Southeastern Poor Performance Continues

[BluePenguin]

Since trains resumed stopping at London Bridge at the start of this year, the punctuality of services has been absolutely appalling. The number of carriages on the majority of services have been reduced without warning, forcing passengers to squash together even more.

Southeastern blames the short formations on trains.stopping at London Bridge. However nobody understands why a train now stopping at one more station explains the mystery disappearance of carriages.

Up until the end of last year, everything was blaming on the London Bridge upgrade work, but now they are almost complete it seems Southeastern have had trouble finding new excuses to pedal on Twitter. Instead of answering peoples questions, they attaching photos of generic messages explaining how they are "monitoring services" since the change and will look at them in May - talk abut avoiding the subject!

Signal failure appears to have become the new most popular excuse for why services are late or short formed. With trains running from all different directions, I find it hard to believe that a broken signal would affect services from the Southeastern Mainline, or Dartford. The excuses go on and on every single day!

It seems even when there are no passages to carry the trains "lose time" getting out of the depot.

This morning, somebody was tragically hit by a train. Now an accident like this is of course terrible news and all respect goes out to the individual and their family. However southeastern saw this as an opportunity to excuse all of their wrong doings because of it. There were many other tracks avoiding the incident that services could have used to stop at Bromley South, but as they were very late running services, southeastern decided not to bother and sped through inconveniencing passengers on board who wanted to get off at Bromley South, Lewisham, Shortlands and other suburban stations. Clearly their determination to rob people or their delay repay is important than getting people to the destinations soon as possible, albeit late.

I have attached a few screenshots for people to read:

 

[Bromley boy]

The number of carriages on the majority of services have been reduced without warning, forcing passengers to squash together even more.

Do you have a reference for this? Many metro services have been lengthened in the last few months as networker stock has been freed up by the arrival of 377s.

There are occasional short formations due to defective stock, but to suggest the number of carriages on the majority of services has been reduced is factually incorrect.

Signal failure appears to have become the new most popular excuse for why services are late or short formed. With trains running from all different directions, I find it hard to believe that a broken signal would affect services from the Southeastern Mainline, or Dartford. The excuses go on and on every single day!

Signal failures happen and cause enormous delays. Not really an excuse, just a fact. It’s also down to network rail, who own and maintain the infrastructure, rather than southeastern.

I’m not sure what’s hard to believe about services on both the SE mainline and dartford being affected by a signal failure. Trains and drivers cover both of these routes in quick succession on many diagrams so disruption anywhere on the network can quickly affect multiple routes and services.

it. There were many other tracks avoiding the incident that services could have used to stop at Bromley South, but as they were very late running services, southeastern decided not to bother and sped through inconveniencing passengers on board who wanted to get off at Bromley South, Lewisham, Shortlands and other suburban stations.

Where was the fatality (not familiar with this one), and which are the “many other tracks” you think SE should be using instead?

 

[otomous]

Some trains were longer formed during the rebuild because they would not be emptying out at London Bridge.

The Old Southern region is hugely interconnected. Signal failures further out can quite easily affect the normal working of trains.

Trains do lose time leaving depots. They have to have a free path to get out on to the main line, and if there is general disruption they have to wait.

What other tracks are free exactly? You can be fairly sure if they were available they would have been used.

SE are by no means perfect but they have to run a somewhat complex service on a congested network with many constraints on their flexibility in the franchise terms.

 

[Starmill]

The new stock that Southeastern now have access to in the form of 377s is pretty significant. 27 4 car units that they wouldn't have had a year or so ago. So I'm surprised that there's a big problem.

 

[bramling]

The new stock that Southeastern now have access to in the form of 377s is pretty significant. 27 4 car units that they wouldn't have had a year or so ago. So I'm surprised that there's a big problem.

From memory, since the end of slamdoor trains, Southeastern has gained the 395s plus the 377s, whilst losing 12x 508s. Is this right or am I overlooking anything? Certainly seems like a reasonable increase, although to be fair the 377s have been a long time coming.

