Media centre

Monday 2 Feb 2015

Improving performance with Southern and Thameslink

Region & Route:

| Southern

Network Rail, Govia Thameslink Railway and Southern are working together to improve performance on one of the most congested railways in the country.

Our passengers have not been getting the service they expect from us and for this we apologise.

More than 3,000 trains a day run on the railway linking London and the Sussex Coast and in recent years, as demand has grown, performance has declined. This also affects Thameslink services north of London.

The rebuilding of London Bridge as part of the Thameslink Programme, which will ultimately bring vitally needed extra capacity to the route, has added an additional strain with fewer routes into and out of the station.

Dave Ward, Network Rail’s route managing director for the South East, said: “Trains should arrive when we say they will and all of us know we need to do more to deliver on that promise.

“More than a million people use London Bridge every week, and keeping them moving whilst rebuilding the station has been a huge challenge.

“We have been working with the operators to produce an improvement plan and we have already started tackling some key issues out on the network.”

The plan outlines six areas where we can focus:

Infrastructure

Trains

Timetable

Drivers

Operations

Customer Experience

Charles Horton, Managing Director of Southern and GTR said: “Together we have already tackled some issues, including making some changes to the timetable to ease the pressure on the infrastructure at London Bridge. Today’s improvement plan is the beginning of the journey to make things better, and we will keep passengers and stakeholders updated as we move forward.”

To read the plan please go to www.thameslinkrailway.com or www.southernrailway.com or www.networkrail.co.uk