A big “thank you” to all who emailed with your personal experiences of disruption on the local rail services for the debate I am leading in this week. Stories of constituents left marooned by cancelled trains, or others calculating in working days time lost annually due to delays bring to life dreadful statistics.
This February, under 40% of trains arrived at Horsham at their scheduled time. For the region as a whole Southern had a low baseline to meet – 80% of services arriving within 5 minutes of schedule, a baseline it has largely missed.
Meanwhile closing ticket offices outside of peak hours adds salt to the wound. At the very time of poor service in which customer communication is critical they have chosen to make passengers’ lives harder.
In addition to the current issues that need fixing I will be asking the Department for Transport how it is that this overcrowded, delayed service could possibly cope were an expanded Gatwick to have huge numbers of airport workers commuting-in as well as doubled passenger numbers.
I will happily acknowledge that it isn’t all gloom. The new Class 700 series are coming in, massive investment (some £6bn) has been made in London Bridge and the surrounding infrastructure, the train operators have significantly increased the number of drivers in training.
All this is good news but we want to see agreed and timetabled outcomes for passengers - not just hear about the inputs. I also want to more news from the Rail Minister, Claire Perry, (who has throughout been a powerful ally of passengers) about her plans to extend and make more generous “delay repay” – not only to help constituents but to focus the minds of the Operators.
I don’t believe “nationalisation” is a panacea (most who remember British Rail don’t!) and in any event Network Rail is responsible for more than half of the delays. However GTR is the biggest franchise to be awarded, I really want it to succeed but if we don’t see improvements it will beg the question whether it simply is too big to manage effectively.