Today’s #CrossBorderRail border station

[jon@gruene.social]

Today’s #CrossBorderRail border station

Tournus

Between Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Auvergne-Rhône Alpes

And yes, each side has its own ticketing, its own reduction cards…

[jon@gruene.social]

SNCF “efficiency”

Rather than check tickets on board a train like a sensible railway (with 1 train manager) instead have 2 staff at narrow ticket gates that cause a queue not only to board but ALSO slow down disembarking passengers because the queue blocks them too

Oh and don’t let passengers use the escalator too

Bunch of idiots

[jon@gruene.social]

I asked an employee why the escalator wasn’t being used. “Complain to SNCF by email” he told me. “Why can’t you take responsibility and act to open the escalator?” I told him.

[jon@gruene.social]

In this mess of a railway, no one is empowered to think, to act, to take responsibility

Passengers crowded into a narrow passageway open access to a working escalator to decrease overcrowding

No way!

Rule says no!

[jon@gruene.social]

Your *job* running a station is to get people to their trains as quickly and painlessly as possible

That’s it

If you’ve built passages too narrow to check tickets there then DON’T CHECK TICKETS THERE

Check on board instead

If your response is “that’s another part of SNCF” well then you’ve buggered up your organisation

[jon@gruene.social]

And if you’re a manager at SNCF and have never seen these problems, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM

Sure, skip the queue with your Carte Carmillon

But if you can’t put yourselves even partially in passengers’ shoes you’re failing at your job

[jon@gruene.social]

And really I’ve travelled on plenty of messed up railways

Most of the time the messed up-ness is due to a lack of resources. There aren’t people or money to do what’s right

That’s not the case for SNCF. There are plenty of people *but for the wrong things*

And no one who has done any process design

[jon@gruene.social]

And I’ve just been told - in all seriousness! - that this ticketing mess in France is all due to

The EU!

Amazing how the EU managed to do this TO FRANCE and not any of the other 24 EU countries that have railways

[jon@gruene.social]

(And I’m probably not the person you ought to try telling this, given I’ve travelled on the railways in ALL of the 25 EU countries that have railways!)