{"id":1380,"date":"2016-01-11T08:21:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T08:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/?p=1380"},"modified":"2016-01-11T08:21:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T08:21:21","slug":"a-bad-start-to-the-new-year-for-southeastern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/posts\/1380","title":{"rendered":"A bad start to the New Year for Southeastern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/20160108-trying-to-board-sevenoaks-twitter-milend-licensed.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1381\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1381\" src=\"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/20160108-trying-to-board-sevenoaks-twitter-milend-licensed-225x300.png\" alt=\"20160108-trying-to-board-sevenoaks-twitter-milend-licensed\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/20160108-trying-to-board-sevenoaks-twitter-milend-licensed-225x300.png 225w, https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/20160108-trying-to-board-sevenoaks-twitter-milend-licensed.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>We had numerous\u00a0direct complaints from our members and supporters about short, overcrowded, cancelled and delayed trains last week. One Dunton Green commuter took over 3 hours, 5 trains and a bus to reach London Bridge.\u00a0From Twitter we could see that this was common across the network &#8211; with some commuters saying that 10 out 10 journeys had been late. So\u00a0Southeastern&#8217;s customers had a bad week &#8211; and it showed that at times Southeastern seemed overwhelmed in its capacity to manage and to communicate.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Among the problems we noted:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>there were signal failures in the London Bridge\/Charing Cross area on Monday and Wednesday morning peaks. There had been major engineering work in the area over Christmas, although Southeastern <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Se_Railway\/status\/684651192199282688\" target=\"_blank\">claimed<\/a> that at least one of these was not associated with that work. Worryingly <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Se_Railway\/status\/684668372840243200\" target=\"_blank\">Network Rail were not able to\u00a0make a permanent fix<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>there were broken down trains at Chelsfield, at Hildenborough and at Wadhurst.<\/li>\n<li>there were landslips on the Hastings Line and the Maidstone East to Ashford line, presumably as\u00a0 result of heavy rain. Trains were suspended for a time, and then had to run slowly. The Hastings line is now closed from mid-evening in the coming week for engineering work.<\/li>\n<li>the new timetable for the closure of Dover-Folkestone line did not seem to be working well, with trains to London pulling out just as replacement buses arrived.<\/li>\n<li>the <a href=\"http:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/posts\/1365\" target=\"_blank\">shortening of our trains to provide rolling stock<\/a>. This affected not only Sevenoaks but also Tonbridge and Paddock Wood &#8211; with passengers having to stand all the way from Paddock Wood and with passengers unable to board at all at Sevenoaks. The &#8220;apology&#8221; notice at Sevenoaks station about Dover makes no mention of shorter trains; nor does the Southeastern website.<\/li>\n<li>there were widespread delays on Friday morning which Southeastern blamed on rail conditions due to &#8220;icy weather&#8221;. Most passengers thought that the weather was mild &#8211; and certainly not as icy as would be normal for January.<\/li>\n<li>there were other short formations, presumably due to the failure of stock and the absence of any spares.<\/li>\n<li>there are lots of engineering works this weekend causing further annoyance to passengers &#8211; with all too common tales of the few trains run being short and overcrowded and of replacement buses not turning up.<\/li>\n<li>problems were amplified by known issues about how Southeastern run the network to manage costs, including train crews being delayed when travelling as passengers so unavailable to take over their scheduled trains<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Southeastern would say that some\u00a0of the root causes were outside their control. It&#8217;s certainly true that it was not a good week for Network Rail either. But with 48% of the fares and subsidy paid to Southeastern ending up with Network Rail we expect <em>Southeastern<\/em> to be doing a better job of ensuring that Network Rail do the\u00a0job that they are paid to do. And Southeastern do have the job of managing the network and communicating with passengers. Last week showed how\u00a0Southeastern still lack the capacity to react, to communicate and to minimise passenger inconvenience when things go wrong and how easily they are overwhelmed by multiple events.<\/p>\n<p>We will be talking to Southeastern about this shortly. We would be very interested to hear\u00a0your views and your experiences in the last week.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had numerous\u00a0direct complaints from our members and supporters about short, overcrowded, cancelled and delayed trains last week. One Dunton Green commuter took over 3 hours, 5 trains and a bus to reach London Bridge.\u00a0From Twitter we could see that <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/posts\/1380\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"A bad start to the New Year for @se_railway","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trains"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Secretary","author_link":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/posts\/author\/secretary"},"featured_img":null,"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/posts\/category\/trains\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Trains<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Trains<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"12","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 10 years ago","modified":"Updated 10 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on 11 January 2016","modified":"Updated on 11 January 2016"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on 11 January 2016 08:21","modified":"Updated on 11 January 2016 08:21"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QBJ4-mg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 11:53:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1382,"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions\/1382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srta.org.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}