.fccfirstgroup.com

Thank you for your patience at this time

And thanks again for your suggestion, if you have any further ideas please feel free to leave them on this site.

Hi Andy, thanks for your suggestion

We do have contingency plans, these are written in conjunction with Network Rail as of course they own and manage the infrastructure that our trains run on. The problem is when things happen it all depends on the nature of the problem, and to the signalling problems last Monday we couldn’t turn trains around at certain locations because of where the signalling fault happened,

Blackfriars at the moment does not have the signalling equipment in place for us to turn trains there, but it will do next year when the signalling and new track and bays are in place. That’s why we have to turn around at City Thameslink, but this was compounded on the Monday night because we couldn’t use the full length of the platform due to the nature of the signal failure.

It’s a bit like trying to put back together a very very big Jigsaw puzzle when we have problems in the central core or indeed anywhere, especially during rush hours..

If you have any further ideas please feel free to leave them on this site.

Hi there,

Thanks for your suggestion; I can assure you we’re not hiding anything

It’s a balance between detail and readability with having a single route-wide poster. We publish some statistics at a route level and cancellations at a company level to make the poster more readable. Adding more information is likely to make it harder to understand for some customers.

We do record and monitor performance for both the Thameslink and Great Northern routes. We are always happy to provide this information for ad-hoc request. The last two period percentages are 3.31% and 4.26% respectively.

We are currently looking at a project to publish more detailed performance information on our website.

The 5 minute threshold is an industry standard defined by the Department for Transport and reported on across the industry.

The Thameslink route is an industry exception in that Public Performance Measure for punctuality is measured twice for cross-London services: once at the mid-point of either Blackfriars or Farringdon (as you suggest) and then again at destination. This is done, to capture the journey experience of people only travelling into London.

For example a train 6mins late at Blackfriars and 2mins late at Brighton will have one PPM success and one PPM failure so the train will have a PPM of 50% despite reaching its destination within the PPM threshold.

Cancellation figures are also reported in a similar manner with the train effectively considered in two parts.

Consideration is being made of a tighter threshold in future, but this change needs to be standardised across the industry, The Department for Transport and Office of the Rail Regulator define and manage the performance measures.

In recognition of the McNulty report into Rail standards, First Group are committed to releasing additional performance data, and this will be available on all First Train Operating Companies websites in the very near future.

Again thanks for your suggestion if you have any further ideas, please feel free to leave them on this site.

Hi there,

Thanks for your suggestion.

We aim to run all of our train services on time. I can see where you’re coming from on many of your points raised. Train heating has become a real issue, many of the trains we have inherited in our franchise are very old, the heating fails and it’s hard to get replacement parts. Our Engineering team are working to get this fixed.

Just let us know when staff are not being courteous to you, there is no excuse for rudeness and we will address that.

We are really committed to giving you all the information you need when things go wrong. But we do have a period of between 30-60 minutes when we go into major service disruption where our Service Delivery Centres are dealing with the mammoth task of rebuilding the train service, inputting all the details in the Customer Information Systems and talking and liaising with Network Rail about the service we can run, depending on what the infrastructure problems are.

I agree about the truth of delays, sometimes we get a bit lost in train jargon, which is no good to you guys, and we are working with our industry partners about which wording to use across the whole rail network.

We don’t lie to you we tell you what’s wrong, but no everyone understands what signalling problems, overhead line problems etc are.

We don’t want trains delayed at all. It’s not good for our customers, or our staff. It’s causes a headache and misery to everyone.

Thanks you for your very valid points and if you have any other ideas please feel free to leave them on this site.