Southern rail to run full service next week and suspends three days of walkouts

Commuters caught in recent Southern rail delays
Noor
Dick Murray18 January 2017

Southern Rail's hundreds of thousands of long-suffering passengers were today promised the return of a full train service - but not until next week.

The announcement comes after Aslef, the train drivers’ union, suspended three days of strikes next week to allow fresh peace talks to take place.

The union also called off the drivers’ overtime ban from midnight, although that came too late to prevent further widespread disruption today.

Southern said it will not be able to run a full timetable before Tuesday because the RMT union, which is not involved in today’s peace talks, is still going ahead with a strike by train guards on Monday.

The company, however, said it still expects to run 70 per cent of its trains – 10 per cent more of the timetable than it ran during previous walkouts by guards – on that day.

Four coastal routes, completely without trains during previous action by guards, will now have a service and routes that previously finished early on strike days will now run much later.

Also from Tuesday the Gatwick Express will return to a service every 15 minutes, with two trains an hour from Victoria to the airport and two trains an hour continuing to Brighton until 10 pm.

From then until midnight there will be a half hour service between Victoria and the airport only, to allow Network Rail engineering work.

The Southern dispute is over the implementation of driver-only operated (DOO) trains where the driver operates the doors and not the guard. The unions say this is unsafe, claims widely dismissed by the rail industry.

Angie Doll, Southern’s Passenger Services Director, said: “Whilst, inevitably, there will be disruption next Monday, the good news is that due to the changes we’ve now fully rolled out, we’re now able to run more services on more routes serving more passengers and ultimately we’ll have fewer cancellations and delays.

“Next Monday, some 200 extra trains will be running and several routes will have their first service on an RMT strike day.

"The RMT should now recognise that their industrial action is wholly futile. They should stop the strikes, get back round the table with us and move forward together with us, delivering a better railway for our passengers.”

After the end of the overtime ban, all lines continued to suffer late and cancelled services.

The six-week old overtime ban has caused daily disruption with up to 25 per cent of services failing to run.

The three days of strikes next Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday by Aslef union train drivers - which were suspended yesterday - would have brought Southern’s 2,200 services to a standstill.

Aslef suspended all industrial action to allow a new round of peace talks to take place today with GTR, Southern’s parent company, at Congress House, the TUC headquarters, jointly-chaired by TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady and Andy Meadows, group human resources director for Abellio, the public transport giant.

Mick Whelan, the Aslef leader, said: “We believe the best way to resolve the dispute at Southern is for all parties to engage in meaningful talks – without preconditions – aimed at finding an agreed way forward.”

Charles Horton, GTR chief executive, described the new talks as an “important and significant development” for passengers but declined to comment further until their conclusion.

The RMT, however, which has ordered repeated strikes among its train guard members, is furious at not being included in the talks.

Unless there is a last minute change and the union is allowed to attend, Monday’s walkout by guards – the 28th in the 10-month long dispute – will go ahead.

The RMT also has 12 train driver members and they are also still scheduled to take strike action next Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. This is also dependant on whether the talks are opened to include the union.

Southern apologised to passengers for the “continuing disruption to your journeys” adding the RMT strikes are “still expected to take place.”

*The RMT and TSSA unions resumed talks today at Acas, the conciliation service, to try and avert another damaging Tube strike scheduled for Monday, 6 February.

Up to 4,000 station and ticket staff are protesting over up to 900 job cuts with claims the network has reached “crisis point.”

A walkout on Monday of last week caused major disruption for the Tube’s four million a day users.

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