So, what did I learn this morning, apart from that it is quite difficult to get up at 4.30am and avoid waking up the rest of the household?
1) It was one of the easiest possible days I could have done this story. With schools back imminently, and this being the Friday after a bank holiday, it was nowhere near as busy as a typical commuter day. Alas, it was the day that Go-Ahead Group announced their results, so that rather dictated the timing of it.
2) The Southern employees I spoke to all seemed to genuinely care about the quality of the service, and the safety of the services they operate. They feel they have been misrepresented by management and the press, and their anger over that was palpable. One of them also said it was the same way that junior doctors were being treated, as if they were the problem, rather than being the people trying to take action to force the people in charge to fix problems.
3) Having said that, there were several people I spoke to who really couldn’t care less about how much profit the company was making - they were absolutely exasperated with the staff and the unions.
4) It’s a lot harder to talk to people on commuter trains than it was on the night tube - where people were up for a party - or on a long distance mid-morning train, where you can spot people idly sitting there looking wistfully out of the window and pounce on them. On commuter trains the focus was much more headphones on, face buried in smartphone screen. I got some odd looks from people for daring to try to start a conversation. And I have made my boss promise me I won’t get sent onto another train for at least a fortnight.
5) British people REALLY like talking about trains on social media and in the comments on articles. Although I sort of knew that already.
I do enjoy going out on these type of live blogs - the rather random nature of who you run into and who you get to interview is great, and obviously, if you want to speak to railway users and railway staff, then on a train is clearly the best way to bump into them.
Thanks for all your comments and contributions, both here in the thread, and via GuardianWitness and our call-out yesterday. I’m going to press the off-switch on the live blog in a minute, but I’d very much welcome you continuing to debate the state of the UK’s rail services below the line. Cheerio.
Updated
A few final comments from our Witness contributors ... trains are forcing people to take the car ... here’s a good one from Oldham which brings in trams as well:
Environmental choices - driving vs light rail (OK, trams!)
At 9.06 you asked about people taking longer/more inconvenient journeys for environmental reasons.
I live in Oldham and spent the last year working in Trafford. I could generally drive there in 40-50 mins and had free parking. The public transport option involved getting to the tram station (either a 25 minute walk or a bus ride,) a good hour on the trams and a 10 minute walk at the end. The trams are reliable but crowded, and I have to stand until I change trams in the City Centre. For several weeks I also had to add on a 20 minute walk across the City because the trams weren’t running through services.
Despite the fact we have a so-called integrated public transport system in Greater Manchester, you can’t buy a combined tram and bus ticket until after 9.30 a.m. and you can only buy them on the bus with certain companies – and not mine, so you have to get to the tram stop anyway. Buying tram and bus tickets costs £10.40 for 2 x 90+ minute journeys (there might be slightly cheaper options but the TfGM website is impenetrable when it comes to combined fares) compared with about £4.80 in petrol for 2 x 45 minutes. The tram stop does have park and ride, but unless you get there before 8.00 a.m. it’s full because of people who park there to work in the town centre, as it is not effectively monitored.
Add to that the facts that I was an essential car user because of travel required in the job itself and I also do shopping, go out after work (e.g. choir) or visit family, then driving - in warmth and comfort, listening to my own music and admiring the buzzards, kestrels and herons you often see on an M60 commute - becomes a no-brainer. My brother lives in South Manchester and works in Rochdale. His public transport journey involves trains and trams and is just as unfathomable as mine.
And finally ... one more about Southern rail ...
Southern, you've finally broken me!
The last 5 months of Southern Rail chaos has coincided with the 20 weeks of my first pregnancy. It’s been unsafe and exhausting…Being crammed in the aisles, pushed around on platforms, held in a pen behind a fence at Brighton station for long periods of time [with no way to nip to the toilet or sit down]. Weeping to myself quietly as I stand in the aisles, seething with anger that there are elderly and disabled getting being left on the platform with no help to navigate the chaotic coastway route, the 80 minutes it takes to travel the twelve miles from Portslade to Lewes yet costs over £1800 a year. I’m sorry to contribute to the congestion on the roads but the safety of me and my bump comes first so I’ve bought a car. Southern you’ve finally broken me!
A lot of discussion below the line about how this story reflects on one of Jeremy Corbyn’s key policy promises - the renationalisation of our railways:
JustThrustIt - not entirely sure about your choice of username there mate to be honest - says:
Mr Corbyn’s promise to renationalise the railways is actually something I’d readily support, even if I don’t readily support him. Get the shareholders out of the equation, and invest, invest, invest. Our rail infrastructure in this country is abysmal.
Thewash says that regardless of the precise details #Traingate has done a service to passengers:
The rail services are in desperate straights countrywide. Whatever happened on that East Coast Line train that Jeremy Corbyn travelled his experience has split the hornets’ nest and the real story is getting out. There are many hundreds of thousands of very angry passengers out there who deserve better and in my view taking the rail service back into the public service is the way to go.
A good suggestion from Nogbadthebadshat - I shall look into us doing this:
A more in-depth article about Corbyn’s proposal to take control of franchises as they expire (he is the only mainstream politician proposing any form of nationlisation so it has to be his plan), which franchises would be affected between 2020 and 2025 and the changes consumers could expect would be a good idea.
