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Brighton Main Line Closure (16 - 24 February)

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Surreytraveller

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I would have thought half term volumes wouldn’t be too different to a summer Saturday where the normal rail replacement plans work quite well with express direct buses alongside the stoppers
Summer Saturdays are horrendous on the Brighton Mainline, to the point where engineering works where possible aren't done. Normally saved up for the autumn and winter
 
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RichardKing

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I was about to comment and offer words of wisdom and advice. Then I read what I put and saw a P45 in my future. So, all I can say is good luck and pray I'm not saying 'I don't know, I'm sorry' all next week.
PS. I have found a plan/map, but it was already being dumped this afternoon.

So, plans are still changing?
I do hope my fellow passengers realise that none of the inevitable chaos next week is down to frontline staff, but I do fear there'll be a lot of anger displayed on the ground (especially to the poor souls dealing with the buses at Three Bridges).
 

talldave

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I can't think of a word to describe the people who have planned this fiasco that won't get filtered out, so I won't bother. But do these people actually venture out of their office to see the mayhem they've inflicted on their paying customers?
I mean, seriously, making the RRB as slow as possible in the vague hope of putting people off is insane. Some people cannot give up their job for a week so have no choice but to travel. They just need pushing through the setup as fast as possible using the fastest possible route.
What's doubly annoying is that this entirely predictable f*** up by GTR will overshadow what are probably some very well planned, major engineering achievements taking place on the tracks.
 

sarahj

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In which car park are the free parking spaces at Gatwick?

Unless you have applied for a permit, please don't try and park. If you have it is supposed to be well signposted and the bus will drop you off at the gate on platform 7

For Seaford branch folks. Perhaps a hidden gem?

Seaford Branch Line
A special bus service will operate at 06:25 to Uckfield to Connect with
the 07:33 Uckfield – London Bridge 10 Car Service.
A return service will operate at 17:37 from London Bridge arriving
Uckfield at 18:52 connecting to a 19:05 rail replacement service back to
the Seaford Branch.
 

radamfi

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Unless you have applied for a permit, please don't try and park. If you have it is supposed to be well signposted and the bus will drop you off at the gate on platform 7

I'm not planning on using it, I am just curious as to where it is and whether it is actually worth using compared to getting a rail replacement bus. I had assumed it would be in the long stay car park and you would be using the regular bus shuttle.
 

Class 170101

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For Seaford branch folks. Perhaps a hidden gem?

Seaford Branch Line
A special bus service will operate at 06:25 to Uckfield to Connect with
the 07:33 Uckfield – London Bridge 10 Car Service.
A return service will operate at 17:37 from London Bridge arriving
Uckfield at 18:52 connecting to a 19:05 rail replacement service back to
the Seaford Branch.

Seems a bit risky to me on the return run. If I was a commuter I don't think I would chance it for fear of missing the bus and then having to travel all the way back to East Croydon before heading back south.
 

VT 390

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Seems a bit risky to me on the return run. If I was a commuter I don't think I would chance it for fear of missing the bus and then having to travel all the way back to East Croydon before heading back south.
As it is a rail replacement bus would they not hold it for a late running train?
 

Class 170101

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As it is a rail replacement bus would they not hold it for a late running train?

In my experience elsewhere that assumes the bus driver knows if the train is late. If they don't then no they won't wait.
 

johnw

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The big bus operators in the Southern area such as Stagecoach South, Brighton & Hove will not have the amount of spare vehicles. It’s ok saying ‘work from home” but in reality hoW many employees will allow this. You just need to put up with this if you want a better railway.

Try living in East Northamptonshire with bridge closures on the Midland make driving a nightmare, just so the Scots in Corby get an electric service!
 
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I have spoken to one of my mates who works at GTR and apparently there is 56 bus companies involved in total. They have come from all over the South East so lots of drivers don't have geographical knowledge.

I am a bus driver and i was driving some of the GTR rail replacement yesterday evening and night and again will be this evening and night (and in fact every day during this nine day closure) and can tell you that it is complete chaos as usual. Every time that GTR put on rail replacement buses it is chaos.

We do not receive any route training or any form of training. Luckily i have very good knowledge of all the roads in the area but many other drivers from further away do not. All they normally give out to those drivers is a simple basic map printed out on an A4 sheet for them to follow and some don't even get that. There is certainly no route training being provided (unless some of the larger bus operators decided to provide it to their drivers).

In regards to waiting for connections this is often not done because bus drivers don't know the train times. We are not told when the trains are due so we won't even know if a train has been delayed. So often this can result in passengers missing their rail replacement bus connection.

