Heathrow Express…deterioration?

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  • rferguson
    Participant

    I use the Heathrow Express weekly and used to absolutely sing its praises. As soon as anyone would ask for advice on the best way to get from London to Heathrow or vice versa i’d in a heartbeat recommend the HEX.

    It was quick, pleasant, friendly staff, no stress, reliable.

    Oh how that has changed since the service switched operators.

    My biggest gripes:

    1) The regular use of four car train sets. This used to be a regular occurrence during off-peak periods. Weekends, school holidays etc. Now I am finding even in peak periods Monday – Friday HEX are using a mix of four and eight car train sets. If you end up on a four car it is standing room only and frankly as uncomfortable as the tube (albeit for a shorter period of time).

    If HEX want to continue this kind of operation they should re-configure the seating in the train cars to accommodate more seated passengers. Get rid of the four-block front/rear facing sets and install more ‘bench style’ seats a la tube.

    And get rid of the ridiculous ‘BusinessFirst’ cars, especially on the four train sets. When there is a handful of people in one car and hundreds rammed like sardines in the other three well it just doesn’t make sense.

    2) The ridiculous ticket barriers at Paddington. The most poorly thought out design ever. I imagine to cut costs the operator switched from the old process of train staff selling/checking tickets onboard to installing automatic gates. Quite simply there are not enough of them. At Paddington you can have hundreds of passengers arriving on an incoming train and a significant amount attempting to board an outbound train. At the Paddington end of the station there is a sum total of five gates (there are also two at the other end but 80% of people seem to be coming via Paddington station). The ticket machines accept a mixed mode of methods – old fashioned tickets inserted, QR readers for mobile phone tickets. And you get a load of people standing in front of the gate with all their luggage faffing around opening up their phone or completely lost at what to actually do with their ticket. Gone are the days when you could make a run for your train. And on occasion i’ve waited longer to enter the ticket barriers than my actual journey has taken.

    3) the conditions of the trains. It’s a bonus if you find one with a working loo. During the summer it was commonplace for the air conditioning to not be functioning.

    4) operational reliability. This morning my service was cancelled due to ‘driver shortage’. When I then went onto the HEX app to take a look there were in fact around five cancelled services between 07:00-10:30 due to the same issue. I acknowledge that could amount to just one driver short but surely they must have a system of standby?

    On the flipside, it has to be pointed out that Heathrow Express offers more promotional fares than they used to. But I would definitely not be so quick to recommend them anymore unless you were able to take advantage of one of these promo fares.

    5 users thanked author for this post.

    Raffles99
    Participant

    The trains will be only be here for another 4 weeks or so.

    In December they are being scrapped and refurbished 2015-2017 commuter trains introduced.

    These are Great Western rolling stock (who now run the service, remember) – scrapping the current trains allows for the demolition of the Old Oak Common depot for HS2.

    3 users thanked author for this post.
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