New South Western Railway managing director promises improvements
A series of walkouts by SWR staff as part of a long running dispute over the future of guard roles caused a month of travel chaos in December.
A number of other issues have also impacted travel times, including a derailed freight train at Eastleigh last week.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdBut now Mark Hopwood, who has been managing director for just four weeks, said the company is seeing ‘signs of improvement’.
‘(We) still face some big challenges – like the derailed freight train at Eastleigh which shut down a good portion of our mainline last week, causing disruption for most of our network as trains were diverted or cancelled,’ he said.
‘We run one of the busiest networks in Europe, so there’s no easy fix, but there are a number of things we’re doing to make the improvements our network needs.’
Ways SWR plans to address issues is by ‘taking a detailed look at stations from which our trains leave a couple of minutes late’, which will help find ‘small but important ways to get more of our trains running on time’.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdPlans to speed up its service recovery will come into force to ‘claw back vital minutes’ after a problem.
He added: ‘Disruption to our services is often caused by issues with the railway infrastructure, and whilst this isn’t our fault, it is our problem.‘So we’re working to reduce the number of speed restrictions on our network, making the case to Network Rail for their safe removal, and so help save those crucial minutes from our journey times.’
Comment Guidelines
National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.