There are daily complaints about trains in England. Our railways are a joke, our trains never run on time, there are leaves on the line stopping anyone getting home and please, please, nobody mention a millimetre of snow! But...boy can we complain about it. It's in the news, its on the TV, we're mobbing the railway stations and we're vocal about how terrible things are. And even though fares still increase in price and we can't get things running on time, at least train companies know we're pissed off and give us as much information as they can in a clear way.
Not here.
No.
My mum visited and was on a train to Uppsala. It was not leaving the station because of signal failure. I took her off the train and we went to the pub instead. 3 hours later we returned to catch the train, and realised the people on it were the same ones who we'd left 3 hours ago. Those people had sat on that train, with no information given, for 3 hours. With no food, no drink and no knowledge of how long they would be there. And nobody complained!
This week has been an absolute disaster for the train companies. All over Sweden there have been strikes, broken signal systems, fires and burnt out circuits. If you don't believe how bad it's been, take a look at this article from the metro. One spokesperson has helpfully pointed out that Sweden has a "non-robust railway system" NO REALLY? But hey, whatever, stuff breaks and I can deal.
What I hate though is the piss poor information the companies give to travellers. There are 2 companies, SJ and SL. At different points in the week these companies have given different information. When they say there will be replacement busses, they don't say where from (they've started to now, but it's taken them a week.) They also do unbelievably poorly conceived quick fixes, like making a rush hour train terminate at Arlanda airport and having 300 people walk through 4 revolving door systems designed for individual people, a terminal building, a packed arrivals hall and a bus station so narrow they could never have expected such a crowd. Then, just to put the tin lid on it, they send 2 busses to carry all these people.
And that was a nice version of my commute story, I skipped the part where I waited 40 minutes for the train - a train that ran, like all the others, according to no schedule so I just had to turn up at the railway station and hope for the best.
A week on and the companies still haven't got a working replacement system. Perhaps if people were more outraged, demanded their money back, called the complaints line, got angry or did more than just bend over and take it up the arse, perhaps, PERHAPS the companies might have realised they should get their shit together.
Or maybe I'm finding the wrong scapegoat for this. Whatever it is, WOW the train companies here suck balls.
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