Merseyrail celebrates ten years in operation
was awarded in 2003 to Merseytravel, and Serco and Abellio became 50-50 joint venture shareholders.
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The occasion was marked with the naming of a 507 016 train at Rock Ferry station in the Wirral where the first train to enter service under the present concession arrangements left ten years ago.
Merseyrail’s managing director, Maarten Spaargaren said: ‘Merseyrail has come on a lot over the last ten years and it’s largely down to excellent working relations with Merseytravel and our two shareholders.’
erseyrail recently
celebrated ten years since the 25-year concession
Train websites struggled with rush hour demand during St Jude’s storm
websites were slow or unavailable between 7:00am and midday on the day the storm swept across England and Wales, said website testing and monitoring specialist Key Note. News reports on Sunday October 27th warned commuters of transport chaos for the following morning, but Key Note said many websites failed to keep up with demand due to the influx of commuters trying to access information regarding their route to work. According to Key Note, South West
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Trains had the most severe website performance issues between 06:45 and 08:15 on Monday 28th, with the majority of attempts at accessing the website homepage timing out. This brought the site’s average availability down to just 11 per cent at 7:00am in the morning, meaning that almost 90 per cent of South West Trains commuters were not able to access the site’s homepage.
Southeastern trains also struggled to keep up with demand on its website, with only 62.5 per cent availability at 7:00am on Monday, and an average load time of 25 seconds. National Rail, East Coast and National Express also experienced slow site load times during this period, however Virgin Trains and
ommuters turned to Twitter to gain up-to-date transport information as many train
The Trainline continued to provide a relatively good service online, with The Trainline maintaining 100 per cent availability throughout the disruption. ‘It is worrying to see such poor performance from the train websites when they were most needed during the storm,’ said Robert Castley, performance management specialist at Keynote. ‘Commuters during the morning rush hour were forced to look to alternative sources of information during the chaos, as websites became unresponsive and slow to load, in some cases timing out repeatedly. Left stranded with no answers, this would not only have been inconvenient but in some cases quite distressing.’
He continued: ‘In contrast to the under-performing train websites, social media platforms such as Twitter were fully operational and responsive during Monday’s morning rush hour. Based on the performance stats of Twitter’s homepage, the site was available 100 per cent of the time and the response time was kept under two seconds. It is no wonder that commuters were turning to Twitter for answers to their commuting woes. ‘For the train websites, it is a call to action to improve performance or risk being ignored in favour of more responsive sites,’ concluded Castley.
Travel magazine names East Coast route in its top ten trips
ourism magazine Britain, the official magazine of tourism agency VisitBritain has selected the East Coast cross-border route between Durham and Edinburgh in its Ten Of The Best Railway Journeys colour feature in its latest issue.
T The East Coast Main Line is the only inter-city route to make the
magazine’s top ten. Editor of Britain, Jessica Tooze, said: ‘The journey is filled with thrilling views and beautiful surroundings. It is undoubtedly one of Britain’s best railway journeys.’ Writer Martha Alexander began her description with the famous view of Durham Cathedral – ‘one of the most admired Norman cathedrals in the world’ – from the viaduct high above the city. The route enters Newcastle, ‘crossing the river to take in the city’s industrial glory’, before heading north into ‘rolling, unspoilt Northumbrian countryside’. East Coast head of Marketing, Natalie Cowen agreed the journey offers a unique and memorable travel experience. ‘Our passengers can relax and feel at home while some of Britain’s most wonderful cities, coasts and countryside present an ever-changing vista. More and more people are discovering the train offers a relaxing and more comfortable alternative to driving or flying.’
December 2013 Page 19
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