This week it’s train week. Last Saturday I joined a huge turnout at Shoreham Station to protest at the continued failure of Network Rail to open up the underpass to the public which was closed to non-ticket holders in 2008. The strength of feeling was palpable as was the frustration of the Shoreham Society who have led the negotiations with Network Rail and Southern involving me in numerous meetings where we thought we were making progress.
On Monday I visited the Three Bridges Rail Operation Centre with the head of GTR and surprise surprise a major signalling breakdown failure had caused significant disruption that morning and for at least the third time in a month a passenger taken ill on a train at Clapham Junction had compounded the problem. Apparently on at least 2 occasions it was exactly the same passenger. Weird! I then travelled in the cab of the train up to Victoria and with my bird’s eye view was able to see at first hand some of the challenges facing the train operators. We arrived only 10 minutes late but the driver Simon did a great job in the circumstances keeping speed up where possible.
As I write this Wednesday we have a further debate in Parliament about the state of the GTR service where I know many of my Sussex colleagues will be joining me to vent their our constituents’ anger to the Rail Minister at the continuing unreliability of the local service. Then on Thursday (17th) I hope as many constituents as possible will join me at the Shoreham Centre from 6.30pm where representatives from GTR will be on hand to take questions and (polite) complaints about the service, the underpass and the proposals to close ticket offices as well as anything else.
To date I have delivered petitions to GTR from my website signed by over 2200 people opposing the ticket office closures and hundreds more gathered by Lancing councillors as well as individual letters. So make sure you come along on Thursday and don’t be late, unless you are traveling by train of course.