Also most of the staff controlling the rail replacement buses in the car parks and helping passengers are completely clueless. They don't have a clue which bus is going where or what time the buses are meant to be leaving.

As usual GTR are completely incapable of organising anything.
 

sammyg901

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I take a shuttle every morning in Singapore where I live. The drivers are sometimes substituted but they use an app by Beeline / Grab which has all the stops in and they just follow the navigation and timings. As it's using Google maps we reroute around traffic sometimes. On my side I can follow their position in the app as well.

I really don't understand why something similar couldn't be implemented. A controller could then send a message/retiming to delay a buses departure in the event of a late running train etc
 

tsr

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Between the parallel lines
For Seaford branch folks. Perhaps a hidden gem?

Seaford Branch Line
A special bus service will operate at 06:25 to Uckfield to Connect with
the 07:33 Uckfield – London Bridge 10 Car Service.
A return service will operate at 17:37 from London Bridge arriving
Uckfield at 18:52 connecting to a 19:05 rail replacement service back to
the Seaford Branch.

Excellent, except that the 0733 from Uckfield isn’t exactly quiet at the best of times. The lack of some school run passengers at Edenbridge Town will definitely help, but it’s normally full (by which I do mean full) beyond Hurst Green even on a good day, without any school traffic. In disruption I’ve known it to be full and standing by Eridge.

Evening trains tend to be better, with loadings more extreme around the time the 1637 leaves, partly due to the varied length of the trains. The 1737 is busy but not usually unbearable, unless Thameslink fall apart and everyone needs an alternative service to East Croydon all at once.

It seems it’s actually quicker, by about 10 minutes, to go via Three Bridges anyway.

Seems a bit risky to me on the return run. If I was a commuter I don't think I would chance it for fear of missing the bus and then having to travel all the way back to East Croydon before heading back south.

No need to return that far - you could always get a normal service bus from Uckfield (or for that matter maybe even as far north as Eridge).

Brighton & Hove Buses will accept rail tickets on routes 28/29 from Uckfield to Lewes and Brighton & vice versa.

As it is a rail replacement bus would they not hold it for a late running train?

Depends very much on whether anyone is on duty at Uckfield station and whether GTR Control will be able to advise them that the bus needs holding. Uckfield can in theory be staffed specially (depending somewhat on the staffing commitments over the whole of the local area) but is normally unstaffed from lunchtime on weekdays.

That being said, it should be painfully obvious to most bus drivers that they are running a pointless and empty service if they don’t wait for anyone off the train. (Many drivers will care, some don’t - a sad fact about the work culture of rail replacement almost anywhere in Great Britain.)

In my experience elsewhere that assumes the bus driver knows if the train is late. If they don't then no they won't wait.

As above, it’s not that clear cut.

I have spoken to one of my mates who works at GTR and apparently there is 56 bus companies involved in total. They have come from all over the South East so lots of drivers don't have geographical knowledge.

I am a bus driver and i was driving some of the GTR rail replacement yesterday evening and night and again will be this evening and night (and in fact every day during this nine day closure) and can tell you that it is complete chaos as usual. Every time that GTR put on rail replacement buses it is chaos.

We do not receive any route training or any form of training. Luckily i have very good knowledge of all the roads in the area but many other drivers from further away do not. All they normally give out to those drivers is a simple basic map printed out on an A4 sheet for them to follow and some don't even get that. There is certainly no route training being provided (unless some of the larger bus operators decided to provide it to their drivers).

In regards to waiting for connections this is often not done because bus drivers don't know the train times. We are not told when the trains are due so we won't even know if a train has been delayed. So often this can result in passengers missing their rail replacement bus connection.

Also most of the staff controlling the rail replacement buses in the car parks and helping passengers are completely clueless. They don't have a clue which bus is going where or what time the buses are meant to be leaving.

As usual GTR are completely incapable of organising anything.

The maps I’ve seen could be improved but detail is not something I’ve ever really noticed to be majorly lacking. More perhaps of any issue is the medium - a cramped paper map, barely of black and white photocopy quality, does not help a bus driver who is also trying to drive with a modicum of safety. I am sure most bus companies have a policy on how drivers should drive unusual routes, and so if they approve of a better map or satnav system, a preset route for such a system shouldn’t take an undue amount of effort to set up.

I can’t honestly believe that bus companies are just being asked by GTR to send out drivers and buses, without said companies having some inkling of where they’re being sent or the likely calling points en route... so really they need to be ensuring they can send their employees (and equipment) out to work safely. GTR will know where the bus is timetabled to go, and do act on feedback about routes which are impossible for buses (eg. tight bridge clearances) but they are not a bus operator, first and foremost, even this week; they do not have in house teams to maintain competency and route knowledge of individual companies’ bus drivers.