It’s not a universally shared view, however, that Corbyn’s plan would be good news. MmmBisto describes British Rail staff back in the day as “untouchable and lazy”. They don’t think Corbyn’s policy is a step forward:
Jeremy Corbyn is in the unions’ back pocket. Even if he nationalised the railways, he wouldn’t touch the rail unions (which, by common consent, are regarded to be among the most regressive unions we have).
Marketingexpert isn’t a fan either:
Nationalising Corbyn? No thanks. He is a national liability, not an asset. The man is a menace.
I’ll finish this wrap-up of your comments with this from PrincessedeChartres, which I suspect may raise a wry smile from many of the regular readers on here:
I look forward to this newspaper getting fully behind Jeremy Corbyn in his efforts to improve the railway network in the UK.
Updated
The shadow transport secretary, Andy McDonald, has weighed in on Southern rail and it’s a lengthy missive. He claims Southern is trying to blame its own failings on the unions and calls for the government to seize back the franchise from Govia.
Over the past year Southern has established itself as the standard bearer for dysfunctional privatised rail services. Passengers are enduring the worst delays in the country, fares are up 25%, and public investment to improve Southern services seems a long way off.
The primary cause of train cancellations and delays on GTR services are poor planning and management by GTR and the DFT. Southern was already the least reliable service in the country before industrial action began in the spring and GTR’s management revealed their failure to prepare and plan for necessary driver numbers at a select committee session in July. Trying to pin the blame on rail unions is a politically contrived attempt to deflect criticism from the failures of management and the DFT.
GTR’s management contract or ‘concession’ with the government sees the DfT taking all the revenue risk whilst GTR is paid an annual management fee, totalling £8.9bn over the life of the seven-year contract to 2021. Not only does this place all the risk on the taxpayer and the passenger, GTR is not incentivised to improve performance for passengers. But the company is incentivised to cut costs at the expense of staff and to poison industrial relations.
Go-Ahead CEO, David Brown, let the cat out of the bag this morning when he said: ‘A large part of the role of the GTR franchise is to introduce three new train fleets and modernise working practices.’ If revenue risks were with GTR, they would never have allowed services to get to this point and if the DfT had not insisted on ‘modernising working practices’ which really means attacking trade unions in order to force through an extension of cheaper and controversial driver only operations, then the current dispute would have been settled by now and the company and the rail unions could set about restoring good industrial relations.
Instead, GTR have been fined just £2m, a pittance of the company’s annual turnover of £1.9bn and easily covered by the £15m (36%) increase in operating profit from the rail sector announced this morning by Go-Ahead. Passengers seeking recompense for serial delays, service cancellations and failures must enter the ‘delay-repay’ lottery which is heavily loaded against them.
Yesterday, it was announced that another £20m of taxpayers’ money would be spent to try to save the failing franchise. Today, the Go-Ahead group, a co-owner of the Southern franchise, announced a 27% rise in profits on last year.
The Government should strip Southern of the franchise, end the Tory sponsored rip-off of the public and run services in the public sector. The last Labour government took this approach when franchises failed on both South Eastern and twice on the East Coast, where Directly Operated Railways went on to deliver record punctuality and passenger satisfaction scores. Passengers, not ideology or political pride, must now be the priority.
There’s been a few comments on this story over on our Facebook page. This one stood out, from Jan Foster. I think it echoes the sentiment of a lot of people below the line on this live blog, and also a couple of the people I met on my journeys this morning, who really were indignant at the timing of the profit announcement coming just a day after taxpayers’ cash was pledged to sort out the problems. Jan says:
The sum of £20m was mentioned on various news programmes yesterday as being the amount given to Southern rail to assist them in some way. I’m very confused by this. I never voted Tory and don’t live in the Southern rail region, but voters were always led to believe that privatisation was the best thing ever, with more choice and competition, etc. Odd, then, that those wonderful private companies, including many banks, financial institutions and now this particular railway provider, make such a total and utter mess of running them.
Those at the very top, however, seem to thrive on this series of cock-ups, being awarded ever-expanding salaries and bonuses and then, when they fail, they are often given hand-outs to make our benefits system weep. Yet this government support this, tacitly, by chucking more and more money in the direction of many corporate companies who are poor at best and out and out crooked at worst.
To add insult to injury, the same government holds public servants (except for themselves and their public servant cronies, of course) in extremely low regard, denying that there are available monies to support the NHS, ambulance, police, councils and fire services while handing out £20m to a failing, rubbish rail company without a qualm.
Indeed, some government bloke appeared on the BBC news yesterday, and had the bare-faced cheek to tell viewers that £20m was “a drop in the ocean”. Really? If it truly is a ‘drop in the ocean’ I am sure there are many more ‘drops’ it could find to fund public services which would benefit everyone and not just bail out CEOs who can’t do their job.
