Denial of Service

The phrase Denial of Service (DoS) is nowadays often used in regard to attacks on websites and other internet resources which leaves them unable to respond to valid requests. However, in the UK we have a much older and more common arena for DoS. The rail service. This is a service (and I use the term service in the absense of sense) which regularly suffers from DoS attacks. However, unlike those attacks performed on websites by script kiddies, the rail DoS is usually self inflicted. Ok not usually. Always.

Lets take today for example. Now, I regularly travel to work by train (a combination of bike and train). The timetable for this service (God it is painful to use that word) has just been revised - I think they used the term updated but I think it gives the wrong impression, i.e. one of improvement. And it is quite a substaintial change. Which happened on Monday. So low is my expectation of this service (ahhhhh) that I only noticed this evening that the train was late by a different amount of time than I was expecting (is it actually possible that there is some nasty relativistic process at work here? Is the problem that the time experienced by passengers is not the same as that expereinced by those sat in offices writting the timetable?). I guess one reason I noticed was that I had so much time on my hands, due to the late running of the train, and was able to fully digest the timetable. Perhaps this is what they had in mind. Make the service late so they have the time to enjoy the new timetable. Well at least they are getting the nation reading.

The train itself was over 45 minutes late. Late by an amount greater than twice my journey time. Why was it late? I have no idea. Neither apparently did anyone at Wilmslow station (well Alderley Edge is unstaffed so I rode to Wilmslow for some company). I did ask if they were concerned that they had apparently lost a train but they didn't see this as a problem - maybe they saw it as acceptable loss and these things tend to turn up in the end anyway. Today was by no means atypical. I use a servi..serv....s.. trainline which, for the first half of this year was closed; replaced with a bus service. This bus service was, despite having to negotiate the traffic, far more reliable than the train it replaced. It wasn't just a bus, it was a bus service. The improvements made to line in this time are difficult to see. Sorry, I meant impossible.

Fortunately, although standing around at the station means I can miss my children going to bed, it does mean I get time to think about what action we, the passengers, might take. The obvious one is don't pay. Due to the obsession with understaffing stations, we are often expected to pay on the train. This provides an excellent opportunity to sample the merchandise before handing over your money. And if you don't like the service withhold your money. Or at least some of it. Perhaps tell the conductor that "there will be a delay to the arrival of your money and apologise for any inconvience this causes". If you are ever get challanged as to why you don't already have a ticket just tell them that you didn't want to be so presumptuous as to pressume there would actually be a train. Wouldn't it be great to have a day of action where everyone in the country who uses the train did so, but refused to pay. What on earth could the rail companies do about it?