With regards bus control and train integration, I will agree the quality of this does vary. Perhaps GTR need to take this in house as a permanent function of station staffing, even if they don’t run the buses themselves. Indeed, the times when I have worked with full-time station staff who’ve been commandeered to run buses, they’ve been a lot better at it than the bus company or agency staff. Your experiences may vary, though...

I take a shuttle every morning in Singapore where I live. The drivers are sometimes substituted but they use an app by Beeline / Grab which has all the stops in and they just follow the navigation and timings. As it's using Google maps we reroute around traffic sometimes. On my side I can follow their position in the app as well.

I really don't understand why something similar couldn't be implemented. A controller could then send a message/retiming to delay a buses departure in the event of a late running train etc

It would be fantastic - and there have been murmurings for a very long time about the traceability and transparency of rail replacement. Some of the bus controllers on GTR operations do now have a bit of a better idea about where their buses are, and some of the bus companies have GPS tracking, but on a large operation it’s more than a bit piecemeal, and any such data certainly hasn’t made it back to customer facing apps/websites/station CIS screens.

Also, a number of the companies who supply replacement bus services during major operations are quite small, not large well-established city bus companies with sophisticated IT arrangements. So if you wrote this sort of infrastructure into their contracts, there’s a good chance they might just pull out, or else submit poor quality and misleading data to the rail companies and the public. It doesn’t entirely excuse the lack of information, but the reality is that rail replacement is quite complex, and can barely ever cope as it is, so any complications like this really can become quite lengthy and tortuous.
 

Bletchleyite

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As usual GTR are completely incapable of organising anything.

This is not much of a surprise.

Fraser Eagle, if anyone remembers them, had got very competent at managing rail replacement. I believe they failed because TOCs preferred to go it alone as it is cheaper, but almost always the TOCs, particularly bad ones like GTR, are not very good at managing a bus service because they are a TOC, not a bus company.

Perhaps it is time for ATOC to be required to set up a "Fraser Eagle replacement" type agency with the relevant competencies? I don't believe I have ever used a rail replacement bus service in recent years that was acceptable. And I don't just mean "I don't like buses" or "it's slower than the train", I mean in terms of information and on the operational side.
 

mmh

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In my experience elsewhere that assumes the bus driver knows if the train is late. If they don't then no they won't wait.

In this case, wouldn't the driver know the train is late because there are no passengers on the bus?
 
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Fraser Eagle, if anyone remembers them, had got very competent at managing rail replacement. I believe they failed because TOCs preferred to go it alone as it is cheaper, but almost always the TOCs, particularly bad ones like GTR, are not very good at managing a bus service because they are a TOC, not a bus company.

I don't know what the arrangement is for GTR, but Abellio, Arriva, First and Stagecoach all have their own dedicated divisions that manage the rail replacement operations for the TOCs within their group.

For each blockade they have planning meetings with the TOC to decide the vehicle requirements and timetable, then liaise with local operators (which may or may not be part of their group) to book vehicles, provide control room staff and coordinators at stations.

It might be worth noting that all of those groups have managers and supervisors who started their careers working for Fraser Eagle. (VTWC uses Coach Hire Booking which is part of Cmac... and also run by an ex Fraser Eagle manager!)
 

DavyCrocket

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For GTR PR and their CV it’ll all be about the numbers. They’ll throw out the 500 buses from 50 operators and people/media/politicians will say wow
I have spoken to one of my mates who works at GTR and apparently there is 56 bus companies involved in total. They have come from all over the South East so lots of drivers don't have geographical knowledge.

I am a bus driver and i was driving some of the GTR rail replacement yesterday evening and night and again will be this evening and night (and in fact every day during this nine day closure) and can tell you that it is complete chaos as usual. Every time that GTR put on rail replacement buses it is chaos.

We do not receive any route training or any form of training. Luckily i have very good knowledge of all the roads in the area but many other drivers from further away do not. All they normally give out to those drivers is a simple basic map printed out on an A4 sheet for them to follow and some don't even get that. There is certainly no route training being provided (unless some of the larger bus operators decided to provide it to their drivers).

In regards to waiting for connections this is often not done because bus drivers don't know the train times. We are not told when the trains are due so we won't even know if a train has been delayed. So often this can result in passengers missing their rail replacement bus connection.

Also most of the staff controlling the rail replacement buses in the car parks and helping passengers are completely clueless. They don't have a clue which bus is going where or what time the buses are meant to be leaving.