Updated
One contributor, who wishes to remain anonymous, travels on East Midlands trains from Nottingham to Leicester. Season ticket: £1,860
07:30 - Car journey (as passenger) to railway station. Discover ticket machine isn’t working again. Frantic dash to different platform. Wait in queue while surly employee finishes texting. Purchase ticket. For the third time that morning curse myopic cretin who totalled my motorbike and sentenced me to this daily torture session to hell and back.
08:00 - Train departs Nottingham.
08:35 - Train arrives Leicester.
16:30 - Leave workplace for railway station.
16:50 - Train departs Leicester. Attempt to find seat to avoid standing in vestibule next to absolutely honking toilet. Jam self into rubbish-strewn seat and listen to the dulcet tones of “Random, Unintelligible Tinny Noise Played Through Mobile Phone Speaker” by Inconsiderate Prat Two Seats Down. For the fifth time in half an hour curse myopic cretin who totalled my motorbike and sentenced me to this daily torture session to hell and back.
17:20 - Arrive Nottingham. Sit in traffic and curse myopic cretin who totalled my motorbike and sentenced me to this daily torture session to hell and back in different languages because, apparently, variety is the spice of life.
18:10 - Home at last. Pour wine, remove bra and seek sweet, sweet oblivion before I have to do it all again.
Sid Ward, a teacher in Herefordshire, makes an interesting point: outside of the main commuter lines, do pricing structures put off anyone who wants to use the train service regularly?
In out-of-the way places you have trains that are underused and over priced and the train operators, such as Arrive Wales, are only interested in longer distance journeys.
As such, shorter journeys are over priced to discourage people from taking them. These shorter journeys could link smaller towns and services and make more parts of the countryside attractive for people who work.
For instance, a Leominster to Hereford train cost £7.50 for an open return, a journey of 13 miles and about 18 minutes on the train.
A cost of £15.00 for me and my wife to pop into Hereford for a bit of shopping doesn’t make sense when we can drive it in about 20 minutes, even when you take into account the parking and traffic.
I can see such train lines becoming like the bus routes in rural areas. Only those people who are entitled to concessionary rates, such as pensioners, will use the services.
One subject that keeps coming up in the comments on here and on social media is the baffling pricing structures for rail journeys, nearly illustrated in this tweet:
There is no logic to #trainprices pic.twitter.com/ijipw9oBIS
— Andrew Webb (@foodjournalist) September 1, 2016
Yes, that’s right. The direct, faster train is £6. The round-the-houses way that involves two changes is £99.
I’ve spoken to several staff during the course of this morning who naturally don’t want to go on the record talking about their employer. And some are reluctant to speak to me at all because of anger over the way the current dispute has been covered.
“You’re going to find it very hard to find someone to trust you enough to talk to you,” one said. Another completely clammed up and wouldn’t say another word to me when I said I was a reporter.
But I did meet some very eloquent and passionate employees, who clearly care about the service they are trying to deliver.
“You’ll get someone take a picture of the sign up there with delays on it and some member of staff they say is doing nothing and it will be all over Twitter. But that person has probably just been taking abuse for five hours.
“This place is a shambles. You’ve got people being asked to do the jobs of four people. And then you go home and see what’s reported in the papers, and that’s not what appears at all.”
His concern is that the changes Southern want to make, which he says will involve people losing their jobs, will then be replicated across the country.
“And then the £100m profit becomes £200m. And where does that money go? Into making the trains better? No.”
He doesn’t feel the Southern staff get a fair hearing in the press at all. “Who cares about the common man like us? It’s all rich people controlling the newspapers.”
Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, has commented on the profit announcement. He says:
This is like living with Alice in Wonderland! A company, which has failed to deliver for passengers every day for the last year, and which only yesterday got its snout back in the public trough, with another generous pile of taxpayers’ cash, courtesy of a compliant DfT, has just announced record profits for its shareholders. David Brown is, apparently, set to turn down his bonus and salary increase; but shouldn’t he, and all the directors, be handing back their salaries after another year of failure?
Because Southern is a company which has shown this year that it cannot - or will not - deliver on its franchise commitments. It is failing to deliver for passengers, it is letting down the government, it is selling the British taxpayer short. And morale among staff - the men and women who work hard, who take real pride in their job, and who want to deliver a first class public service but are prevented by the hapless management at Southern - is, not surprisingly, at rock bottom.
It’s time for the company to hand back the keys and for this franchise to be run by people who know what they are doing and who will - like East Coast when it was in public hands - return money to the Treasury, not take it out of the industry.
Here’s an image from Alan Simpson, who commutes between Nunhead and Farringdon on the service run by Govia Thameslink.
Nearly every day the train is delayed from between 5 and 20 minutes for a 22-minute journey. Nearly every peak train is over capacity, and some days people can’t get on at Nunhead and Peckham Rye.
Updated
Rush hour is over
I’m back at Victoria station, where I started over three hours ago. The station is a lot busier, but rush hour is mostly done. The people who were sleeping on the seats at 6am have been replaced by passengers checking their phones and reading newspapers.
Southern staff on the platforms have been dealing with some delays caused by signalling problems. Unlike me on this live blog, whoever is writing their electronic notices clearly doesn’t have the benefit of a sub-editor.
