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SWT getting even worse?

surbiton1's picture

surbiton1
9 years ago...

Has anyone noticed another step down in the quality of SWT’s service lately?

The reaction time to incidents just seems to be going through the roof, and the regulators do not seem to care.

On Monday a train hit and killed a person at Wimbledon at about 8.40am. I was on that train, and I think we were stuck at Wimbledon for about 90 minutes. I have no problem with that whatsoever, it is a tragic and awful incident and the proper investigations and clear up must take place.

Whilst thoughts and condolences must go to the family of the poor person that was killed, I can’t help but think that South West Trains then went on take take advantage of the incident somewhat.

I know for a fact that the train in question was taken out of service at Clapham Junction before 10.30am. Of course, this has a knock on effect on services for the next couple of hours whilst trains/crews get back into the right place, but SWT decide that there is going to be severe delays until ‘end of service’. Even during the evening service the NEXT DAY, they were still blaming the incident for short-formed trains and a couple of cancellations.

Clearly what is happening is that they are now using incidents like this to cancel more services than they have to for longer than they have to in order to save on wages and overtime.

What prompted me to write this rant is that it is now Friday afternoon of the same week, and there is a signal failure at Waterloo that was discovered at about midday. Funnily enough, this is also now going to cause delays until end of service tonight. Every time there is a hint of a problem ALL trains on the Dorking, Hampton Court and Chessington lines are cancelled, but they still refuse to run a reasonable service on the rest.

The problem is, they just seem to be able to do as little as they want to with no fear of retribution.

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