As usual GTR are completely incapable of organising anything.
that’s a lot, well done.

Just like throwing a lot of people in yellow vests at places with little training.

Or their “neighbourhood officers”
 
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SouthernOne

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In the staff information book, there is a fast non stop Brighton to Three Bridges (ghost service) every 10 minutes at peak times and every 20 minutes the rest of the day. Also semi fast buses from Hove to Three Bridges every 20 minutes all day.
 

Antman

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In my experience elsewhere that assumes the bus driver knows if the train is late. If they don't then no they won't wait.

Under the circumstances surely the driver will be under instructions not to depart until authority has been given to do so? There would be no point running the bus empty.
 

Chrisgr31

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Excellent, except that the 0733 from Uckfield isn’t exactly quiet at the best of times. The lack of some school run passengers at Edenbridge Town will definitely help, but it’s normally full (by which I do mean full) beyond Hurst Green even on a good day, without any school traffic. In disruption I’ve known it to be full and standing by Eridge.

The 7.33 is usually an 8 carriage train so it is going to have an additional 2 carriages. Must admit it should be obvious to the bus driver whether the train has arrived or not whether they care or not is a different question.

During the drivers strike there was an excellent bus coordinator at Tunbridge Wells. Not sure how but he appeared to know where all the buses where, how long the wait would be etc, and good at marshalling the traffic so they could actually get in to the station! Hopefully he is involved somewhere.
 

Chrisgr31

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I can't think of a word to describe the people who have planned this fiasco that won't get filtered out, so I won't bother. But do these people actually venture out of their office to see the mayhem they've inflicted on their paying customers?
I mean, seriously, making the RRB as slow as possible in the vague hope of putting people off is insane. Some people cannot give up their job for a week so have no choice but to travel. They just need pushing through the setup as fast as possible using the fastest possible route.
What's doubly annoying is that this entirely predictable f*** up by GTR will overshadow what are probably some very well planned, major engineering achievements taking place on the tracks.

It is impossible for them to push people through the system as quickly as possible or rather quick enough to cope with the usual demand for the trains. 600 passengers on a train requires around 12 buses and of course many trains are carrying more than that. There appear to be 8 trains an hour to London from Brighton so you need 96 buses s one leaving every 45 seconds or so. Where are you going to park all these buses to load them, what impact is this going to have on the traffic in brighton, how do you un;oad them all in three bridges especially as it also has to deal with buses from Haywards Heath, Hassocks etc.

Its very easy to blame GTR for this but I see no other option based on the restrictions they are operating under. If a bus from Brighton was a realistic option there would be lots of commuter buses running from there already.
 

Chrisgr31

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I'm not planning on using it, I am just curious as to where it is and whether it is actually worth using compared to getting a rail replacement bus. I had assumed it would be in the long stay car park and you would be using the regular bus shuttle.

Its in the short stay car park, so no need to use a shuttle bus. Dont recommend parking all day at Gatwick without a pass thought, £25 in the long stay if you turn up and go, £40 in the short stay!
 

radamfi

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Its in the short stay car park, so no need to use a shuttle bus. Dont recommend parking all day at Gatwick without a pass thought, £25 in the long stay if you turn up and go, £40 in the short stay!

If it is in short stay, why is a bus required to drop you off at platform 7?
 

Bletchleyite

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At Uckfield, for one bus?

If the bus driver is not competent to manage dispatch requirements (aka to get off his backside and go and look if the train has arrived), then yes, there needs to be one at each point where there are connections to be maintained, or if not a marshal as a "conductor".

This is the exact problem. It's all done on the cheap. Hired bus drivers just drive, there needs to be someone with the appropriate authority to dispatch and direct passengers either on board the bus or at each station, whether they would normally be staffed or not. The number of times I as a passenger have ended up doing this over the years is an absolute and utter disgrace.
 

Chrisgr31

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If it is in short stay, why is a bus required to drop you off at platform 7?

No idea! Last week it was in the short stay car park at least as there were signs telling GTR passengers to use the first car park in the short stay. Maybe Gatwick dont want rail passengers using the terminal at all?
 

Sunset route

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Can I please ask why all this?, What are NR actually doing to cause this blockade.

The stuff that I’m aware of

Replaceing Balcombe Tunnel Junction with a modified layout,
Relining Clayton Tunnel
Replacing the signaling controls Keymer Junction to Preston Park (the FDM system)
Replacing the signalling controls for Preston Park interlocking (the TDM system)
Work on Ouse Viaduct
 
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