Sadly a few of them are Clacton services which will be going from 8 car down to 5. Comparable number of seats, but significantly less standing space.
Been saying this is a big flaw with the bid since day 1 and is another example of style over substance when it comes to bid managers who never use the lines in question. In fact, some of the people who were involved in this bid rarely use the train at all from what I have heard so what happens in practice won't affect them at all.
When I asked Abellio about the plans for the EMU services they essentially stated
- Every 4 car service is being replaced with a new train with an increase of capacity.
- Every 8 car service is being replaced with a new train with an increase of seating.
- Every 12 car service is being replaced with a new train with an increase of capacity.
Note the different word that is used for the 8 car services which tells you all that you need to know. They have time and time again avoided answering the question about if the 8 car services will all be lengthened to 10 cars and calculations previously done on this forum show that unless they order another batch of units, that's not going to be possible anyway.
When the overcrowding to the point where people physically cannot board of they can only board by being pushed up against other people where they have more room stand now inevitably happens, Abellio will just point out that they have added more seats and the naive press will lap it up as proof that it is not their fault, as Abellio's PR team have the media wrapped around their little finger as the media take in all the style but fail to look underneath at something that is really lacking in substance.
The operational people know what is coming, the bid managers only care about the optics and looking good, not like they'll be traveling on the train. Half the senior management who sold the operations side this pup have already gone anyway, so I would reckon the ops side and the guy who took up the business readiness director post after the former bid manager in the post previously left, will be the people who end up carrying the can when the whole thing goes titsup as most of those responsible will be long gone.