Since the Govia consortium took over services on the Great Northern routes out of Moorgate and Kings Cross in September 2014 there has been little sign of the promised improvements in service. There have been more of the delays and cancellations that we are familiar with from the bad old days of First Capital Connect and the usual half-hourly service in Christmas week.
Some of the problems can, of course, be laid at the door of Network Rail, but employing enough drivers is clearly Govia's responsibility. The fact that so many trains are cancelled during school holidays suggests that running a full service requires drivers to work overtime, which they are not prepared to do when they have domestic responsibilities to fulfil.
Things are clearly no better on the Thameslink routes - also inherited from First Capital Connect - prompting irate passengers to set up an e-petition:
Force Thameslink to improve their service
Responsible department: Department for Transport
Govia Thameslink won the bid to run our trains by vowing to cut costs; it appears they have done this by reducing staff and foregoing essential maintenance work. Every day trains are delayed due to "staff shortages", "broken down trains" and "signal failure". Their delay repay service is unsatisfactory because very often these delays fall just short of the 30 minute milestone currently necessary to reclaim fare; this benchmark seems increasingly inadequate if one considers the number of delayed minutes accumulated throughout the course of one week, or even a single day. Check their twitter account for a catalogue of errors:
https://twitter.com/TLRailUK/with_replies
The main purpose of this is to draw public attention to the situation, and to provide a platform for commuters to express their frustration with a service (their only route to London) which appears to be getting worse. This company should not be allowed to continue providing such terrible service.
