RMT has called for Southern to have its franchise removed as it finishes at the bottom of the train operator league.
Rail Union RMT has repeated the call for GTR to be stripped of their franchise. The call was repeated this morning.
With the services now being taken into ownership of the public after it emerged that train operator Southern scored the worst levels of trust from the public out of all the rail companies during the past two years. The GTR Great Northern and Thameslink operations were also rated very low down in the zone of regulation.
Analysis done by Transport Focus has shown the firm was given “notably low scores for trust” across the last four surveys taken by passengers, ranging from 17% in the spring and in the autumn 2017 to 22% in the most recent survey that was taken in autumn of last year. These were in fact the lowest scores out of all the train operators involved.
What did the officials say?
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said:
“For over three years RMT members have been warning that Southern is a basket case franchise, cutting corners on safety and service and not fit to run a railway. These latest shocking figures prove that we have been right all along.
“Finishing bottom of the league when there are no-hopers like Northern Rail in the running takes some doing but for both passengers and staff alike the cavalier attitude of Southern to safety, access and quality of service is no joke.
“GTR, which is the group operation including Southern, Thameslink and Great Northern, are specialists in failure who should have been removed from the tracks by Chris Grayling ages ago but instead he has chosen to bail them out and prop them up at taxpayer expense regardless of what depths they plumb.
“RMT will continue to fight for the return of the guards, for safety and access to come first and for the whole lot to brought into the public sector.”
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Looks like it’s nearly the end of TSGN and to be downgraded to just TGN franchise as Southern could be separated from Govia GTR franchise (along with Gatwick Express) and to be taken over by another foreign rail investor ie Arriva, Abellio, MTR, Trenitalia & First Group.