Today, 1 April, the Department for Transport have announced that Japanese Railways will be awarded the Southeastern Mainline Franchise when TfL take over the Metro Franchise in 2018. 

Under the new Franchise, Japanese Railways will:

• Reduce delays to an average of 6 seconds per train, to match the standards of the Tokaido Shinkansen.
• Increase train frequency so that a Kent mainline train to Sevenoaks and Tonbridge leaves London once every 3 minutes, again to meet the standards of the Shinkansen.
• Increase train speeds to 320 kph/200 mph between London Bridge and Sevenoaks, allowing Sevenoaks estate agents’ claims about journey times to become true.
• Use the existing minimum 7-minute train turnround time at Charing Cross to perform a “seven-minute miracle” full train cleaning – ensuring that trains are cleaned before each journey rather than once every ten years. 
• Redesign stations so that the trains meet on both sides of the same platform to allow people to transfer between Express and Local trains. This will be done first at Grove Park (for the Bromley North line), Sevenoaks (for the Bat & Ball line) and Paddock Wood (for the Medway Valley line).
• Remodel Bat & Ball station along the feline lines of Kishi station in Japan.
• Ensure Revenue Protection Officers wear white gloves and bow to all customers.

A spokesman for Japanese Railways said:

“When we looked at the books, we saw that Southeastern were spending a fortune on Delay Repay and the costs of failure. By applying the principles of Kaizen and simply running clean trains on time we could delight our esteemed customers and make big profits as well. Cleaning trains and stations every day saves £70m “investment” in cleaning them once every 10 years. We find it amazing that Southeastern had not done all this before.”

Thanks to @TopTVCameraman and Muza-Chan for contributions to this post.