 

[BluePenguin]

Well I never, I never knew so many people would be defending southeastern. The technicalities and reasons/excuses aside, services have been consistory late for the 11 full days of this year. I am sure the many people complaining on Twitter wouldn't be lying.

 

[Bromley boy]

Well I never, I never knew so many people would be defending southeastern. The technicalities and reasons/excuses aside, services have been consistory late for the 11 full days of this year. I am sure the many people complaining on Twitter wouldn't be lying.

Again this statement is incorrect. What are you basing it on?

PPM has been over 80% most days, right time 50-70%.

 

[bramling]

Well I never, I never knew so many people would be defending southeastern. The technicalities and reasons/excuses aside, services have been consistory late for the 11 full days of this year. I am sure the many people complaining on Twitter wouldn't be lying.

I don't think people are defending Southeastern - I for one have been on the receiving end of some highly questionable service recovery decisions - however it is fair to acknowledge that their network is an extremely challenging one to run. Unlike something like Thameslink which is something the industry has largely chosen to create, the Southeastern network is largely inherited and has to do the best with the infrastructure it has.

 

[BluePenguin]

Hmm from the way you are writing these replies, I wouldn't be surprised if you worked for Southeastern. Maybe they have deployed you to combat customer complains being voiced on other parts of the internet.

Do you have a reference for this? Many metro services have been lengthened in the last few months as networker stock has been freed up by the arrival of 377s.

There are occasional short formations due to defective stock, but to suggest the number of carriages on the majority of services has been reduced is factually incorrect.

Yes, the tweets I have attached. There must be a ton of defective stock as losing 2 carriages on a number of services until May must mean they were badly damaged! No, the carriages have been moved leaving some services short formed, that is the fact...unless they disappeared into thin air. 1 hour 20 minutes of my journey yesterday was spent squashed amongst lots of other sweaty bodies.

I haven't got any reference for metro services on me, but Twitter is full of angry commuters on the Dartford lines who seem to testify if that counts.

I have no idea where the 377s are you are talking about.

Signal failures happen and cause enormous delays. Not really an excuse, just a fact. It’s also down to network rail, who own and maintain the infrastructure, rather than southeastern.

I’m not sure what’s hard to believe about services on both the SE mainline and dartford being affected by a signal failure. Trains and drivers cover both of these routes in quick succession on many diagrams so disruption anywhere on the network can quickly affect multiple routes and services.

Signal failures from time to time are acceptable although why does a signal take 5 days to fix? That is what is hard to believe.Claiming it/they are broken each day is an outright lie as otherwise trains wouldn't be able to run. From looking at the map, mainline services into Charing Cross bypass Lewisham which seems to be the place where congestions builds up and causes delays. Services should run paralel without causing each other issues.

Network Rail have had enough of our money to make London Bridge look like a palace, but the infrastructure of other parts of the network must be severely lacking for this much downtime.

If signal failures aren't excuses then how about the passenger being taken ill each day? For 3 days in a row someone has been taken ill, bless them. It must be because of Southeastern's free sauna service!

Problems at Greenwich should not be causing issues at Bromley South or London Bridge.

Where was the fatality (not familiar with this one), and which are the “many other tracks” you think SE should be using instead?

I am not sure where it was exactly but from your name I assume you live in Bromley. Perhaps you could ask someone on your way home? I am interested to know to as apparently was the reason given for the cause of the huge back log of trains and delayed a large number of services today.

According to Wikipedia, platform 3 is used for services that are non-stop to Victoria. This would mean that if there was an issue on platform 1 for the stopping services, it would be an isolated incident.

Similarly, a Thameslink train breaking down or being delayed on platform 2 should not affect the Southeastern lines either side of it.

I understand some of what you are saying and agree to disagree with you on the rest.. However nothing can explain or excuse this amount of poor performance. It is as if Southeastern are following in the footstops of Southern!

 

[BluePenguin]

Again this statement is incorrect. What are you basing it on?

PPM has been over 80% most days, right time 50-70%.

A lot of the statistics available are inaccurate as services run fast to their destination. 80% is good although what about the remaining 20%? It is a considerable number

 

[Malcolmffc]

Again this statement is incorrect. What are you basing it on?

