Please see below Southern's update on the issues raised at my recent public meeting:
Skipped stopping
Please be assured that the decision to miss a station is one that our control centre takes carefully in particular circumstances where this will benefit a majority of passengers, but we do try to avoid this as we understand the disruption it causes to individuals. Given the congested nature of our network (with a combination of increased train services on the lines to cater for increasing passenger numbers, and the constraints caused in particular by the long programme of improvements at London Bridge Station) any individual incident on the network can potentially have an even greater knock-on effect across our services if we do not act quickly to recover the situation. Our priority is to minimise the number of people delayed as a whole, by restoring services and schedules across the network to normal as quickly as possible.
It may be relevant to also include here that we are penalised in our contract with the DfT for skipping a pre-planned stop so it is not in our contractual interests to do this - it is about reducing the knock on effects of late running.
A train is considered to be a part cancellation if it misses at least one (but fewer than half) of its scheduled stops, and covers more than half of its scheduled mileage. Figures on partial cancellations are officially published by the ORR. For the Govia Thameslink Railway franchise (that is, including Great Northern, Gatwick Express, Southern and Thameslink), in the most recent quarter for which figures are available (August-October 2015) there were 6,732 part cancellations, representing two per cent of all scheduled trains.
Looking at the most recent information for Shoreham in particular there has been a reduction in the instances of skipped stops over the last three reporting periods (there are 13 four-week periods in the year). For the four week period starting 6 March there were 26 instances of a train skipping a stop at Shoreham. This is down from the period starting 7 February when there were 32 instances and in the period starting 4 January when there were 67. This is out of around 4600 services which are planned to stop at Shoreham each four week period.
Other examples for the last three periods (starting with the four weeks starting 6 March) are - Lancing where there were 26, 28 and 58 instances of skipping the stop, and Southwick at 15, 18 and 33 respectively.
On passenger information, our customer information team will update the screens to show that the train is no longer calling at the station, and this is done sufficiently in advance so that people can re-plan their journey if the train is no longer stopping at their station. Currently, the best way to display this information is to show the train as ‘cancelled’ as effectively it is from the station which it will skip. We appreciate that this does not show the whole picture but is the most efficient/clearest way currently to tell passengers quickly that the train will not call. We continue to look at the best way of communicating from our Three Bridges Control Centre.
More generally, as our punctuality is improving, we would expect further improvements in the frequency of incidents that lead to trains having to miss stations. As you know, we are working with Network Rail on improving performance and details of our latest performance data and improvement plans are here at www.southernrailway.com/improvementplan.
Ticket office changes
The plans aim to update how we sell tickets and manage our stations. As increasingly passengers switch online, to self-service machines or to smartcards, ticket offices are used less. The reference to 30% of ticket sales now being at the ticket office is for GTR stations as a whole. Looking at the specifics of Shoreham, for example, over the last year sales at the station from the ticket office accounted for 34% and for ticket machines it was 66%. At Lancing, it was 32% at the ticket office and 68% at ticket machines.
This trend is expected to continue so we want our staff to become more available to all passengers. We’d like them to be a visible presence on the main station area, where they can be on hand to offer assistance, provide travel information, but also have the ability to sell tickets when needed.
At both Shoreham and Lancing we will relocate a ticket office machine into a hosting point in the main area and the Station Host will be able to use it to sell more complex tickets when required – anything you can currently get at the ticket office. Otherwise the Host will be able to coach people in how to use the self-service machines, and both of these stations will get an extra self-serve machine as part of the plans.
At Shoreham currently, there are no staff at the station after 8pm. Under this proposal there will be someone there from the first to the last train. Whilst the ticket office opening hours from Monday-Friday run from 0540-1955 today, under this proposal staff with ticket knowledge will be present at least from 0530-2300. The same principle follows at the weekend - we are proposing a Station Host, with their ticket knowledge, to be there up to 2300.
These proposals should improve the experience of our passengers by having more of our on-station staff trained in ticket issuing, and therefore able to help more customers.
We are reviewing the feedback from consultation in conjunction with the two main rail passenger bodies and will come to a conclusion on the proposals, with the aim of starting to make changes over the summer.
313 services
On the use of class 313 type trains on the Brighton – Portsmouth route, these were introduced onto our network in the last franchise in 2010 to significantly increase our overall passenger capacity. With passenger numbers rising, there was a need to add to the fleet as quickly as possible and using existing trains already available was by far the best option to achieve this. The fleet went from 293 train units at the beginning of the year to 311 units by the December – a sizeable increase in passenger capacity in a short period made possible by introducing these units.
Although the trains were not newly built, did not have toilets included in their design, and retro fitting toilets was not viable, they underwent a significant refresh with an interior paint, new seats and flooring, and flexible spaces for wheelchairs and cycles. We make announcements at stations to highlight if the incoming train does not have a toilet and also have class 377 trains running along the west coastway which do have on board toilets. We also added toilets at some stations on the route.
The issue of crowding is reviewed as part of the industry’s long term planning process assessing where and when investment should be made to help meet the increasing demand on the railway. The next significant change is associated with the Thameslink programme, and the work currently being undertaken in and around London Bridge. Network Rail is providing the infrastructure for an increase in capacity from 2018 and we have new trains on order to support the infrastructure work and these will start arriving on our network later this year.
East Worthing – Davison’s High School
Our area manager for the station had a discussion with the deputy head and he will review what might be possible in terms of seating/shelter at the station, including options for funding. (The typical seating/shelter that we use at stations we do not believe would be suitable here as they would take up too much space, given the width of the platforms).