Before 2015, the Southern brand, whilst not universally loved, appeared to be a well-run operator, who were light years better than Connex, their predecessors.
During the initial franchise, Southern had delivered hundreds of new trains to replace slam-door stock (whilst Connex ordered the first batch, to the eyes of the passenger they would have been ordered by Southern), introduced new late night services to and from London/Brighton and better services on many branch lines with the Marshlink and the Oxted lines seemingly victims of their own success, among many enhancements. I can remember that many people were pleased when Southern retained the franchise in 2009, as they seemed to have done the best job they could on a crumbling infrastructure with growing passenger numbers.
Whilst in 2015 they suffered a large dent in their reputation after the London Bridge debacle(s) as well as appearing to be on the slide in terms of performance and reliability, I wonder whether, with the benefit of hindsight that the Southern brand shouldn't have been retained when it was absorbed into GTR later that year.
The TSGN franchise was always going to be a unique challenge, and with industrial trouble brewing as well as years of delays due to the Thameslink Programme, the chance that services would suffer as a result was high. Wary of this disruption therefore, should they have rebranded Southern to a new name in order to preserve what reputation it had left?
Since absorption into TSGN, I feel that the Southern brand is one of the most poisonous on the railway network due to both industrial action, and, it appears, general incompetence from the managers. This has caused one of Govia's better assets to be permanently tainted.
Therefore should they have dropped the Southern brand to preserve some of its reputation?
During the initial franchise, Southern had delivered hundreds of new trains to replace slam-door stock (whilst Connex ordered the first batch, to the eyes of the passenger they would have been ordered by Southern), introduced new late night services to and from London/Brighton and better services on many branch lines with the Marshlink and the Oxted lines seemingly victims of their own success, among many enhancements. I can remember that many people were pleased when Southern retained the franchise in 2009, as they seemed to have done the best job they could on a crumbling infrastructure with growing passenger numbers.
Whilst in 2015 they suffered a large dent in their reputation after the London Bridge debacle(s) as well as appearing to be on the slide in terms of performance and reliability, I wonder whether, with the benefit of hindsight that the Southern brand shouldn't have been retained when it was absorbed into GTR later that year.
The TSGN franchise was always going to be a unique challenge, and with industrial trouble brewing as well as years of delays due to the Thameslink Programme, the chance that services would suffer as a result was high. Wary of this disruption therefore, should they have rebranded Southern to a new name in order to preserve what reputation it had left?
Since absorption into TSGN, I feel that the Southern brand is one of the most poisonous on the railway network due to both industrial action, and, it appears, general incompetence from the managers. This has caused one of Govia's better assets to be permanently tainted.
Therefore should they have dropped the Southern brand to preserve some of its reputation?
