Is this Europe’s worst rail company?

As a Brit, I’m often struck by the spectacle of seeing Swiss people looking surprised when a train or tram is late. They nervously start looking at their watches a couple of minutes after the tram or train is due. In Britain the opposite is true - you generally express surprise when a train actually arrives on time.

So I wonder what Swiss public transport users would make of the UK’s Southern Rail, currently embroiled in a perfect storm of mismanagement, incompetence and woe? Southern, part of Govia Thameslink Railway, is one of the privately-owned companies operating part of the UK rail network. British Rail was privatised between 1993 and 1997, with ownership and operation of the railways passing from government control.

Southern is facing calls to be stripped of its franchise over increasingly serious delays, engineering works, staff shortages and industrial disputes. The company has also been swamped with further problems recently, including earlier this month a hole that was discovered under rail tracks, cutting off many services to London, and a signal failure on the south coast resulting in more disruption.

Barely one in two trains run on time nowadays, and, after weeks of cancellations and delays, a collapse of relations between Southern, staff and passengers, the train company announced in early July that 341 of its services would disappear until further notice. This figure represents 15% of Southern’s around 2,300 daily services. Southern has admitted that there is no prospect of normal service being reinstated before September. 

Tearful disrupted journeys

Some services have suffered worse than others: the Gatwick Express, for example, can no longer claim to serve the airport once every 15 minutes, while a well-used commuter route from Milton Keynes to Clapham Junction in London has been axed completely.

Southern felt it had no choice but to cancel services due to the ongoing industrial dispute, which at its core is over the operator increasing reliance upon driver-only trains. The transport workers’ union, the RMT, says that replacing trained conductors with lesser-qualified on-board supervisors presents both a safety risk and increase in future job losses.

Southern’s response, to withdraw some employee benefits, has resulted in lower staff morale. Staff claim that this coupled with increasing workplace stress have contributed to rising levels of illness, making existing staff shortages even worse. Both Southern and the government, have implied that increased sick days constitute unofficial strike action, making the mutual resentment even worse. In April it emerged that train conductors called in sick more than 1000 times in a month, triggering an average of 83 trains each day to be cancelled.

Rail government minister Claire Perry resigned in July after it emerged that an emergency timetable instigated by Southern failed to prevent delays, while the internet is awash with accounts of woe suffered by by Southern passengers, including missed flights, job losses and tearful disrupted journeys.

So next time your Zurich tram or Basel train sails in three minutes late, spare a thought for the UK: a worrying proportion of British trains won’t be turning up at all.