PPM has been over 80% most days, right time 50-70%.

Are you suggesting a PPM of 80% is good?!

 

[fusionblue]

Every day this week my Cannon Street bound train has stopped outside London Bridge for a few minutes before progressing into a platform. During the rebuild, it would slow but continue all the way through. Given the tracks have now been "untangled" (ignoring the spur to Deptford, flat crossing outside New Cross, the flydown at Tanners Hill, Lewisham Junction itself, the spurs to Sidcup and Hayes...) there's clearly still bottlenecks happening.

 

[BluePenguin]

I don't think people are defending Southeastern - I for one have been on the receiving end of some highly questionable service recovery decisions - however it is fair to acknowledge that their network is an extremely challenging one to run. Unlike something like Thameslink which is something the industry has largely chosen to create, the Southeastern network is largely inherited and has to do the best with the infrastructure it has.

I agree with you, it is an awfully challenging network to run. However any service recovery decisions made will effect a number of people, big or small. I can only begin to imagine how tough those decision were.

I am one of the people who lost their job not long ago because of terrible services on the railway. Leaving at 5am was not good enough to leave enough time to be late. This why I am so passionate about performance, as to an employer apologising the trains were late isn't a good enough excuse. If I am late it is a black mark against my time. No amount of delay repay will change that.

This why fare paying passengers deserve more than the same old daily excuses. If there really are problems then they need to be fixed, this can't go on for much longer.

 

[tsr]

A person being hit by a train is not an isolated incident. The person struck by the train in this case was regrettably not in the most presentable state, and visible from all the running lines near Bromley South. This is strictly not permitted to be viewed by passengers on passing trains, for obvious reasons. Therefore screening (which took up another line) was deployed. Once this was done - which was commendably promptly, in the circumstances - the service recovery could get into full swing, whilst forensics worked on the deceased only 6ft from trains which were actually running. A fantastic effort all round, in fact.

As for signal failures, many are repeat problems caused by environmental issues (weather, litter, pollution etc.), tiny electronics problems which would be laughed off if they occurred in your computer keyboard or even your car (but the railway is built around failsafes, so the job stops when this stuff breaks), or glitches which take a long time to access and diagnose but a short time to fix. Combine these three together, and you can see why the knock-on impacts are so common and often so great.

Don't get me started on people being taken ill. Often it's the same person several days in a row, who hasn't had breakfast and faints on their way to work. Someone pulls the alarm (which is understandable with an unconscious person lying on a busy train!). Then you have to wait for the crew to assess the situation and possibly get medical assistance. Eventually these passengers are politely advised to stop it (something like this happened at Clapham Junction a little while back). Anything more serious and therefore more genuine will result in a genuine and often long-drawn-out medical response. On the occasions when somebody goes into labour or cardiac arrest, you can't necessarily move them quickly to a safer place. Therefore they stay on the train until the ambulance service has figured out a way to get them over the Victorian footbridge, or whatever.

 

[Bromley boy]

If a train breaks down in Bromley South p2 then the other lines through the station will rapidly become congested. It is in no way an isolated incident.

If a train breaks down on the Greenwich line of course this will effect trains running into and out of London Bridge!

It’s disappointing that some posters, who are presumably railway enthusiasts, seem to lack even the most basic insight into the operational realities of running a railway.

Are you suggesting a PPM of 80% is good?!

It’s below par. A good day would see PPM (+\-5mins) in the high 90s and right time (+\- 1min)into the 70s.

 

[Bromley boy]

I am one of the people who lost their job not long ago because of terrible services on the railway. Leaving at 5am was not good enough to leave enough time to be late.

I would certainly never wish unemployment on anyone and you have my sympathies for losing your job.

But is this really something that can be blamed on the railway? If you were leaving at 5am that suggests something of an unusually long journey - what was your start and end point, out of interest?

 

[theageofthetra]

Don't underestimate the impact of the sheer number of trespass incidents. The vermin being chased (often after dumping a moped) know the police won't follow them onto a live third rail railway.

