Southern Railway much improved?

[yorksrob]

Yes, and I have given accounts of practically empty travelling conditions at peak time on routes where there were once twice as many trains running.

One thing Southern are doing well is reviewing their operation to refocus capacity where it is needed, which can take some time to do.


Yes, but neither you nor I are an arbiter of saying whether the extra units were needed or not. It is fair to say that at least some of them weren't.

I think it is fair to say that 22 people in a carriage on a Tattenham Corner to London Bridge service leaving East Croydon does not justify a separate Tattenham Corner to London Victoria service running.


Travel patterns are different though, and 'fully recovered' is a misnomer because they evolve over time. As noted above, one of the things Southern appear to be doing well is recasting timetables in the light of 'recovery' rather than simply saying that the 2018 timetable should be set in stone.

Again, calling it 'cut to the bone' is just your view and not necessarily how the operator sees it. I think it is fair to say that the service is determined by the available rolling stock, but is that 'the bone'?

Yes of course there will be quiet trains at some times of day, there always were.

Also, it's quite sensible to remove peak extras where not required. However the Southern Region is based on all day long clock face timetables, and if these are now experiencing regular crowding as some are observing on here, then too much rolling stock has been withdrawn.

Not only is this bad for recovery now, it's also bad for the prospects of future growth.

 

[43066]

We've heard accounts of crowded travelling conditions on this very thread.

It's a lot easier and cheaper to keep an existing fleet that is in good condition than to build a new one.

A Government that was serious about providing quality public transport would not be cutting back to the bone before transport has fully recovered.

It’s slightly concerning that there isn’t really a plan to replace the lost capacity as passenger numbers continue to rise. This probably applies more to other fleets such as 365s.

Yes, but neither you nor I are an arbiter of saying whether the extra units were needed or not. It is fair to say that at least some of them weren't.

Are you suggesting the current cuts are a genuine attempt to rebalance capacity, rather than a knee jerk function of the government ordering cuts to be made?

Again, calling it 'cut to the bone' is just your view and not necessarily how the operator sees it. I think it is fair to say that the service is determined by the available rolling stock, but is that 'the bone'?

And by making rolling stock unavailable by scrapping it the service will be unable to be increased as numbers rise.

The other aspect this highlights is the ridiculous rolling stock acquisition system by which old fully depreciated stock would presumably still have been costing a significant amount in lease payments.

 

[LLivery]

Outside of the peak, I think you're doing very well to get 22 people per carriage on a Tattenham service, tbh.

It is an improvement most definitely, however I still feel the service can be really wishy washy.
The last time I went to Ashford Int from Eastbourne I had a nice two hour wait for a service back to Eastbourne due to staff unavailability.

Same 2 weekends ago. We were going to go from London Bridge to Ashford and then Rye. Cancellations meant we went via Hastings (Southeastern way) with a 7 min connection. The great thing about the Southern Region, you often have options!

 

[ar10642]

Exactly this. The withdrawal was a cut for financial reasons, nothing more.

Well, yes? Financial reasons is almost always why we can't have something.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jul 2023 ==

A Government that was serious about providing quality public transport would not be cutting back to the bone before transport has fully recovered.

Surely it's pretty clear by now the government is only interested in providing the bare minimum it can get away with. It has no interest in providing quality public transport at all, or we would have had a resolution to the industrial action and various other problems.

 

[43066]

Well, yes? Financial reasons is almost always why we can't have something.

Cutting public services saves money. Where does that thinking end?

Let’s cut capacity in the NHS to save a few quid…

 

[DJ_K666]

It's much, much better without the splitting and joining at HH. Before they did this you ended up with 4 cars through to Eastbourne most of the time and they were often full and standing by Lewes. Plus the reliability is better, you could almost guarantee at least one of the halves of the train would leave late at HH before as the splitting/joining took too long or passengers ran around panicking about whether they were in the right part of the train.

That Eastbourne/Ore half leaving late used to be something I'd rely on occasionally if I finished work when I could only get the XX25 Hove shuttle to Brighton which meant a half hour wait if I didn't catch the XX30 which meant positioning myself right at the front and literally running from platform 1 to platform 7 and 8, using the railing to turn the corner as sliding down even a fraction meant missing it and punching through the crowds heading through the exit barriers at full speed.
And often have to dive through the closing doors of the train. And if I missed that then I'd either hope the train down from Lewes was late or head up to Wivelsfield and get it there. My special Go-Ahead staff ticket allowed me to do that. It just took a bit of planning.

