The district council has received the following letter covering issues like car parking charges, accessibility and compensation:
Chris White
Councillor for St Albans Central and Clarence Ward, Leader of St Albans District Council
The district council has received the following letter covering issues like car parking charges, accessibility and compensation:
Thank you for posting this – it’s good to see this made public.
What an absolute joke of a response from FCC. Patronising and complete disregard for commuters and the council – it’s disgusting and Neal Lawson is brazen in his response. I’m a Harpenden commuter and have had to learn to suffer the sky high prices and miserably pathetic service FCC offer. I met Neal Lawson not long after he joined and his promises and commitments me then have simply not materialised (I was pretty much lied to by him and his colleague Michelle Smart). I really wish I could write what I feel about him.
And why has he not actually answered any of your questions and simply skirted around them all? This is exactly what I mean about disregard for all.
1. Car parking charges – you ask about peak fares and Mr Lawson rattles on about off peak charges. Absolutely irrelevant. Peak car parking fees have been hiked way above inflation for years – just 5 years ago Harpenden station parking was £5 daily. How can they justify this price hike? It’s nothing short of fleecing the commuter for shareholder benefit
2. What Mr Lawson neglects to mention is the date that Harpenden station will have these facilities. These are many years away and to use this as some sort of benefit is shameful. In any case, this is not an FCC scheme – it is one they have no option to do. I’ll bet that if FCC had the option this would be cancelled.
3. FCC have a track record of burying incidents no doubt to avoid paying compensation. I list of just some of these can be found here: http://ihfcc.weebly.com/index.html. Just recently Harpenden station was completely closed and the FCC website neglected to list any information relating to this incident and in addition to that information at stations and on board were minimal. Here was a clear case of a hidden incident.
4. Again, where is the answer to the question? I don’t care how many more passengers there are in the London and the South East – how many are on the Thameslink line for pities sake? It doesn’t matter how many more trains there are if there is a bigger increase in passengers – it means more overcrowding. As they’ve blatantly avoided answering the question it can only lead one to believe the figures work in their favour, which is – more passengers per train = greater revenue for shareholders. Given FCC’s track record of hiding information on cancelled trains (again found here http://ihfcc.weebly.com/index.html) the bad situation for commuters is made worse and the good situation for shareholders is made better.