European Railroad Discussion > "Fed-up commuters threaten fare strike amid Southern Rail delays"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/10/fed-up-commuters-threaten-a-fare-strike-amid-southern-rail-delay/

Excerpt:"Commuters are threatening to withhold pay for train tickets as the Government announces that rail company chaos will last another two years. Ongoing cancellations and delays on the Southern network have reportedly pushed passengers towards a “fares strike”, while others quit jobs and move home to escape the disruption. This comes as Southern Rail and its sister service, Gatwick Express,plan to axe 341 trains from their daily schedule after struggling to cope in the face of severe staff shortages."

Perhaps they could hire some of the thousands of "migrants" who are invading the country. They must need jobs!

Southern has introduced a new timetable which has axed some 300+ trains a day and truncated others. The dispute between the RMT (Rail & Maritime Transport Union) and Southern is over the role of the guard (conductor / brakeman). Southern want to remove the guard's door closing & safety responsibilities and transfer them to the driver. Southern says the guard will still have a role as something like an 'on-board customer host' but the RMT smell a rat, and expect that some trains will run with only a driver and no on-board staff. I suspect the union is right.

But here is where things get murky, there's no industrial action at present but Southern have still been cancelling dozens of trains a day, blaming it on 'excessive staff sickness'. However it also appears that the company has curtailed rest day working and overtime, which they are dependent on to deliver the franchise service in any case, thus exacerbating the situation. 

The temporary timetable is supposed to offer some more certainty about what will and what won't run, but doesn't help people whose train has been replaced by a bus. The natives down here in Sussex are getting restless and are expecting someone in authority to bang heads together, with our government currently in paralysis that doesn't seem very likely.
 

I think that Nick's assessment is pretty well spot on. However, even though we will now have a new prime minister very soon, we shouldn't hold our breath over getting this one resolved. There are just so many problems around that take a higher priority, and I hear that the Department for Transport is in total disarray to put it mildly!

I'm just glad I don't have to commute on Southern.

PS  A further issue is that no operator runs wholly self-contained services, and so the Southern problems have spilled over at least to Southeastern Trains at places like Tonbridge, where confusion and chaos often rule. Just another of the consequences of railway Balkanisation that we have had to cope with. Please don't copy us!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/16 05:36 by spflow.

Rather remarkably the rail minister, Claire Perry, has resigned, citing the ongoing Southern shambles as one of the reasons, or rather her inability to help resolve it. Novel that a minister resigns over a failure of policy, although whether she would have been given the elbow by Mrs May, our new PM, we'll never know.