Southern services being reduced in bid to be on time

Railway bosses said temporarily having fewer trains would provide passengers with the “certainty” they crave as it tries to manage high levels of staff absence and other problems.

The amended timetable for the network is set to be announced tomorrow (Tuesday) to begin on July 11.

It comes as parent company Govia Thameslink Railway is facing calls for it to be stripped of its franchise due to the poor service.

GTR chief operating officer Dyan Crowther told The Argus: “It will mean fewer services […] Nobody's going to be happy with a reduced timetable and I don't pretend to be selling this as people are going to be happy with it. 

“But people will be getting some certainty around the timetable. There will fewer short notice cancellations.”

She described the plans after she faced more than 100 angry rail passengers in a public meeting about the service organised by Hove MP Peter Kyle on Saturday.

He told of passengers receiving written warnings from bosses due to lateness caused by train delays.

At the meeting at All Saints Church Ms Crowther apologised for the poor service on Southern, but said she did not have a “magic wand.”

She said: “The first thing I am going to do is apologise unreservedly.

“I have worked in the industry for 30 years and I have commuted for 30 years, and I know that the services that you have experienced in the last two to three months are simply not good enough, and I

apologise unreservedly for that.

“I do not have a magic wand. I am not going to stand here and tell you six things that I am going to do to make it better by a certain date.

“What I am going to do is give you the assurance that I am working very hard to fix things.”

She said the company planned to press ahead with introducing driver-operated doors on much of the network.

 Unions’ opposition to the plans has triggered two strikes in recent months, but Ms Crowther said the dispute was “unnecessary”.

“When you are up against two unions that won’t move, won’t negotiate, I am afraid that is the option we have been left with,” she added.

She said up to 70 per cent of delays on GTR’s network were the fault of Network Rail.

And the ongoing engineering work at London Bridge had an effect higher than anticipated by the Department for Transport – and would not get better until much of that work was finished.

Asked when and how matters would improve on Southern, Ms Crowther said the revised timetable would improve things in the short-term.

She added: “We are increasingly aware that what our passengers want is certainty.

“When I was in Victoria on strike day lots of people came up to me and sort of said, ‘we like this timetable because we know it is going to work’.

She added: “It’s for the foreseeable future but clearly we want that to be as short term as possible.

“It’s temporary until we get our resources back, until we get our staff back, until our proposals are implemented.”

Tonorrow the transport select committee at the house of commons will speak to representatives from the RMT union and Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) on ways of “improving the rail passenger experience”.

Also read: The Argus leader column - Credit to MP Kyle

MP AND RAIL USERS QUIZ GOVIA CHIEFS FACE TO FACE ON WHAT IS HAPPENING

MORE than 100 rail users came to All Saints Church in Hove on Saturday afternoon to tell Govia’s chief operating officer Dyan Crowther about their horror stories on Southern rail and to join Hove MP Peter Kyle in asking what the company was doing about it.

Peter Kyle: What stage are you at with industrial relations?

Dyan Crowther: We want to introduce the role of onboard supervisors. Those roles are about improving the customer service and basically asking drivers to operate the doors on our train. Unfortunately Aslef and RMT (the unions) last November signed what is known as a joint concordat, where they have basically expressed they do not support any expansion of driver-operated doors.

And that is effectively a line in the sand. That has really hindered our ability to negotiate. Traditionally we would negotiate with the trade union. And that is how every driver-operated scheme has been introduced over the last 30 years. Let’s be clear – this dispute is unnecessary. Our proposals are sensible proposals. We are going ahead and implementing our proposals. In 30 years in the industry I have always striven to achieve collective agreement. I used to be in the unions myself. But when you are up against two unions that won’t move, won’t negotiate, I am afraid that is the option we have been left with.

PK: Who pays compensation and if the Government does, how can you as a company feel the pain?