This to me is one of the many timetable failures of Southern at that time. Instead of rearranging them with a 5 minute connection across the station (I can't expect the Hove shuttle to use 3 and thd Hastings to use 4, that'd block up the whole throat don't you know) they'd literally have one minute to cross the whole station and I'd only make it 50% of the time. I said at the time a 20 minute service to Eastbourne or a few minutes later from London at Lewes would be extremely beneficial and, with a change at Lewes would result in twice the trains heading east without using any extra rolling stock. It would have meant less stress for me, certainly. I've had times where it took me over w hours to get home, which was a 25 mile journey, give or take a couple if miles.
That splitting and joining at HH used to happen at Worthing back in the good old days. But then it was Southampton to Vic, with a Littlehampton portion running as a stopper to Worthing and having the portion from Southampton attached to the rear, the reverse happening westbound.

I'm just glad I'm well away from them now as I'd probably have said something that crossed the offensiveness line by now to the wrong person. We can't have that now, can we...

 

[ar10642]

Cutting public services saves money. Where does that thinking end?

Let’s cut capacity in the NHS to save a few quid…

Haven't we been doing these things ever since the Tories got in? I doubt it will change until they are booted out.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Let’s cut capacity in the NHS to save a few quid…

It's a bit OT, but there is some mileage in designing a "Contract of National Insurance" which would define precisely NHS entitlements and what was covered, which might save a quid or three while keeping the basic service going.

 

[43066]

Surely it's pretty clear by now the government is only interested in providing the bare minimum it can get away with. It has no interest in providing quality public transport at all, or we would have had a resolution to the industrial action and various other problems.

Haven't we been doing these things ever since the Tories got in? I doubt it will change until they are booted out.

You’re the one who seems to support their stance! Presumably you must feel it benefits you somehow.

 

[bramling]

Exactly, especially considering that there was actually timetable improvements on the coastway following the 313 withdrawals. The current timetables are clearly well thought out, despite obviously being constrained by the DfT.

To be fair, GTR have always tended to be reasonably good in terms of their timetable planning. It’s the actual delivery that seems to be the problem.

 

[43066]

It's a bit OT, but there is some mileage in designing a "Contract of National Insurance" which would define precisely NHS entitlements and what was covered, which might save a quid or three while keeping the basic service going.

Agree off topic, my view is that we need to accept that we need to pay more for healthcare as a % of national income due to the ageing population, but we also really need to accept that the NHS as a structure is utterly unfit for purpose, and needs to be abandoned in favour of an insurance based system as seen in Europe.

Sadly there is no political consensus to drive forward the necessary changes, so ever more money will be thrown into the failing NHS, and things will just continue to get worse…

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

A Government that was serious about providing quality public transport would not be cutting back to the bone before transport has fully recovered.

You seem to bring politics into every thread these days (to the point where your signature was once, unbelievably, “General Election Now Please.” It’s getting a bit boring now. We get this government are not popular.

 

[bramling]

You seem to bring politics into every thread these days (to the point where your signature was once, unbelievably, “General Election Now Please.” It’s getting a bit boring now. We get this government are not popular.

He does have a point though, namely that much of this seems to be a combination of

* the economic damage done by the Covid response having been allowed to drag on way beyond what is should have done

* no doubt an element that Covid is used as a convenient cover to implement things which the politicians would like to implement but might not have got away with in normal times

In GTR’s case, they do seem to have acted as DFT’s puppet over the last few years, no doubt because they were already on a management contract.

On the broader subject of politics, I’m very much reaching the point where it seems the whole system is properly broken and politicians of *all* parties are to blame for the current mess. Lest we remember that Labour were even more in favour of a prolonged Covid response.

 

[yorksrob]

You seem to bring politics into every thread these days (to the point where your signature was once, unbelievably, “General Election Now Please.” It’s getting a bit boring now. We get this government are not popular.

Politics does permeate every aspect of railway management now I'm afraid, so until they stop screwing around with it, I'm unlikely to shut up.

 

[bramling]

Politics does permeate every aspect of railway management now I'm afraid, so until they stop screwing around with it, I'm unlikely to shut up.

Yes it was always the case that railways and politics were heavily entwined. Covid has unfortunately turbocharged that dysfunctional relationship.

What I do find odd is that so-called Conservative governments seem to want to interfere so much with the privatised railway they themselves created. It feels like the industry simply isn’t trusted to make even the smallest decisions for itself, especially when it comes to operational matters.

Things *ought* to be running better now than five years ago simply due to the network being less saturated with trains (and to some extend passengers), and this should apply to GTR more than most. Certainly from my experiences of GTR north of the river, this doesn’t really seem to be the case. If anything the service is now very undependable. The only reason south of the river seems to have improved is because they hit the absolute pits during the DOO/OBS dispute.

Look no further than TFL for another example of a railway network the politicians have managed to systematically trash.