Earlier I spoke to one of the customer service people at East Croydon. Are you getting much grief from people over the strikes, I asked. “Some people,” he said. “But I just let it go straight over my head.”
For further evidence that Southern aren’t the only rail company with irked regular passengers, here’s a round up of commuter stories from across Britain.
Location: Littlehampton
Operator used: Thameslink / Southern
Annual season ticket: £4,500
It is just too difficult to describe what I have encountered on a daily/weekly basis for the last few months. I am apoplectic with the Southern and Thameslink services. Some days I want to cry but mostly I just want to scream.
I am very fortunate that my employers are so flexible as I rarely arrive on time.
The train staff are pleasant and usually as helpful as possible, but over the last few months, with the increasing number of problems, when it becomes difficult due to cancellations or delays many now retreat out of sight so passengers are left stranded with little or no information. Personally, I think removing guards from the trains is a bad idea. It is helpful and reassuring having a company face available for people who need advice about their journeys (especially as my line goes via Gatwick so there are many people who really need help). Also, in terms of being a woman travelling alone for almost two hours at night I would feel safer.
I think Govia’s profits should all be reinvested in building not just more trains but more railway lines. The entire network is inefficient.
Anna, Journalist
Location: Reading
Operator: First Great Western
Annual season ticket: ~£6000
For the cost it’s shocking - you rarely get a seat at peak time which means you’re forced to stand. It’s only 25 minutes - but if you’re stuck in a tiny space with 30 other people it feels a lot longer! Trains are usually late - usually only by a few minutes but sometimes it’s disastrous. It seems to be affected by rain (flooding), wind (reduction in speed), heat (reduction in speed), cold (ice) - the list is endless.
I have two really specific gripes:1) lack of communication. If the train is slow or stops en route it’s rare anyone on board takes the time to explain (but will usually manage to announce the cafe is open!)
2) Reservations on peak time commuter trains. Holiday passengers and day trippers can reserve seats, but as far as I’m aware there’s no option on a season ticket.
I’m lucky because there are a high frequency of trains that call at Reading - I don’t know how people manage with one or two trains an hour.
It’s really an extraordinary amount of money and I really resent it.
Laura, Researcher
And here’s one happier commuter...
Location: Leamington Spa
Operator: Chiltern Railways
Annual season ticket: £7,596
There are inevitable glitches, possibly one bad trip a month but otherwise it’s largely on time; I always get a seat, often two seats, occasionally an entire table; the crews are friendly; and the 1970’s vintage Mk3 coaches with the original comfy seats are as good as it gets - remember HSTs in BR days - You get people wondering if they’ve strayed into first class.
The bacon sandwiches are lovely and the coffee awful.
Marylebone must surely be the most civilized terminus in London.
I do appreciate that I’m atypical; few can afford a 100 mile inter-city ride every day. However I spent over 30 years commuting on Southern completely understand the awful experience the vast majority suffer.
Nick Davies, IT worker
Updated
Some train pain from the north of England ...
Northern Rail is terrible
I commute on a Northern Rail pacer between Huddersfield and Manchester and it's terrible - both during winter and summer. Air con? Forget it. Wifi? Forget it. Leg room? What's leg room? And all that for £200 a month.
Going back in the evening is always utter shambles, with trains delayed and last minute platform alterations and no information from staff. And in the mornings, if they put fewer than 4 carriages on, which they often do, a couple of stops down people can't get on.
It's been like that for a long time, with close to no improvement. I know they're planning to get rid of pacers, but that's still a long way down the line....
And more ...
Onetime train commuter, never again!
I used to commute from Sheffield to Manchester via trains for 9 months. I only managed to endure the service for that long, as it was frequently late arriving into Manchester. Often it was delayed, sometimes the 4 carriages would be reduced to 2 and I would be crammed in next to the toilet. All this for the princely sum of £330 a month. Now I work in Sheffield and walk 10 minutes down the road. Trains in this country are over priced, unreliable and frankly a disgrace for a country like the UK in the 21st century. This became even more apparent after a trip to Japan. The service and system there is amazing.
I’m travelling around the fringes of south London at the moment, but we are asking for your experiences of using rail all over the UK.
Emus - I think that is a name rather than Rod Hull’s mates - regularly travels from Stoke-on-Trent to Manchester Piccadilly. They raise an interesting question about how fare structures affect what we are prepared to do to travel to and from work:
I cycle to the station in order to get within an arbitrary price boundary which saves 30% off my fare. The train is relatively empty when I get on, but I usually have to compete for space for my bike as there are no signs in the allocated space that bikes are permitted. I get off train in Manchester and cycle 30mins to work. To travel this way takes the same amount of time, or more than, by car, but for environmental and exercise reasons I choose to cycle.
It’s a good question to throw into the comments - would you do a regular commute that took longer because it helped you get exercise or because you thought it was more environmentally responsible?
A lot of the time when we report on train reliability, as journalists we tend to fall back into reporting “but how does it affect commuters” because they can be the most visible and most vocal group using a service. But there is a lot more to using public transport than just travelling to work.
This story was sent into us last night via our form, and it really puts into perspective the additional anxiety that an unreliable service can add to an already emotionally difficult situation.
