You will likely have heard about the issues at Redhill Station on Sunday 25 February – when thousands of passengers were left stuck trying to complete their onward journey to Gatwick and the south coast by a lack of Rail Replacement busses.
If you saw that (and our response to it last weekend) and feel like you were missing out by not being involved your luck is in, as it looks like it will be a very similar story this weekend when the same engineering works take place.
As a local rail users association we wrote to Southern Rail in response to their plans before the issues happened, and we’ve been speaking to them again since in a bid to secure a better service over the next two weekends when the same line closure is happening.
The good news – they’ve been listening to us
The bad news – they’ve not really doing anything to solve the problem at Redhill on the trains although they’re going to give running busses a better go.
Our point of view
On the face of it this weekend they’ll be doing what they should have been doing last weekend on the bus front. However there simply won’t be enough trains.
Passengers at Merstham and Coulsdon South were unable to board services last Sunday as they were full. The issue isn’t really being dealt with. All that’s been added to the Redhill route is the 4 extra coaches on the Victoria – Tonbridge (via Redhill) route.
The capacity issue is made worse as everyone from London Bridge will be turning up at East Croydon to board these services too – as the Thameslink trains south will not be running at all.
There should be more trains per hour provided to cope with the passenger demand in both directions.
Oh and not to mention Brighton at home against Arsenal this weekend.
So here’s the detail (and they have made some positive steps)
Travelling to Gatwick Airport or further south
If you need to get to Gatwick on Sunday 4 March you have several options, and most of them involve not using Redhill at all.
– An additional hourly service will run from Victoria to Horsham (via Dorking) meaning you can get to Gatwick on that – the train takes a big loop through Dorking down to Horsham, Three Bridges, and then Gatwick. It’ll be a 10 or 12 car train!
– You can also get one of the 2 trains per hour to East Grinstead from Victoria, and then transfer to a bus to Gatwick Airport.
In summary all your options are:
– 3 trains per hour Redhill – Victoria
– 1 train per hour Tonbridge – Victoria via Redhill
– 1 train per hour Gatwick Airport – Victoria via Horsham/Three Bridges
– 2 trains per hour East Grinstead – Victoria (with a bus link to Gatwick Airport)
– Buses between Gatwick Airport – East Grinstead
– Buses between Redhill – Gatwick Airport – Three Bridges
The Tonbridge train will now be 8 coaches instead of the 4 that it was last weekend. The Victoria to Redhill trains will be 12 coaches again.
Southern also tell us that they have extra standby busses to support the demand if needed, and some of the busses will run direct from Redhill to Gatwick Airport without pulling into all the other stations.
They also tell us that an ’emergency train’ will be sitting at Victoria in case it’s needed (why they don’t run it we don’t know).
At Redhill they tell us they’ll be doing a better job of making sure people and busses are managed effectively. There will be extra staff and bus controllers. The carpark at Redhill will be used to marshal people onto the busses with clear options for each destination.
Standby train(s) should surely be placed somewhere other than one end of the route? Bus boarding split? Or dropping pax on Down side with Down car park as holding zone for ‘spare’ buses awaiting loading on Up side. Main subway one way passenger flows Down to Up side. Pax for London using island platform use East side of main stairs? Pax for London sent under bridge on footway & enter station via Down side gate?
Railways Southern Piss-up Brewery Free Beer Couldn’t Run A In A With. Please rearrange to understand how passengers feel.
When I passed the station it was clear that there had been a vast improvement on the previous weekend however looking at the above raises questions:
1. Why so few trains to both Redhill and East Grinstead? Sundays are busy for airport traffic let alone the large number of football fans for the Brighton vs Arsenal game at the Amex as demonstrated by the early full park and ride site notification.
2. Why not 2 trains per hour from Gatwick via Horsham and Dorking? Surely that would have been possible combined with extra Horsham to London services using re routed services that would be curtailed at Three Bridges.
3. Why was the main station car park not better set up to house the temporary pick up point and taxi rank?
4. Why was there no diversion signs for this relocated pick up point – cars stopping everywhere!
It is my opinion that those passengers wanting Three Bridges and beyond should have been taken via East Grinstead and the Gatwick passengers via Redhill with extra trains operating.
It is good to read that there were extra carriages put on and the queue management system appeared when I passed to be working a lot better. I am concerned that Gatwick Express when I checked were still selling tickets at their premium price despite Southern mentioning not Gatwick Express operating.
Finally I hope that those residents in Merstham and Cousldon had better luck getting on board