Chris Burchell, Managing Director - September 2009
Southern Railway Managing Director, Chris Burchell, explains what the new franchise means for the network and how it will benefit you, the customer.
Welcome to our new look website and to a new era for Southern Railway.
Following the recent franchise renewal, Southernwill now continue to provide your train service until July 2015. This is a great opportunity for us to build on the investment and achievements of the last eight years.
The transition from the old franchise to the new has been seamless with improvements already under way.
Your feedback and suggestions have been invaluable – and through initiatives like our meet-the-managers sessions we can further improve our service:
We’re going to enhance your safety and security:
- There’ll be improvements to your station environment and ticket buying experience
- Longer trains in suburban areas to provide more seats
- More frequent services and on parts of the southern network
- There’ll also be additional and later running services
We know feeling more secure whilst travelling by train is very important to you, so every Southern train and station will have CCTV coverage by 2011…
…some stations will have an increased staff presence with almost all South London stations becoming staffed from the first service of the day until the last.
In addition to 14 recently gated stations, a further 22 will have ticket gates installed to help prevent ticketless travel and vandalism. Help Points will also be installed at 40 more stations.
To further improve your travel experience, we are going to ensure every Southern station will be deep-cleaned and refreshed.
At thirty-four of our stations, significant improvements will be made, and at seven of those, including Brighton and Hayward’s Heath, major work will take place.
We’ll provide over 1,000 extra car parking spaces and additional secure parking for over 1,500 bicycles.
There’ll also be new ticket machines installed at many of our stations to improve queuing times.
We’re investing heavily in refurbishing the interiors of our trains, to meet the highest standards you’ve come to expect.
We will be focussing on every aspect of your experience during the next franchise, because it’s not only about the train journey itself, although that’s vitally important, of course.
- There is now a more immediate compensation scheme called Delay-Repay
- We’ll introduce Oyster Pay As You Go at all of our London stations
- There’ll be new customer information zones at every station
You can find out more about these services on this website.
It’s an exciting time for our network with several major projects and events happening in the next few years, such as the Thameslink Programme and the 2012 Olympics. These will have an impact on services and we’ll do our utmost to ensure our passengers get the best service possible during this period.
There is so much more to tell you about, so have a look around the new website. It’s even more user-friendly and has all you need to know about our commitments to passengers over the next five years or so. It also makes it much easier for you to buy any National Rail tickets – including season tickets online.
Thank you for taking the time to watch, I look forward to delivering an even better service to you and I hope you notice the difference.