My partner is having radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Sutton: we have been travelling there from Clapham Junction on Southern since July once or twice a week, and since 1 August Monday-Friday. We are in week five of six of our treatment commute. During this period we have experienced the revised timetable and a strike ... and almost every day trains are late, cancelled or at the very least a last-minute platform alteration.
There are “security staff” on the platform who know NOTHING and look up “live departures” on their phones if you ask for information. It is uncertainty and stress which we can really do without: I feel that I just can’t rely on Southern to provide the service we need.
An unhappy user of Southern trains ... not pleased by the announcement this morning ...
Been crap for the entire 2016
Southern service on the Brighton mainline has been terrible all year. Peak "terribleness" hit in May/June/July. I've been commuting for approx 4-5hrs a day to work around the random cancellations - train hopping three/four times per journey, often. I pay £410 a month for the privilege. And this apparently Will go up in January. Someone, somewhere, is having a right good laugh at us commuters. The government should step in. If they don't then what good are they?!
I’m on a train heading into Victoria. When I speak to him, Andrew tells me he has just been reading about the profit announcement on his phone. I ask him how he feels about it.
“A bit sick. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. And haven’t the government just put a load of extra money into a rescue plan? It seems like unfair profiteering. You wonder how bad it has to get or what they have to do to get it taken off them.”
He uses the line regularly and concedes it has got more reliable recently - “since they started only running a third of the services.”
Fiona Pattison took this photo at Balham station in London last night - she was travelling to Gypsy Hill. She tells us she “ended up with a crush in the tunnel under platforms as platforms kept being altered. Forty-minute delay on a nine-minute journey.”
Overcrowding at Balham last night
Chaos as trains were cancelled, platforms were altered and no information was given. Someone is going to get hurt.
We’ve been receiving a steady flood of rail horror stories via our commuter call-out, which you can contribute to here.
Many of them seem to involve Southern. Here’s Lee, a media director from London, who travels to the south coast regularly to visit his elderly mother.
I’ll detail you the worst journey I had thanks to the conductor shortage that happened this year.
Friday night - I leave work, get to Clapham junction to go see my mum. It’s 6.30 and I just missed a train. Next one isn’t for another 30 minutes. Then the cancellations start appearing. There is a signalling fault in East Croydon. Then there isn’t enough staff to run the trains. The next three trains don’t appear. One arrives 45 mins late (after the three that haven’t appeared) train is so busy with people trying to get to East Croydon that I can’t get on the train. It’s now 2 1/2 hours into my journey, Clapham Junction is mayhem and I haven’t moved.
Now I’m told to go to Shoreham-by-Sea, on a slow train, but when I get there I can get a train to Chichester. I take the slow train, it takes two hours to get there. It’s now 11 at night.
When I get to Shoreham, every single train is cancelled. There is no staff at the station and the next train is 90 minutes away (at 12.30 at night!). No one to help. No one cared. Passengers everywhere. I end up taking an Uber from Shoreham to my mum’s in Selsey which was an extra £22.50 on top of £34.50 return ticket.
My journey takes 6 1/2 hours (it’s quicker to fly to Athens!) and Southern would only refund £14.50. In vouchers. Which ticket machines and their website don’t use.
Updated
Fabio Sarlo has left this comment on our Facebook page. He is an orchestral management trainee at the English Chamber Orchestra. He tells us:
Landed my dream job in London two months ago, been commuting up from Horsham on Southern fail. Terrible service, 8/10 times a train is delayed or cancelled sometimes to poor excuses which I’m starting to think they make up! Aside from the terrible service it’s the sheer cost that baffles me - £455 a month for a travelcard from horsham!
As a recent graduate with no savings behind me it’s been almost impossible to get off the ground financially these first couple of months even with a wage coming in! The amount of strikes is getting out of hand - I will have been at my job for eight weeks and I will have endured two weeks of strikes by that point ... it is inexcusable and I really hope they can sort the mess out that is Southern Fail.
I’m sat on the surprisingly punctual and empty 07:54 from Lewes to London Victoria, whipping through the Sussex countryside, writes our environment site editor, Adam Vaughan.
Today is not a normal day. Yesterday my train home from London Bridge was cancelled, no explanation, while the day before my train home was delayed by about 40 minutes due to another train having brake problems. Next week’s two strikes mean I’ll either have to cycle more than 100 miles in a day to get to work, or work from home.
When Southern works - which was most of spring and last winter (December excepted) - it’s absolutely fine. But the last four months have been Fawlty Towers on Rails. Multiple cancelled trains in the morning and evening have been the norm, leaving me phoning family to pick up the children, or penning and editing articles on the train. Filling in the delay relay form for compensation (a pitiful £4 or so per delay for me) is slow and tedious.
For some, the stress and inconvenience is more serious. An actor I spoke to recently was furious at having been left stuck in London several times by last-minute cancellations, unable to get home to Sussex and forced to beg a sofa from friends in the capital. “I despise them: Southern rail, Thameslink Govia, it’s a nightmare, they’re useless,” he said.
