Southern improvements

Investments in your train service

Our Stations

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen three superb brand new station buildings at Mitcham Eastfields, Coulsdon Town (formerly Smitham) and Uckfield. This year, the new station at East Grinstead is almost complete and work has started on the construction of new station buildings at Ashtead and Hassocks. There are plans for further major station improvement schemes which will bring the overall investment in new stations and major improvement work to over £16.5million.

At Gatwick Airport station, the concourse has had a major £1.5million makeover and at Brighton and East Croydon stations, over £6.4million will be invested in concourse improvements.

It’s not just the major improvements that we’ve invested in at our stations. We’ve listened to what you told us you wanted improving most. The top two things by far were new and improved toilets and waiting rooms, so, with those done, and things like improved energy efficient lighting, accessibility improvements, more CCTV, more automatic ticket gates, more ticket machines and a deep clean and refresh of all of our stations, we’ve invested around £19.5million in improving your overall station experience.

Our investment doesn’t stop at the station door. We think it’s important that no matter how you travel to and from our stations, our car parks and cycle parking have to expand to meet the need, so this year alone, over 800 new cycle and 550 additional car parking spaces have been added, with much more to come through things like decking schemes and making use of land adjacent to existing car parking.

Our Trains

170 new carriages ordered

You may have heard in the news that last December, we ordered 130 new carriages for use on services into London Victoria via Hackbridge, Norbury and Gypsy Hill to ease crowding and provide 10-car trains on these routes from December 2013, at a cost of around £200 million. We’ve just announced that we intend to add 40 more carriages to that order, which will provide even more capacity for you. Also in December last year, as a result of additional carriages to our fleet from elsewhere and more efficient maintenance practices, we were able to increase seating by around 5,000 on the East Grinstead route.

£19m train refurbishment programme

With our existing fleet, you may have noticed that many of our Class 377 Electrostar trains are cleaner, brighter and have new carpets and seating. This is because we are currently refurbishing the whole fleet of 700 carriages at a cost of £9million. Work started last year and by spring next year, all carriages will be fully refurbished. We’re also investing £10.5million overhauling our fleet of Class 455 trains – those you see on our Metro routes. The overhaul includes mechanical inspection and repair and a refresh of the interiors. We hope you have noticed a significant difference on these trains.

Your Journey

Investment in improving quality at our stations and on board our trains is key for us to be able to provide you with a great journey experience, but the overall experience is much more than that, and we invest heavily on improving other aspects of your journey.

7% drop in crime on our network

Safety and Security are top of our list and in addition to the installation of automatic ticket gates, full live CCTV coverage at all of our stations and on all of our trains, we have a dedicated team of 36 people which includes 32 Rail Neighbourhood Officers and four British Transport Police Officers who patrol our network preventing, detecting and dealing with low-level crime. This year, the team has contributed significantly towards a 7% drop in crime on our network.

You need information at all times, not just when things go wrong. Our station and on-train staff have been provided with technology that allows them to get information to you when you need it – as it develops. We’ve also invested in training programmes for our entire customer facing staff to help them deliver information to you as quickly, as accurately and as comprehensively as possible.

Improved customer information systems, additional help points, Multi-modal screens, Information pods in waiting rooms, Maps for All and use of social media vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook have all helped to improve the quality and accessibility of information for you to make informed decisions about your journey.

Finally, in addition to the improvements we’ve made to make it easier to buy your ticket, we’re rolling out our innovative smartcard – the key. By the end of next year, every station outside London will be covered by the key – the start of the end of paper tickets and the start of the smartcard revolution proper on Southern.

Thank you for renewing your season ticket. We understand you have a choice in how to travel so we really appreciate you continuing to choose Southern. 

We often get asked how fares revenue is used so we have produced this short article to show how we invest to build a better railway and improve the experience for you, our passengers. We work closely with Network Rail and other funding sources to get the best value for money and spend it in areas which will make a real difference – areas such as waiting rooms, station and train toilet facilities, live train-running information and car parking.

If you have any suggestions for where improvements should be made, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us or fill out our Feedback form.