 

[ScotGG]

The big question is how many delays (and there has been an increase this month) are teething troubles and how many will linger and not be resolved despite London Bridge work. If trains are still queuing up that seems a bit of a failure.

As for train lengths, I have heard similar complaints. They've clearly changed lengths on some trains and it doesn't seem to be working. They've done similar at recent service changes which were baffling and then had to change them back after a few weeks/months when things didn't "settle down" as expected.

 

[otomous]

Are you suggesting a PPM of 80% is good?!

I personally take the view that trying to make something that does not lend itself to crude performance indicators fit that system of measurement is the problem.

Yes of course we want as many trains as possible to run on time. But remember the timetable is a construct. It is based in many ways on an ideal which may be nigh on impossible to meet. If the timetable is not realistic then it is unfair to assess performance against it without some latitude.

The peak SE timetable is probably impossible to run close to its ideal much of the time. But there may also not be much scope to tweak it. Start adding minutes here and there and you effectively run out of minutes in the hour - either you then have delays which you try to offset by some skip stopping or accept that some will still run to schedule to do the same job, or you permanently take trains out and thus reduce capacity. This is not a great option in South London. There is not a train every few minutes as on the tube. Better to run the majority within whatever the PPM allows than lose some entirely, surely?

If you are making the journey by car or bus, you might expect issues on the road that slow you down. You might estimate to within ten or more minutes of reaching your destination. Trains on congested old networks are subject to the same uncertainties to some extent. But they will still be quicker and will deliver an awful lot more people to their destination en masse. That is the compromise we face with our commuter networks. If a brand new line was built Bromley to Victoria, in Tunnel with few stops, it would be more predictable. But we are not in this situation.

I do not work for South Eastern. I work for another TOC. But I spent years commuting on SE and working on the railway has taught me that it is doing a thankless and almost impossible job, especially during peak hours.

 

[Frontera2]

Since trains resumed stopping at London Bridge at the start of this year, the punctuality of services has been absolutely appalling. The number of carriages on the majority of services have been reduced without warning, forcing passengers to squash together even more.

Southeastern blames the short formations on trains.stopping at London Bridge. However nobody understands why a train now stopping at one more station explains the mystery disappearance of carriages.

It's not about blame rather than stating the facts. When Cannon Street trains stopped calling at London Bridge in 2016, Charing Cross trains were strengthened where possible to cater for the extra London Bridge passengers. With both Cannon Street and Charing Cross trains now stopping there it's not as simple as moving the carriages back although this is being done where possible. Once passengers get used to the fact that Cannon Street trains now go to London Bridge again I'm sure things will settle down as there must be many passengers who migrated to CHX trains that haven't switched back yet.

Up until the end of last year, everything was blaming on the London Bridge upgrade work, but now they are almost complete it seems Southeastern have had trouble finding new excuses to pedal on Twitter. Instead of answering peoples questions, they attaching photos of generic messages explaining how they are "monitoring services" since the change and will look at them in May - talk abut avoiding the subject!

Southeastern don't "peddle excuses" on Twitter, they provide factual information. And the line about monitoring services is an accurate one. You can't expect changes to be made overnight, passenger loading data needs to be gathered and, as mentioned above, some travel patterns need time to settle down. Once this is completed then changes will be be made where they can.

 

[Starmill]

Well I never, I never knew so many people would be defending southeastern.

It wasn't an attempt at defense - but I am surprised if short formations have increased rather than decreased recently for the reason I mentioned.

 

[BluePenguin]

I would certainly never wish unemployment on anyone and you have my sympathies for losing your job.

But is this really something that can be blamed on the railway? If you were leaving at 5am that suggests something of an unusually long journey - what was your start and end point, out of interest?

Thank you Bromley boy, I appreciate that. It took a long time to get over. I enjoyed that job very much, but finally moved on. I put my best foot forward and went back to university without looking back. I worked for Deliveroo for a while which was good fun.

