Sign o' the times...er, car park

Carrying out jobs in a measured and methodical manner is often the best way of getting things done, but back at sunny Chippenham Station, they’re taking it to extremes.

It’s APCOA I’m talking about – the good people who run the car parks. Just before Christmas last year, they started to take some of the car parking ticket machines out of service. By Christmas Eve there was only one machine working in the north car park instead of the usual three. Needless to say, the queues at this lone machine grew longer and longer while irregular visitors to the station wandered around from machine to machine like zombies looming out of the morning gloom.

Shortly after New Year, a number of large new signs appeared in the car park explaining what was going on. We were to have new ticket machines, the signs told us – big ones, exciting ones, ones with chip and pin, ones that were so complex staff would be on duty the morning they first came into operation to explain their diabolical workings to us.

We should, the signs warned, leave ourselves a little more time to deal with these wondrous new machines. (Though quite how we were meant to know which morning this transformation was going to take place on I don’t know.)

Anyway, duly given notice that new machines were on their way, we waited for their arrival.

And waited…and waited...

All through chilly January there was not a hint of them. Damp, depressing February came and went and still the old machines remained. Gusty March swept by…and no new machines. And now we’re well into April, four months since they started to take the ticket machines out of service, and still nowt. In fact, so slow has progress been, they’ve actually had to bring at least one of the old machines back into service having shut it down.

So the question I am forced to ask myself: just how long does it take to change the ticket machines in a First Great Western car park? Right now we’re at four months, but somehow I suspect this might be just the tip of the iceberg. Ho hum.