 

[Minstral25]

I think it depends on your point of view. At Redhill the only Southern services are the 1R's from Reigate and the 2A Tonbridge shuttle. The former (1R) are always overcrowded due to platform constraints at Reigate. This has got no better and in fact reliability of the service has (from a subjective point of view) been falling.

The latter (2A) is running exactly as it has since May 2018 (when it was downgraded to shuttle due to lack of through customers) but we are about to see cuts in Dec 23 and a restructured timetable to remove one unit from the line to head coastwards we believe. This will effect most of the few customers quite badly and their view will be very negative - it works for them currently as a regular service which it will no longer be, that is a massive downgrade especially as there are no alternatives. Of course with commercial/political pressure, if it had enough passengers the change wouldn't happen.

So not a great view of Southern but trouble is at Redhill most of our services were converted from Southern to Thameslink, these Thameslink's are appalling and getting worse with a complete lack of customer care from the organisation or GTR. For example this week with the overtime ban, almost 70% of services to London are cut and they couldn't even run the remaining services at an even timetable, making the service almost useless. Plus there seem to be issues every other day on Thameslink creating cancellations.

So locally the general view is that GTR is getting much worse.

 

[yorksrob]

Yes it was always the case that railways and politics were heavily entwined. Covid has unfortunately turbocharged that dysfunctional relationship.

What I do find odd is that so-called Conservative governments seem to want to interfere so much with the privatised railway they themselves created. It feels like the industry simply isn’t trusted to make even the smallest decisions for itself, especially when it comes to operational matters.

Things *ought* to be running better now than five years ago simply due to the network being less saturated with trains (and to some extend passengers), and this should apply to GTR more than most. Certainly from my experiences of GTR north of the river, this doesn’t really seem to be the case. If anything the service is now very undependable. The only reason south of the river seems to have improved is because they hit the absolute pits during the DOO/OBS dispute.

Look no further than TFL for another example of a railway network the politicians have managed to systematically trash.

I think the problem is that the Government doesn't like the costs that their own party has embedded into the system through their own policies, however they can't do anything meaningful about the way the industry is run because it would mean admitting that they were wrong previously.

Unfortunately this means that the passenger ends up having to take the strain.

 

[Class15]

Yes, and I have given accounts of practically empty travelling conditions at peak time on routes where there were once twice as many trains running.

One thing Southern are doing well is reviewing their operation to refocus capacity where it is needed, which can take some time to do.


Yes, but neither you nor I are an arbiter of saying whether the extra units were needed or not. It is fair to say that at least some of them weren't.

I think it is fair to say that 22 people in a carriage on a Tattenham Corner to London Bridge service leaving East Croydon does not justify a separate Tattenham Corner to London Victoria service running.


Travel patterns are different though, and 'fully recovered' is a misnomer because they evolve over time. As noted above, one of the things Southern appear to be doing well is recasting timetables in the light of 'recovery' rather than simply saying that the 2018 timetable should be set in stone.

Again, calling it 'cut to the bone' is just your view and not necessarily how the operator sees it. I think it is fair to say that the service is determined by the available rolling stock, but is that 'the bone'?

Withdrawing 65 units with no replacement is pretty much the definition of cut to the bone, I’m afraid. Meanwhile there are far too many 720s on GA….

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jul 2023 ==

You seem to bring politics into every thread these days (to the point where your signature was once, unbelievably, “General Election Now Please.” It’s getting a bit boring now. We get this government are not popular.

Ridiculous. The government are the people making these crazy decisions.

 

[WizCastro197]

I think it depends on your point of view. At Redhill the only Southern services are the 1R's from Reigate and the 2A Tonbridge shuttle. The former (1R) are always overcrowded due to platform constraints at Reigate. This has got no better and in fact reliability of the service has (from a subjective point of view) been falling.

The latter (2A) is running exactly as it has since May 2018 (when it was downgraded to shuttle due to lack of through customers) but we are about to see cuts in Dec 23 and a restructured timetable to remove one unit from the line to head coastwards we believe. This will effect most of the few customers quite badly and their view will be very negative - it works for them currently as a regular service which it will no longer be, that is a massive downgrade especially as there are no alternatives. Of course with commercial/political pressure, if it had enough passengers the change wouldn't happen.

So not a great view of Southern but trouble is at Redhill most of our services were converted from Southern to Thameslink, these Thameslink's are appalling and getting worse with a complete lack of customer care from the organisation or GTR. For example this week with the overtime ban, almost 70% of services to London are cut and they couldn't even run the remaining services at an even timetable, making the service almost useless. Plus there seem to be issues every other day on Thameslink creating cancellations.

So locally the general view is that GTR is getting much worse.

Thameslink does always seem to suffer quite greatly without the 1Rxx service. As Tonbridge service is already 1tph, are we looking at a possible 1tp2h?