Well, of course I blamed the railway for the 30 - 90 minute delays and missed connections I had to put up with. But in the grand scheme of things it wasn't responsible for everything. Yes I did go on some long journeys but the start times allowed me enough time to arrive on time.

I did look at renting closer to London but boy the rents are expensive.

My starting point was Sandwich, Deal or Walmer depending on where I had stayed the night before. As these stations didn't (and still don't) have services as early on a Saturday, I would say at friends' house and start from Dover Priory instead. Occasionally I stayed at a friend's in Orpington or Hayes & Harlington. My end point was either Bedford, Canterbury, Faversham, Southampton Central, Basingstoke, Battersea Park, Croydon, Luton, Hayes, Vauxhall or Greenwich depending on what I was schedule for that week.

It became awfully tiring so I swapped with a colleague and was commuting to London locations only after that. I thought this would make things easier. This is where the trouble started - my employer stopped subsidising my season ticket. As a result I could only afford non-highspeed ticket and was forced to sit for at least 2 hours to get to London, not including changing train at Dover Priory - this experience is where a lot of my argument for bringing back fast Ashford - Tonbridge services comes from! When the trains were on time this allowed me to be 20 minutes early. However this was rarely the case and I was often up to 40 minutes late.

Could some this have been prevented by buying a high speed ticket? Yes definitely. However I simply couldn't afford it and I still would probably have been late having to use the Underground. I wasn't on this forum back then. Looking back I could have bought several loop hole tickets. Oh well.

My point still stands though, people shouldn't have to allow an hour or two for delay to avoid being late for work.

 

[otomous]

It isn’t the railway dictating the peak fares, or fuelling house price bubbles and centralisation of resources in London that is leading to people having to move further out and then being priced off the trains is it? Or deciding what shape the country’s transportation should take. In its time the railway has been forced to take business that will lose it money, then told it must meet its costs, then criticised for having to run itself down, then criticised for having sold off assets to make ends meet which means it now lacks capacity. It has hardly ever been free to run itself effectively and frankly, privatisation set that cause back even more.

 

[Lukespenceruk1]

I don’t think the 18.49 Dartford via sidcup has left Cannon Street on time once since the new year.

 

[Bald Rick]

Just to put a few things straight:

Trains that skip stops to make up time are counted as a part cancellation and thus fail PPM.
There have been no in service failures of any of the recently commissioned rail infrastructure at London Bridge.
Signal failures do not take 5 days to fix (well, not usually!) However, you can obviously have different signal failures on different days. And a signal failure can mean a failure of any part of the signalling system: control system, interlocking, transmission, lineside equipment, track circuits and signals.
Thameslink train do not use platform 2 at London Bridge!

 

[BluePenguin]

Just to put a few things straight:

Trains that skip stops to make up time are counted as a part cancellation and thus fail PPM.
There have been no in service failures of any of the recently commissioned rail infrastructure at London Bridge.
Signal failures do not take 5 days to fix (well, not usually!) However, you can obviously have different signal failures on different days. And a signal failure can mean a failure of any part of the signalling system: control system, interlocking, transmission, lineside equipment, track circuits and signals.
Thameslink train do not use platform 2 at London Bridge!

They may not take 5 days to fix, but if they keep breaking they don't count as fixed
No but Thamesink trains do use platform 2 at Bromley South

 

[BluePenguin]

I don’t think the 18.49 Dartford via sidcup has left Cannon Street on time once since the new year.

My point exactly! Someone confirms. At last we have an anecdote.

 

[Bald Rick]

They may not take 5 days to fix, but if they keep breaking they don't count as fixed

It's different signalling kit! There are millions of different signalling components in the area that Southeastern use, any one of which breaks can cause a 'signalling failure'.

 

[Darandio]

I don’t think the 18.49 Dartford via sidcup has left Cannon Street on time once since the new year.

My point exactly! Someone confirms. At last we have an anecdote.

It did on Wednesday.

 

[BluePenguin]

Prevention is better than cure. I am not a railway engineer but they should really keep on top of them and rest of the Victorian infrastructure. Maximising spreading resources is important.

It did on Wednesday.

1 day out of 12 is appalling!