We need to talk about South Western Railway
Esher and Walton residents are being let down by South Western Railway (SWR). I wrote to SWR in September to reflect the frustrations of local parents at a disastrous first week back at school for many pupils reliant on trains for their journeys.
For five mornings in a row, peak-time services on the main line from Esher to Walton and Weybridge were subject to cancellations and delays. Journeys that should have taken just 20 minutes for children travelling to various schools in Weybridge and Chertsey were taking 75 minutes. And on one afternoon, services between Chertsey and Weybridge were cancelled for hours leaving children stranded, with no notice and no alternative travel options, miles away from their homes.
SWR replied to my letter to apologise for the “poor start” to September and to explain that the delays had “no single or common reason”. Among the causes listed were: “broken down trains, shortforming or cancellations due to operational incidents the night before meaning stock is in the wrong place for the morning start, overrunning overnight engineering works causing knock-on delays or cancellations in the morning and things like signal or points failures”. The afternoon of cancellations on the line through Chertsey was down to a faulty battery within part of the signalling equipment that led to “a loss of control of 11 level crossings in the area”.
Broken down trains, overrunning engineering works, signal failures, faulty batteries, unworkable level crossings: I would suggest that there is a common reason for all of them. Years of neglect, underinvestment and a failure to hold the rail industry to account by the Conservative Government. They have failed in their duty to make our railways run in service of their passengers, rather than to the benefit of their shareholders.
We see this locally not just in the unreliable service commuters and pupils suffer, day in day out, but in multiple other issues that residents have raised with me:
increasingly unaffordable fares, following a nearly 6% rise in March this year, with the additional financial impact on local rail users of TfL’s decision to withdraw one-day travelcards, which will come in next January;
Worries about unsafe stations and a lack of assistance on many weekdays if SWR go ahead with their planned closures of ticket offices;
The lack of progress on repairs to storm damage at Hampton Court station, which has been covered in scaffolding for 18 months, despite being a gateway for 1000s of tourists visiting the Palace;
The widespread impact, with little warning, of the three-week closure of six of our local stations over the Christmas period last year.
Improving our local rail service is a central part of my campaign: I am determined to use the constructive relationship I have established with SWR’s senior leadership to ensure that they are aware of the strength of feeling and the daily frustrations felt by local commuters. I will continue to push for the extension of zone 6 to cover stations in the constituency - a campaign started by Elmbridge Lib Dems way back in 2019 and only recently piggybacked by outgoing MP, Dominic Raab after 13 years as MP, five of which he was a Cabinet Minister and could have done something about this.
At a national level, the Liberal Democrats are committed to fixing the broken fares and ticketing system so that it provides better value for money for passengers and to improving industry accountability by being far more proactive in sanctioning and ultimately sacking train operators if they fail to provide a high-quality public service to their customers. We want the planned increase in fares to be abandoned as part of our action on helping people through the cost of living crisis. We are calling for the Government-mandated proposals to close station ticket offices to be halted and for the new “Great British Railways” to be established before the next election, to ensure that the needs of passengers and freight are put first.
As the Tories have shown with their inability to run HS2 within budget for 13 years, and then abandoning it half complete, they have little interest in rail travel and seem completely out of touch with the people who use it to travel to work and to school. As your MP, I’d fight for better services for us all.
Please contact me with your views, concerns and recent experiences of rail travel.