The Golden Whistles
Incidents involving passengers taken ill are a major cause of delay to operators. Dan Tall, Head of the Network Rail and Southeastern joint performance team, told the Golden Whistles conference about the importance of having a clear strategy to deal with such delays. Since April 2016 the industry has seen over 15,000 ill passenger incidents which have caused over a million delay minutes, at an estimated cost to the industry of £20 million. The key here is to work out how to care for passengers while keeping the railway operating.
The Rail Delivery Group’s Planning and Performance Forum was challenged by the National Task Force to review all train operators’ policies for ill passenger incidents. While all operators had a policy, Mr Tall says the lack of consistency was concerning, with some companies not taking the issue as seriously as others.
If fellow passengers see someone who is ill on board, the most likely outcome is for the passenger alarm to be pulled, which could well bring the train to a stand. Not only does this have a major effect on performance, but it leads to the possibility of passengers egressing the train outside a station, which could have even greater knock-on e…