One friend, David Wicksteed, who commutes from Banstead in Surrey to a school in south London, now has to include over 10km of running into his daily journeys, because Southern’s emergency timetable cut off his line entirely.
Some long-suffering passengers I spoke to earlier this summer had a very British, resigned approach to the ongoing problems.
“I don’t have any choice. What can I do? I’m not going to hang myself,” laughed Anna Hita, a manager in the City, who admitted she was “always late” to work because of the delays and cancellations.
“No train services are particularly brilliant are they? It is what it is. What can you do? They’ve got you over a barrel, you’ve got to get to work,” said Martin Smith, an IT contractor who commutes from Crawley to London Bridge.
James Emanuel, a software developer who travels up to London from Newhaven, said he was regularly delayed and had taken to getting earlier trains, but echoed the sentiment. “I’m resigned. I can’t see that getting angry is going to help my situation, it would make things more stressful. And I’m not in to having a go at the staff either.”
I’ve been bustling up to people on trains and introducing myself saying, “Sorry I know it’s weird to talk to strangers on trains, but I’m a journalist.”
The best reply to that so far has been: “Well if you are a journalist you’re weird anyway.” It’s a fair cop to be honest.
I’m currently on the platform at East Croydon waiting for a delayed train coming up from the south coast and going into Victoria, and while we’re waiting I’ve just spoken to Pat about the profit announcement. He’s middle-aged, in a suit. He says he’s not sure about that but asks me if it’s true that the government are putting another £20m in to support the Southern franchise. It doesn’t make sense, he says, that we’ve got a privatised system that his heavily subsidised.
I ask him if he would support the re-nationalisation of the railways. “It’s a difficult question,” he says. After a pause he adds: “With the amount of money the government pays behind the scenes we’ve still got a nationalised system now.”
Updated
Ben from Guildford appears to have channeled the experience of trying to write this live blog. He describes his regular morning commute as:
Train arrives. Stand up for half an hour. Wifi provided is useless, so try to do work while going in and out of bad phone signal. Get off.
He goes on to say: “I by no means have the worst commute, but it’s telling that I consider myself lucky while paying over £4,000 a year to SouthWest Rail to stand up every day.”
At least if I end up being late into the office today, I’ll be able to say to my bosses: “But you asked me to take really crowded trains that were likely to be delayed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
Latest on strikes
Hundreds of staff working on the Southern franchise will stage a 48-hour strike on Wednesday and Thursday next week over the prospect of driver-only trains, which would save Govia money but which the RMT union claims would make trains less safe.
The RMT has been further angered by the announcement that £20m of taxpayers’ money will be allocated to help Southern “get to grips” with its problems.
The RMT general secretary, Mick Cash, said: “If there’s money to prop up this private outfit why isn’t there cash available to make sure that the guards and safety are protected on their trains?
“If this huge chunk of money was allocated to maintaining the safety-critical role and the jobs of the train guards on the Southern services we could have avoided the strike action that has been forced on us again next week by the penny-pinching, profiteering and intransigence of Southern/GTR.”
Separate 24-hour strikes by the RMT and train operators’ union Aslef about plans to close ticket offices were scheduled for next Wednesday and would have applied across all Govia Thameslink services.
Both unions have since suspended industrial action after talks mediated by conciliation service Acas saw Govia make concessions, including a guarantee that no jobs would be lost. Aslef is also understood to have been concerned about the legality of its strike, having already lost high court battles with Govia. Its executive will be meeting again in a couple of weeks’ time.
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More from Julia Kollewe on the business desk:
Go-ahead has said its chief executive, David Brown, has “made it clear he does not wish to be considered for an annual bonus this year and declined a salary increase”. The company has also introduced passenger satisfaction measures in its annual bonus plan.
Govia has been at loggerheads with unions over the use of more driver-only trains and the role of guards. A 48-hour walkout by RMT guards next Wednesday and Thursday is expected to go ahead, while a strike by station staff has been called off.
Brown said the £6.5bn Thameslink programme, which comes after 40% passenger growth on Southern over the past five years, would deliver “gradual improvements” over the next two years.
Southern is the UK’s largest rail franchise, covering routes from Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Kent into London, and runs Gatwick Express services. GTR operates the Thameslink and Great Northern rail companies.
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I’ve gone from London Bridge to East Croydon. For part of the journey I was sitting opposite a man in his 50s listening to The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks so loudly on his headphones that I could happily sing along. Thankfully we weren’t in a quiet coach.
A few seats down from him is Stefano. He has only started using Southern in the last couple of weeks - he used to take the tube. His regular commute is just a couple of stops out of central London, and so far he says he hasn’t experienced any problems with the services. “Five-minute delays sometimes, but that’s nothing.”
I’ve met another Kevin. When I tell him about the profit announcement he says: “Obviously it’s unjustified. I imagine people will be aggrieved. You can be sitting on a train one minute before departure and then they tell you it’s cancelled because they don’t have a driver. I’ve never known anything like it.”
Davina is also in this carriage. She usually works at Bluewater but is having to head south today because she is covering a shift elsewhere. She says she does this once a month, and her experience of this service isn’t too bad. She does add that she’s going to be late for work though.
