The Elusive Fish — Creative Services

Close to six hours on a train to nowhere and all I have is a renewed understanding of the importance of a crisis communications plan. Heck, the importance of a plan, never mind communicating it.

Friday I had a heck of a lot of work to get done here at the home office. I may work all hours of the day and night but my clients are generally on a nine to five, Monday through Friday schedule. So that’s why I abandoned the longstanding agreement I have with my body over leading a sedintary lifestyle and dashed my way along the PATH, through the station and up three flights of stairs to catch the 1:43 train out of Union.

I slipped onto the train mere moments before the doors closed. I was a smelly sweaty mess, but the upshot of my mad dash was that I’d be able to get started almost an hour sooner than if I had taken the bus. Or at least I would have, had the train not ground to an absolute halt just shy of Mimico.

The first announcement from the train was a little confused. Something had fallen on the tracks and we’d have to stop until it was cleared. A few minutes later the bad was delivered a little more clearly. A freight train had derailed and was blocking most of the tracks.

Ugh. Looks like the train would either have to back up far enough to switch to a different track or if the way was completely impassable I’d end up on a bus afterall. Only, the train just continued to sit. After close to an hour of sitting, the word came down that another train was sitting on the rails behind us and we were pinned in. We couldn’t move until that train moved.

That’s when a lady on my car lost it and slammed the emergency passenger assist strip. She wanted off the train and she wanted off right now. When the conductors arrived, she explained the reason for her anxiousness. She had a flight to Vancouver out of Hamilton airport scheduled to depart at 5pm. The conductors patiently explained to her that every policy and regulation they have prevents them from opening the doors and letting her off. They could be liable if she injured herself on the edge of the tracks, or god forbid got hit by another train. She pointed out that the doors didn’t open onto another track, and that a small open field clearly led to the backs of some warehouses, a small shopping plaza and then the road. If any of them wanted to escort her to the edge of the field, fine, but just let her off. No - head office wouldn’t allow it they said. ‘Can you check with head office?‘, she asked, ‘I have a flight.’

‘We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to be moving soon‘ was all they were able to respond with. Shortly after the conductors stepped on to the next car, she and her friends forced the door and were off and on their way across the field, smiling and waving to the rest of us on the train.

That’s pretty well when the conductors started to lose any authority they may have held on to.

Word began to filter through the train that another train had moved into position behind the one that was blocking us, further pinning us in. While the official announcements kept using words like ‘shortly‘ or ‘maybe another half-hour‘ the bits the passengers were overhearing from the conductors were more like hours.

The other passengers on my car, emboldened by the first lady’s dash for freedom, smashed open the emergency release and forced the door open. Twenty some folks began dashing across the fields towards the warehouses. The conductor came rushing to our car, but at that point had no chance of stopping the flood of people. The other cars started emptying out into my own at first thinking it was an orderly departure, but soon becoming excited to learn it was a jail break.

Time passed. The media arrived at the highway’s edge to film us stuck on the train. More than half the passengers had made a dash for it. Continued announcements to please stay on the train and that we’d be moving soon. Word made its way back to the train that the warehouse owners had apparently called the police and that citations for tresspassing were being handed out, so if you were to make a run for it, scale the 10′ high fence to avoid the cops. And at long last the train began to lurch its way backwards.

“We are unsure if we will be stopping at Exhibition or if we will be returning to Union” was the first series of announcements. Then came the word “We will be returning to Union at which time all West bound trains will be out of service. Please depart the train. We do not have answers as to your next course of travel. Customer service will be providing you with answers. Go to customer service.”

And so, amidst announcements from the conductors “There is no more westbound service, get off the train“, the few hundred people still remaining on the train emptied into a station that was an utter madhouse. It was rush hour by this point and the station was filled with thousands of people stuck. I forced my way through the crowd to reach customer service … a little office capable of holding maybe a dozen people in line. The way was barred by staff and a crowd of maybe 50 some odd people trying to hold one on one discussions. I’d edged my way almost up to a staff member when suddenly she began shouting “Track 2 … the train will be travelling West to Hamilton making all stops”

What the…? So I made an about face and rushed back to, sure enough, the same train I’d just stepped off of.

Total time spent on a train: 5hrs 20+min

Some general kibitzing:

• After our train stopped, why, oh why, did you keep sending trains down the line only be stopped? There are dozens of tracks where these trains could have safely been routed onto at Union. We could have backed up, been off the train in under a half hour.
• Don’t send 500+ people into a crowded station to try and communicate with a handfull of staff at customer relations. Okay, maybe your conductor is not a communicator or there are union or bureaucratic reasons why only customer service can deal with these issues. Fine. Send someone from customer service up to the train and stick them on the radio.
• After sitting for over an hour, hearing “we hope to move shortly” for the third or fourth time is hardly reassuring. On the flip side, absolute pronouncements that turn out to be false are even more frustrating. Telling everyone there would be no further westbound travel and then five minutes later reversing that was not good. I can’t tell you the number of people I saw on the highway, crowded into taxi cabs and very visably cursing as our westbound train went flying past.
• Is there no plan to provide alternative transportation in the event of an extrodinary circumstance? Our train was in a fortunate position in that there were no major obsticals between us and a place where busses could have come to take us to our destinations. Why were no busses sent? Maybe there was a good reason. I wouldn’t know because the only thing being communicated was that they were sorry for the inconvenience and we’d be moving shortly.

So my free advice to GO Tranist:

Establish clear lines of communication between all parties and departments.
Provide full information and be completely transparent. If your passengers are going to be stuck on a train for over an hour - tell them that the moment it becomes clear that’s the case. If you’re rerouting a train, communicate to the passengers what comes next while they’re still ON the train.

Have a plan for getting people to their destinations in the event of unforseen circumstances
You are a transportation service… I seriously can’t believe it’s never been considered what to do if the tracks are blocked. If not - then perhaps some heads need to role. If so - what the heck happened with the plan? If that was it, then it needs a LOT of work.

Have a plan for within the station should a major incident occur.
Crowd control. There’s more than enough space throughout the entire station to accomodate all of the waiting passengers, but not if they’re just clumped in unorganized mobs. When a delay of more than a few hours occur, perhaps that’s the time to organize some cues and herd folks into areas where they’re not going to be tripping over one another or blocking the way for those whose trains are still running. This also makes it easier to reach and communicate with various groups.

Rethink the uniforms
Slacks and a black shirt with a GO logo do not command the authority that a conductor needs to keep order. It’s hard to ignore a command from a person in a full dress uniform. Easy enough to ignore some ‘flunkee’ in a black shirt.

Respect your customers.
Apologies are fine if the train is a few minutes late. But my time is extremely valuable to me - as it surely is to everyone else on the train. When we’ve missed the scheduled by more than several hours, I expect a little more than an apology. There should have been a customer service rep standing on the platform as we pulled in, handing a 10-Ride ticket to each and every one of us, along with an apology.

And while the advice is free enough, my time is not. Attached is a bill for the hours above and beyond what I should normally have been in transit.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Communications and Marketing, News and Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.