Commuters need to fight back. Southern Rail has decided to officially reduce its service. Nothing to do with the year long strike. Nothing to do with lack of demand. No it is because Southern appears to believe that it runs the trains for its convenience and not as a service to the hundreds of thousands of commuters, who pay heavily for the privilege.
The rail company has decided to cut the late trains from both Victoria and Brighton and to cut the first trains from Brighton. Southern had recently been providing a service with fewer cancellations apart from when its engineering train broke down at the end of the Bank Holiday and other services cut because of faults on trains.
No late trains on Southern Rail
So now they are going to make the cancellations official. No late trains from Victoria to the South Coast or from the South Coast to Victoria on Sundays to Thursdays. Oh yes and no very early trains from the coast to help people to get early flights from Gatwick.
Anyone who uses the service will know that the late trains tend to be the first to be cancelled so I suppose the company is giving us certainty that we cannot have a night out in London or work late.
Regular users of the late or early services will not be able to claim compensation. Those of us who use late trains know that they can be very busy – much busier than trains in the middle of the day
And while we travellers have been consulted about other reductions to the service this one is being is a fait accompli.