 

[PGAT]

With 1 diagram a train every 90 minutes is do-able

 

[ar10642]

You’re the one who seems to support their stance! Presumably you must feel it benefits you somehow.

I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying how it is. I've never voted Tory in my life and never will. However a majority of people did over the 13 years they've been in power so cuts to public services shouldn't be a surprise, it's basically what they do.

 

[Minstral25]

With 1 diagram a train every 90 minutes is do-able

Please don't give them ideas - the current cannibalisation is bad enough

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jul 2023 ==

Thameslink does always seem to suffer quite greatly without the 1Rxx service. As Tonbridge service is already 1tph, are we looking at a possible 1tp2h?

No - it is bare minimum 1 train per hour all day including peaks (currently every 30 minutes), with very bad connections which we hope they will fix. Details were posted on local (Reigate/Redhill) Rail Users Facebook group about 2 months ago.

 

[ScotGG]

I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying how it is. I've never voted Tory in my life and never will. However a majority of people did over the 13 years they've been in power so cuts to public services shouldn't be a surprise, it's basically what they do.

A majority never have. One of the joys of first past the post.

 

[Surreytraveller]

No 3+5 or 4+5 formations will never be in the WTT, but you will see them on occasion if no units are available

They've been in ACWNs before

 

[NSEWonderer]

Agree off topic, my view is that we need to accept that we need to pay more for healthcare as a % of national income due to the ageing population, but we also really need to accept that the NHS as a structure is utterly unfit for purpose, and needs to be abandoned in favour of an insurance based system as seen in Europe.

Sadly there is no political consensus to drive forward the necessary changes, so ever more money will be thrown into the failing NHS, and things will just continue to get worse…

Problem is do we even know what % of our paid NI tax actually does go to the NHS. If at least 50% of everyone's paid NI tax went directly to the NHS I'm pretty sure we'd not be talking about cuts etc.

 

[yorksrob]

Problem is do we even know what % of our paid NI tax actually does go to the NHS. If at least 50% of everyone's paid NI tax went directly to the NHS I'm pretty sure we'd not be talking about cuts etc.

Whilst it's true that many insurance systems on the continent work well, such systems aren't a magic bullet and I would suggest that there needs to be a real attempt to bench mark costs and outputs per head against these systems, otherwise we could end up paying more for less. Insurance systems tend to come under private expenditure, which massages the public spending figures for those countries.

 

[NSEWonderer]

Whilst it's true that many insurance systems on the continent work well, such systems aren't a magic bullet and I would suggest that there needs to be a real attempt to bench mark costs and outputs per head against these systems, otherwise we could end up paying more for less. Insurance systems tend to come under private expenditure, which massages the public spending figures for those countries.

Indeed. Something like the German healthcare wouldn't be too bad if advertised rightly to the UK but that's my own opinion.

 

[modernrail]

The fact that the 377 fleet comes in 3, 4 and 5 coach flavours gives them a fair bit of flexibility. Evidenced by the East Dulwich route being painfully overcrowded at peak times with 1x5 coach trains pre-May timetable, but now running with 2x3 coach trains.

It looks to me that they do pay attention to capacity pinch points and shuffle around the fleet - if demand does increase though there isn't unlimited room to continue to manoeuvre like this.

I would agree with this. It feels more correctly targeted that the totally arbitrary feel of SE for example. Presumably that will also be good for continually making the case for increased capacity as they are in control of the data whereas other operators seem to be throwing darts at a network map and cutting their revenue and customer satisfaction nose off to spite their growth face.

I do think the Brighton services leave something to be desired though. Every time I have been at Brighton trying to get to London I seem to be staring at a very odd non-clock face timetable of options. I would love a regular half hourly proper Southern service on that route that calls at Haywards Heath, Gatwick, East Croydon and Clapham Junction only.

 

[ScotGG]

How does Southern's passenger recovery within London compare to, say, TfL numbers particularly London Overground? London Overground is back to 90 per cent now.

In theory serving areas like Croydon - which is a sea of cranes and construction - should help them grow pretty strongly but if cuts and shorter trains drive people away then another short term failure by the DfT to think ahead and capture growth.

 

[blelic]

I do think the Brighton services leave something to be desired though. Every time I have been at Brighton trying to get to London I seem to be staring at a very odd non-clock face timetable of options. I would love a regular half hourly proper Southern service on that route that calls at Haywards Heath, Gatwick, East Croydon and Clapham Junction only.

Unfortunately this service is unlikely to return as the path is (I believe) used by the Victoria to Eastbourne/Ore services now. Throughout most of the day though there is a clockface timetable, with Thameslink in general providing the best way to get to London from Brighton for most.