First capital connect from Denmark Hill - getting beyond ridiculous. Health and safety risk?

[youandiaredominoes]

I'm sure it's been mentioned before on the forum but the First Captial Connect trains from Denmark Hill to St Pancs/ west hampstead/Luton in the mornings are terrible.

They are consistently late which is perhaps not a surprise. The real problem I have is that the carriages are crammed to the max in the mornings. It's getting ridiculous now and I don't understand how FCC can continue to get away with providing a service like this.

Lately I've experienced a few arguments between passengers - often about people refusing to move down or out of the way or for accidentally knocking into someone. Also, what really winds me up is when passengers have no awareness of other passengers who want to get on and don't move down the carriages. It's kind of understandable that people can get so irate when the carriages are quite full and people have little consideration for fellow passengers. What if there was a more serious incident - a fight, a crash or a breakdown on a very hot day?

I'm not surprised FCC haven't done anything about it - they don't appear to care about their customers but surely us commuters can ply some pressure on them?

Anyone experience the same as me?

[Red_Cat]

Yes I agree it is not pleasant travelling on those trains these days. It didn't used to be like this but seems to becoming an increasingly sardine-like experience and people are certainly getting tetchy as they try and cram on, you can't always be certain of actually getting on. Just very recently they never, ever seem to be on time either. Must say I haven't actually complained to FCC but was thinking only yesterday of doing so, must get round to finding out how to do that...

[El Pibe]

Yeah, I have to ask people most mornings and have recently increasingly received tuts or sucked teeth.

It makes me want to kill people, but I've yet to see anything actually bubble up to genuine aggravation.

It is a pretty busy service but compared to some routes I know of its not that bad yet. Plus it's a very long train so short of new carriages with few/narrow seats I'm not sure how it'll improve.

[RichJ]

I think trying to even out the gaps between trains would help. Having no trains between the 7.37 and the 8.04 seems crazy at that time of the morning and makes the 8.04 absolute carnage.

[KidKruger]

It's down to the people and the people only, IMO.

If you are trying to get on a busy train you will almost always have to ask people to move down the train.

If you're lucky, the person at the front of that line of people acting oblivious to the carnage at the door will move down a bit. But the people in between are not going to ask those in front of them to move up - it's not for their benefit so why would they ask strangers to move along the carriage for someone else. They won?t.

So it's down to you, it's your ass, your job, your problem.

So you try and do it nicely, ask people to move down.

Nothing.

Ask again with a double-please.

Someone halfway down the half-empty carriage, looks round in a "Oh, what was that ?" kinda way, but never quite makes eye contact with you. Because they don't really care.

So you try squeeze on and people get p1ssed-off.

You can see space down the carriage.

You gotta make a choice. Step off and hope for better luck on the next train when the platform crowd has increased, or try get people to move up so that more of you on the platform can get on and take up the space that's clearly there.

What will your boss say about another late arrival, another train excuse.

So you squeeze past a couple of people and get dirty looks, tuts, tooth-sucking and perhaps a comment like ?no need to push?.

Yes, there fecking well IS the need to push, so do one or move up the carriage next time.

Generally if there?s clearly space on the train and the above efforts have failed, I politely say the train won?t move until the door can close and the door cannot close because I am not on the train yet so if folks could all move along a half step we can all be on our way.

Massively unpopular, but you either wanna get to work or not.

[maxxi]

Don't ask, tell. Pick on the one with the gap in front of them and make sure you single them out and that everyone knows it - "Hey! Hey you in the shoes! Move down! Move down the train so we can get on!" Makes everyone else look at the non-mover like the potential delay is gonna be their fault.

[JohnL]

I'm usually on that train and people have had to ask the crowd to move down at Denmark Hill recently.

Don't know what happened to the train to make it more crowded and I'm actually factoring in the

lateness of the 8:01 from Peckham Rye into my day. Sometimes I get a seat at Elephant (so a lot

of traffic between Denmark Hill and Elephant).

I don't mind moving down - maybe people tut because they can't move down until the rest do, or they

remember happier days of glorious space :).

[Worker]

I'm feeling your pain, but riddle me this: you're mid-aisle, there's some space, people are approaching from both directions, to which direction do you proceed? You pack tight left, but the person directly to the right of you doesn't follow, so the people on the left think you're a knob. Ditto to the right. It's tough.

So I just leave at 7am and spread out over two or three seats.

[KidKruger]

That's what I mainly do too Worker.

This morning I got the 8.19 which is a bit late for me. Having stepped off the train at E&C so people could get off quickly and unhindered, some tool elbowed me on his way out the door - presumably to say I didn't step off quickly enough ?

Dunno, but I'll be taking a chainsaw in my bag tomorrow so I can chop his elbows off and stuff them up his nose.

[El Pibe]

My new technique is to bang loudly on the window by the gap where the aforementioned someone pretends they didn't hear or it's somebody else's problem, and shoutly loudly demanding the carriage to shame the person, whom I pointing at very clearly and cannot be oblivious to the racket, to bloody well move and stop selfishishly ensuring that everyone but them is suffering.

It has yet to fail, though I've certainly received dagger-eyes from the person I shamed and weirdo-alert-eyes from basically everyone else on the carriage.

I've ceased to care though.

There was a time when I never said boo to a goose you know!