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Disgraceful SW Trains sign at Surbiton station

surbiton1's picture

surbiton1
11 years ago...

Has anyone seen the sign at Surbiton station that advises which trains to and from the station at peak times have 'availability'. It is colour-coded, green for 'some seats available', yellow for 'standing room only', and red for 'limited or no standing room' or words to that effect.

Between 7am and 9am there is ONLY ONE train from Surbiton that is highlighted green and that is a very slow service. In the evening rush period, there are no trains at all with seats available.

Does this strike anyone else as a bit of a disgrace? I know that getting a seat is not massively important to most people on a sub-20 minute journey, but the thing that annoys me is that SWT are admitting that they no longer intend to provide seats for people from this station and that is now considered business as usual.

We have long been told that there is no capacity on the line for extra trains, and I accept that, but why on earth are quite a few of these peak-period trains only formed of 4 or 8 coaches? If they were all 12 coaches and still packed, I think people would at least be a bit happier that SWT were doing all they could.

Similarly at the weekend, most of the trains are 4 coaches and way over-crowded to the point where people can't even get on. Doubling the length of these trains would be an easy way to sort this out, but SWT don't seem to have been encouraged to do so. They are running the service that might have satisfied demand 20 years ago, whilst benefitting from the ticket revenue and subsidies from all of the extra people using the service in 2013!

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