DC: We have a very different contract to other train operators. We do not receive any of the revenue, any of the fare revenue; that goes straight to Government. We secure a profit in three ways – we have a performance regime so we are incentivised and penalised on delays, cancellations and capacity. And they are quite stringent penalties. So if we don’t get the revenue then therefore when there is any sort of delay, the compensation is paid out of that revenue pot. The way our contract is designed is to make sure we do feel pain but in different areas.

PK: To clarify, does [compensation money] come from the Government or the company?

DC: Because the Government gets the revenue, then yes, it comes from the Government.

PK: Can you give any idea of timescales for improvement?

DC: We don’t have Network Rail here today. Network Rail are accountable for 60 to 70 per cent of the delays that GTR experience – that is consistent with the level of delay across any other train operator on the network. And only because they are the infrastructure operator. We work very hard with Network Rail to put in place an improvement plan. The works associated with London Bridge have had a significant impact on the overall network. So first of all delay per incident – that has gone up fourfold since the London Bridge works and diversionary works came into play in January 2015.

We are operating the same train plan on 30 per cent reduced infrastructure. That affects our ability to recover from any incident. So we have got a bit of noise in the system and that is going to stay in the system until we get the train services going back to London Bridge – the Thameslink services as well – and we get the infrastructure back here as well. So there is no quick fix here.

Audience member: But you knew that when you took on the franchise?

DC: We took on the franchise knowing about London Bridge. But when we bid for London Bridge we used the assumption that the department gave us around what the impact would be. [One] key element was the impact of London Bridge would be 10,000 delay minutes in a year. We did that in a week. So what we have got here is an infrastructure scheme that is having a more significant impact on the base timetable than anybody imagined. Now I can understand why you would want to criticise, well why was the plan not right? I don’t know – I did not do the plan. Network Rail did the planning.

Audience member: If the change to conductors’ roles is so small [Ms Crowther has said “the small difference we are making is the conductor will no longer operate the door”], why force it through?

DC: These plans were put in place over many years. We are not implementing plans that were made up a couple of months ago. We are implementing plans that were included as part of the invitation to tender for this franchise. What I said earlier was the way we are doing this is the same way we have done this for the past 30 years. What has changed is the trade unions’ position. Now I am not blaming them.

Audience: Why force it through?

DC: Because it’s associated with the introduction of new rolling stock. The new class 700 trains have been ordered and procured on the basis they are driver-operated doors.

PK: Is this the thin end of the wedge in terms of conductors’ futures?

Piero McCarthy, Govia’s head of conductors: "I can categorically tell you that having looked into the contract there is no attempt to remove people from this role through the lifetime of GTR. And when I say the lifetime of GTR I say that because we could not possibly know what will happen beyond that. GTR’s contract has been designed by DfT and this company to have people on board trains.

OUR HORROR STORIES ON THE RAILWAY

GOVIA’S chief operating officer Dyan Crowther was left told of commuters’ horror stories on Southern rail. at All Saint’s Church in Hove.

One woman in the audience at All Saints Church, Hove, recalled helping a “terrified” disabled passenger who was stuck at Victoria station due to cancelled trains.

She said: “People are now actually becoming afraid to travel with you. I am seeing people put at risk physically.”  Another passenger, Tom Constantine, 26, told The Argus: “I wanted to be here to show them that it’s not really OK. It is becoming ridiculous.”

Kim Walker, from Portslade, who works for a charity in London, said: “The trains just keep being delayed or short formation so frequently I have to go into Brighton and get my husband to pick me up. Sometimes it takes three hours to get home.”

But if Although there was some satisfaction at being able to speak directly to the woman in charge, audience members expressed frustration at the answers they were getting.

James Simister, 61, said: “It was not specific enough for me. I’d like to hear what action they are going to take and how long it is going to take.”

Philip Lobatto, 72, from Brighton, said: “She did not really tell us very much.

“She did not really say there was going to be any major difference.”

Hove MP Peter Kyle said he wanted to create a frank discussion where people feel “they have learned something and have a sense of what is possible”.

He added: “We have learned that the situation is incredibly complicated and it requires the parties to work together.”