About us
We provide train services for commuters, airport users, business travellers and leisure travellers in south London, between central London and the South coast, through East and West Sussex, Surrey and parts of Kent and Hampshire.
We manage 157 stations, 112 of which have Secure Station accreditation. Southern's two principal London stations are London Victoria and London Bridge.
We operate a fleet of around 300 new or refurbished trains seven days a week and up to 24 hours a day. Last year, 140 million passenger journeys were taken on the Southern network and we operated over 2,100 trains each weekday. Each year, over 2,000 million passenger miles are covered on 414 miles of track.
We have approximately 4,000 staff, most of whom work at our stations and on our trains.
Southern began providing train services in 2001 when the remaining two years of the Connex South Central franchise were bought out. At the time, we were called South Central.
In 2003, the new franchise, which was to run from 2003 until 2009 was awarded to Govia (Southern's parent company) and shortly after, in 2004, South Central became Southern.
Since then, we have invested over £1billion in two new train fleets, on refurbishing our stations and trains and on a comprehensive train depot upgrade programme. We have also worked hard towards improving train service punctuality and reliability which has culminated in the consistent achievement of record levels of performance, the latest of which was 95% of every Southern train, every day, reaching its destination on time over a four-week period.
We were quick to recognise our impact in the environment and have put in place many initiatives (some ground-breaking such as re-generative braking on most of our trains) to lessen our impact and our carbon footprint.
We have always put the passenger first and have invested heavily in our staff to give you the high levels of customer service you expect, and overall passenger satisfaction scores in the bi-annual National Passenger Survey have been increasing steadily over the years.
In 2008, Southern took over the running of the Gatwick Express service and in December of that year as part of a major timetable change, we extended Gatwick Express services to run from and to Brighton in the morning and evening weekday peak periods using additional trains. This was a major factor in the provision of extra seating capacity to alleviate crowding on the busy Brighton Main Line and the improvement of service provision across the Southern network.
In 2009, Govia was awarded the South Central franchise to run from September 2009 until July 2015.
