Transport Insights

It’s worth looking at the Department for Transport’s press release about Britain’s biggest train operator’s services enter public ownership alongside Heidi Alexander’s written statement to Parliament, which has a bit less spin, although the detail of both is pretty unimpressive.

Yesterday, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), which includes Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern and Gatwick Express, transferred into public ownership, or at least its services did, because the trains themselves remain privately owned.

The DfT press release says:

A renationalised GTR will deliver a range of initiatives to improve performance and passenger experience under public ownership, such as doubling the number of services between Gatwick Airport and London Victoria every hour and training 110 new Travel Safe Officers to crack down on anti-social behaviour on the network.

Alexander’s statement to Parliament also promises “doubling the number of Gatwick Express trains each hour between Gatwick Airport and London Victoria from December” as well as providing additional Great Northern off-peak services from Moorgate from December.

It’s not a massive increase and still leaves GTR services as a whole well below pre-pandemic levels.

Interestingly, the press release states that the nationalisation will mean:

Upgrade signalling to reduce cancellations: Secondary signalling system between Farringdon and Blackfriars to reduce delays and boost resilience. Improvements expected to prevent over 1,000 cancellations a year.

While Alexander’s statement promises:

completing the automatic train operation training programme by December 2026, which will support improvements in punctuality, particularly in recovering delays during disruption

Both are about automatic train operation (ATO) but it seems that the statement that improvements are “expected to prevent over 1,000 cancellations a year” is not something Alexander thought robust enough to put in a statement to Parliament.

Fortunately, most people already got their news from the press release.