One in four trains across the Southern and Gatwick Express network were cancelled yesterday according to figures released by an anonymous member of staff.
The summary for Monday was tweeted out by the unofficial @BrightonStation Twitter account this morning, showing 511 trains cancelled, out of about 2,000 run through the day.
This is the worst day in recent weeks, which have been hit by a raft of cancellations in the wake of three days of strike action by the RMT, which is concerned about the safety of driver only trains and changes to the role of conductors to focus on issuing fines and customer service.
Southern says this is due to union members calling in sick, but the RMT says striking conductors have been banned from working their rest days, leading to severe staff shortages.
The rate of cancellations came on a day where Govia was meeting with the RMT at ACAS. Following the meeting, Govia said in a statement: “We responded to the points raised by the union, and they have taken our responses back to their executive for consideration.
“We await their response, and hope that they will move this forward and help us develop the on-board supervisor role.”
Meanwhile, commuters are set to stage a protest at Brighton Station this evening at 6.30pm, and are sharing their stories of misery on the trains using the #GoViaNowhere hashtage on Twitter.
The @BrightonStation account said it believed yesterday could have been the worst day for cancellations this year. They said: “These are shocking figures. It’s the worst day I’ve seen and I’ve been checking recently.
“To put it into context, for those sort of cancellation figures you’d usually be looking at a big fatality on the mainline.
“A crumb of comfort, after initially being cancelled, around 40 of those services were reinstated for at least part of their journey it seems.
“It is actually very hard to work out what did what, due to the volume of cancellations. But one thing is certain: tens of thousands of seats were cancelled.”
Commuters are also angry at how the Govia franchise, which includes Southern, Thameslink and Gatwick Express, has been negotiated, with Govia paid a fee for running the service but all revenues going to the Department for Transport.
They say that this means Govia has no incentive to improve performance. In May, details of a remedial agreement between the DfT and Govia made in February were made public, revealing that the operator could now make up to 32,000 cancellations before it breached the franshise agreement, up from 23,391, or rising from 2% to 2.75%.
