In the new timetable starting Sunday 15 May Southeastern have added a minute to journeys between Sevenoaks and Hildenborough/Tonbridge. This is due to conditions in Sevenoaks Tunnel. We have been investigating.
Continue reading →Southeastern have announced that, starting on Sunday 15 May, some off-peak trains on the Otford, Borough Green and Maidstone East line will be longer:
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In October 2015 Southeastern launched a Community Panel and invited customers to join it. It has been used to recruit testers for the Problem Reporting Application, but a principal part of the Panel was an online, members-only, discussion group.
However Southeastern do not appear to have made the resource or cultural commitment to engage with members of the Panel and to draw them into a dialogue to improve their train service. So at the moment the Panel is not serving a useful purpose.
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Members of the Southeastern Community Panel have been taking part in an eight-week trial of a feedback application.
It’s a good idea, but its execution needs more work on usability, feedback, social engagement, gamification and transparency.
Southeastern’s half-million customers, from one of the most talented parts of the world, are an incredible resource. The company need to do better than this to engage and use them more effectively to help improve their rail service.
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Karen Harding, our Borough Green correspondent, reports on the current state of the Maidstone East line services.
The general consensus amongst people I speak to, is that the Maidstone East line is treated as the poor relation. Since 2010 I have noticed a marked increase in the number of people travelling, both during the week and at weekends, particularly in the last couple of years. There needs to be increased capacity and frequency, particularly to/from Blackfriars in peak hours; this would avoid the need for people to travel to Sevenoaks for more frequent services.
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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 and 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.