One person has sent in a photo showing his train cancelled this morning - although that line all looks good now ...
Victoria station
My train this morning at Victoria. Pretty standard.
Many rail commuters have been getting in touch. Here are some of the contributions so far:
Walter commutes on the Hope Valley line, which connects Sheffield and Manchester - he travels between there and Rose Hill, Marple. He tells us:
The trains are very uncomfortable and busy, there are usually only two small carriages. They are noisy. They are too hot. The train station has no facilities at all - not even disabled access! There is nowhere to buy a ticket so people have to queue after getting off the train to buy one. Also the service finishes at about 8pm and there are no Sunday trains.
One reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, commutes five days a week on the West Coastway line between Brighton and Southampton. It’s run by Southern rail. He describes a typical day’s commute:
The day begins with checking the Network Rail app as soon as I wake up so that I can see whether any trains have been delayed or cancelled. If everything seems fine I get a bit worried that the app isn’t working properly. I’ll step out to the station and will usually notice that the train I’m aiming for is a few minutes late. This is one thing to point out, they’re never on time. Ever.
I usually have the option of a seat at my station, but the train is still crowded most of the time. A few stations along and it’s standing room only.
Coming back from work, those of us who travel by train discuss which services we can aim for and we religiously check the Network Rail website again to see if they’re cancelled or delayed. On the way home, if you’re not at the train when the doors open, you’re not going to get a seat.
Along the line, if London trains have been delayed or cancelled you will get two or three train loads of people trying to cram themselves on at particular stations. If you’re in a wheelchair or you have a pram, you can forget it. If I’m lucky, the train will be within 10 minutes of its scheduled arrival time. This is my commuting life, every single day of the working week.
It’s not all bad news out there though. Isabel Divanna travels on Great Northern between Cambridge and London. She says she’s quite satisfied by the service:
This is a good line and the early train I catch in, and the mid-afternoon one I catch back, always have seats. The mid-afternoon train is often a little late, but not more than 10 minutes. My main dissatisfaction is the price - I wish it was a bit cheaper. (Her season ticket is about £5,000)
Do let us know about your rail commutes by clicking on the blue ‘Contribute’ button at the top of the blog or via our form.
Worst 10 trains in the UK
The Department for Transport publishes a list of Britain’s most overcrowded rail routes. Here is the roll call of shame for autumn 2015, the most recent figures available.
The list is ranked by load factor - or how full the train is - expressed as a percentage of its stated capacity. If a train is carrying exactly as many passengers as it is intended to, it will have a load factor of 100%.
Govia Thameslink, which owns Southern rail, appears three times in the top 10 most overcrowded services.
- Brighton to Bedford (07:00) - Govia Thameslink - 229%
- Glasgow Central to Manchester Airport (04:22) - TransPennine Express - 215%
- ManchesterAirport to Edinburgh Waverley (16:00) - TransPennine Express - 196%
- Manchester Airport to Edinburgh Waverley (18:00) - TransPennine Express - 176%
- Beckenham Junction to Bedford (08:02) - Govia Thameslink - 171%
- London Euston to Crewe (17:46) - London Midland - 166%
- Woking to London Waterloo (07:32) - SouthWest Trains - 166%
- Bedford to Brighton (16:26) - Govia Thameslink - 166%
- Southampton Airport to London Waterloo (06:51) - SouthWest Trains - 163%
- Edinburgh Waverley to Manchester Airport (06:15) - TransPennine Express - 161%
I’ve been on the 07:27 Southern train from Brockley to London Bridge. When I tell Kevin about the profit announcement and ask him what he thinks he says: “What can you say that is polite?”
He is with Claire. She says she isn’t worried about the company making money, it’s “the fact that they can’t control the unions” that annoys her.
“It’s bad when you get strings of cancelled trains in the evening. This has been going since April” says Kevin.
Evelina is also on the train, who commutes daily from Sydenham. She says she feels services have improved for her. “Two years ago it used to be a disaster.” She says though, that while this applies to her journey, she has work colleagues who come in from different places who “have other opinions”.
When I get off the train staff are busy trying to get it turned around ready for the next departure. There’s a debate about what to do with one of the toilets. It’s been crammed full of paper and is blocked. “But not toilet paper. It’s paper,” says the cleaner, bemused.
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Tell us your commuting experience
Last night on Twitter we asked you what your rail commute in the UK was like, and one of the first responses we got was an animated gif of Miss Piggy repeatedly smashing her head into the table.
@guardian @MartinBelam pic.twitter.com/x5wxWU8LP9
— Heather™ (@dorminguezh601) September 1, 2016
Definitely a case where a moving picture has spoken a thousand words.
We’d love to hear from more of you though - so pop over here and fill in the form to tell us about your experience of commuting by train.
More on the breaking news about Southern’s owners making record profits. Julia Kollewe writes:
Go-Ahead, which owns Southern rail operator Govia, has reported profits of nearly £100m, despite widespread problems at Southern.
Statutory profits before tax increased 27% to £99.8m, with revenues up 4.5% to £3.4bn.
