Thursday 15 November 2007

Fun stats

These are statistics relating to FGW's first year (April 2006-April 2007) of the Greater Western franchise. Just a bit of fun.


Our customers

Students/leisure travellers aged 18 to 24 - 6.5%
Leisure travellers aged 25 to 54 - 15.8%
Families with children - 10.5%
Business travel - 24.5%
Regular commuters - 33.2%
Retired - 9.5%
(figures based on percentage of journeys)

Our network
Number of stations called at - 276
Number of stations operated - 210
Number of services a week - 9,079
Number of staff - 4,400
Number of depots managed - 7
Number of high speed carriages - 494
Number of other carriages - 282

Our passenger journeys
Annual passenger journeys - 75.8 million
Weekly passenger journeys - 1.4 million
Average journey length - 44.6 miles

Growth in past year
Passenger kilometres - 7%
Passenger journeys - 4.3%

Busiest stations
StationWeekdaySaturdaySunday
London Paddington 260,000 150,000 100,000
Reading 55,000 35,000 20,000
Bristol Temple Meads 22,000 16,000 11,000

Catering
Litres of tea & coffee consumed - 890,332 per annum
Litres of mineral water consumed - 400,292 per annum
Litres of beer consumed - 298,000 per annum
Litres of wine consumed - 55,000 per annum
Sandwiches consumed - One million per annum

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice stats, pity no-one in head office would think to circulate them to the staff. As someone who poured a large proportion of the coffee, it'd be nice to know...

Anonymous said...

I decided to re-post a new comment I left on an older posting in the blog, Apologies if you read it before...

The panicked recruitment and training of staff of all front-line grades in FGW in my humble opinion is down to a macho approach taken after the franchise to all administrative posts.

The priority to the company seemed to be a total re-organization of ALL management and administrative grades. As a newcomer, I looked on with horrified amazement as this resulted in a HUGE cluster f*ck, with nobody in effect running the company, as most managers were either 1, new to their jobs, 2. desperately worried about keeping their jobs or 3. in jobs that they knew were not going to be around much longer, so why bother.

This attitude came across very loud and clear to staff, which accompanied with a very macho approach to link negotiation, destroyed a lot of goodwill. Which was a pity, because as a newcomer to the railways just before the franchise, I think that it's a great job, and compares very favorably with the real world!

Anyway, getting back on track, as a result of middle-management basically disappearing for all intents and purposes from the front line, staff who were good were not praised, staff who were crap were not "encouraged", and those who needed either a carrot or a stick to do their job effectively got neither.

The other result from this experiment in "management without action" was that it was nobody's problem to mention staff shortages creeping up, so for all intents and purposes, there was no recruitment as no middle manager wanted to be the one seen to complain that their depot was not waving but drowning. (I know this, I spent two years looking at the job sheets - or lack of them). When these jobs did eventually appear, they were put forward in panic mode, with fast-tracked (i.e. shortened) training for the unfortunates selected.

I don't know how many of the upper echelon that are now gone were responsible for this, but the layer of middle management are now getting a prod to get out there and be seen again - and not before time. (I went for one period of 8 months during which I saw my manager twice - and one of those they were in civvies on a night out).

The only down-side of this is they are interfering in jobs that they don't understand, and making twats of themselves "correcting" staff for things that are not issues (i.e. not restocking 1st class trollies on a Friday night for Monday morning - there is a reason nobody does this, it's because there is no bloody point - the trolley gets stripped over the weekend, and anyway, go away and read the catering control manual, it says to strip the trolley on a Friday night) and ignoring major problems, like the lazy buggers on buffets that do not report broken fridges or do proper temperatures, or the 1st class hosts that won't take a trolly out or think the train ends at the end of the buffet and never go into standard, even when told to.

There are some staff that can be left alone, and some staff that need a manager sitting on their train 24/7. I know who they are, the managers MUST know who they are, but there is a certain element of picking easy targets - and it's not because the union will whine either.

And if the front-line staff see their managers avoid confrontation with the sick, lame and lazy of the depot or station, they are going to avoid confrontation also, be that with the so-called colleague who is not doing their job, or the passenger that is making their fellow-passengers journey a misery.

It's a pity, as it is a great job, and believe me, for what you are asked to do, good money!

Anonymous said...

Erm those stats are accessible to anyone.

http://firstgreatwestern.co.uk/Content.aspx?id=1180

Was in the first year review.

Anonymous said...

So any insights into the joys on today's trains. A "train swap" at Paddington and emergency works everywhere from PAD to OXF?

Anonymous said...

Train Swap = something broke on one and it had to be replaced. 35 year old mechanical objects do break occasionally, sorry and all that.

Emergency works = see above.

Sorry, sometimes sh1t happens.