Grayling announces Southern Rail to be split up

Hopefully our services will be one of the ones to be potentially handed over TFL

I good decision by Grayling I suspect. I hoped at the time when he refused to split South Eastern that this would not mean he wouldn’t give proper consideration to splitting Southern.

It was a shame that politics got in the way a bit as Grayling was reported to have said that he would never give more power to a Labour mayor of London. Nice to see common sense and grown up government.

Politics aside…

From our little window onto the world of rail services, I’ve always thought the London Overground ran better than Southern services.

So rather than the (Southern-like) private franchising model, perhaps we need to switch London Bridge services to the (Overground-like) private outsourcing model:

Or perhaps just switch from Southern to Arriva?

What do you think, @Joey_H?

I think our southern rail services between Forest Hill and London Bridge are outstanding with plenty of seats and modern trains, hardly any delays I would not want london overground to get anywhere near that service unless they can provide a 5 min interval shuttle service in and out London Bridge between LB and east/west Croydon

I couldn’t agree with any description of Southern as being “outstanding”, rather, I would consider them more to be adequate in recent times having improved from being appalling in the past.

If the service was to move away from Southern and under TFL control, could that be a step closer towards a 24 hour service at weekends?

One can only hope…

There are too many gaps in Southern service to LB in morning rush hour (the ridiculous 8:24 to 8:47 gap at HOP), be interesting to see if comes back post London Bridge redevelopment.

That said, the journey into London Bridge is definitely far more pleasent in the rush hour than the shoe horned overground. The longer 10 carriage trains help, but the most important factor is the Overground providing the main route into Canary Wharf siphoning off large numbers of passengers. If you could suddenly go back to pre Overground days I bet you’d find the trains into London Bridge were very uncomfortable.

They are filling back in the gap. But they put the journey time at someone ridiculous like 24+ minutes (I guess that’s why they removed it in the first place due to congestion).

Overground also offloads 100s of people at Canada Water for the Jubilee line, which is very very popular

I usually travel off-peak, and I would guess 60% of trains are delayed. Coming back from London Bridge in the evenings I find that delay is the rule, and that if a FoH train is delayed by 20 minutes, then frequently the stops before Crystal Palace are cancelled - you need to listen for last-minute announcements otherwise you could end up at Crystal Palace!

Last night. Waiting on delayed train to West Croydon. At least this time it was announced it woukd be going fast to a station past Forest Hill before it left.

Tonight. Cancelled a minute before departure.

Sigh. Not a good day for the Starman and Southern’s tempestuous relationship.