The results come a day after the government unveiled a £20m fund and a new review board to improve Southern rail services and restore confidence in the franchise, which is run by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), a joint venture between Go-ahead and Keolis of France.
David Brown, Go-ahead’s chief executive, apologised to passengers after a summer of travel misery. He said: “A large part of the role of the GTR franchise is to introduce three new train fleets and modernise working practices. During this period of change, Southern services have been disrupted by restricted network capacity, strike action and increased levels of absence.
“We apologise to the people whose lives have been affected during this time. We continue to work closely with the DfT, Network Rail and other suppliers and partners to operate the best service possible while delivering the long term improvements.”
Southern will restore more than 100 cancelled services next Monday, more than a third of the 341 that were cancelled on 11 July due to “unprecedented levels of train crew sickness” - but another strike looms later next week.
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If you’re commuting by rail - anywhere in the UK - then please let us know what your journey is like. You can share your experiences, photos or video (though do think about other people’s privacy if you’re taking images) by clicking on the blue contribute button at the top or if you prefer via our form. We’ll use as many of your contributions in the blog as we can.
I’ve spoken to a member of train crew who will be striking next week. He says he’s not doing it for him - “I’ve done thirty years, back from the BR days. If they want to make me redundant, I’ll be fine” - but he says he’s doing it for the future - “to protect our railways”.
He describes scenarios he has been involved in, including having to put out a “Are there any doctors on the train?” call when a woman had gone into labour. He says in emergencies like this, or when somebody falls ill, what is more important - the 1,000 people on the train or acting to help the one person? What can a driver do in that kind of situation if the trains aren’t fully staffed?
He says he remembers back when they took staff off the ticket barriers in Paddington a couple of decades ago. Within a few years they had to bring them back because they were losing so much revenue. “And that’s public money.”
I asked him about the personal cost of the strike - with the two days next week he will have a lost a week’s wages through industrial action. “It’s a lot of money to lose” he says.
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Here’s the view from someone who wanted to remain anonymous, but had plenty to say:
Dissatisfied doesn’t really begin to describe it. The service is completely useless. Trains are late, crowded, short (of carriages) and random. Even first class (often declassified) is unpleasant on many trips.
I have little to no sympathy for the strikers who are making the situation worse, for little or no gain, and appear to want to return to some mythical past. The strikes certainly appear to be more about a political power play for the union than trying to come to a sensible resolution.
And I have absolutely no sympathy for Southern, which seems unable to manage even when all the staff do show up. I doubt nationalisation is the answer - the old British Rail wasn’t exactly a high performer (or cheap) - but tougher regulation would, one expects, certainly help.
Why Southern rail is so bad
Southern rail has become a byword for overcrowding and delays thanks to a combination of factors.
A sprawling franchise: Southern owner Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) also controls the Thameslink and Great Northern franchises, as of last year, as part of one mega-franchise. Under this unusual contract, Govia only suffers small financial penalties if it doesn’t meet service requirements.
Engineering works: Hugely disruptive upgrades to London Bridge have been compounded by signal failures, sinkholes and flooding.
Staff shortages: GTR has admitted it underestimated the shortfall in drivers it needs to operate trains. Industrial disputes have made it harder to find drivers and guards willing to do overtime.
New trains: New rolling stock has been ordered but drivers have to be retrained to operate them. That means taking them off the usual schedule, adding to staff shortages.
Industrial action: Some new trains have been designed to run without a guard, which unions oppose. This has fuelled strike action that only exacerbates existing problems.
Growth in rail usage: Passenger numbers have reached record levels and the south-east is where three-quarters of UK journeys take place. This has strained busy commuter routes to bursting point.
Cost cuts: The government has sought to transfer the cost of rail travel from taxpayers to passengers but fares are already so high that raising them is difficult. One solution is to drive down costs, which can hurt the quality of service.
Despite the problems at Southern, Go-Ahead, which owns Southern operator Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), has reported a 27% rise in profits before tax to nearly £100m. Revenues increased 4.5% to £3.4bn.
David Brown, the chief executive, apologised to passengers who have been affected by Southern’s woes. He said: “A large part of the role of the GTR franchise is to introduce three new train fleets and modernise working practices. During this period of change, Southern services have been disrupted by restricted network capacity, strike action and increased levels of absence.
“We apologise to the people whose lives have been affected during this time. We continue to work closely with the DfT, Network Rail and other suppliers and partners to operate the best service possible while delivering the long term improvements.”
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With the Go-Ahead Group announcing their results today, I thought I’d head onto some of the Southern Trains that they run to see what passengers think of the service, and the profits they generate.
In a rather poetic turn of events the first Southern train I wanted to catch, the 05:47 from Victoria to East Grinstead, was delayed.
Instead I got the 06:02 to Bognor Regis, and jumped off at East Croydon. As I walked up to the train, Southern staff were standing around discussing the staffing levels on it. I must confess, I was sorely tempted to just head to the coast for the day instead of bouncing around between commuter stations.
Please join in the discussion below the line about UK commuter rail services, not just in the south, but across the country. I’ll try to pop in when I can. And please send me your stories of commuter joy or woe using this form and we’ll feature some in the blog during the morning.
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