3. It’s the infrastructure, stupid
There’s a limit to what Southern can do to fix these problems: train operators don’t actually own or run the infrastructure (track, signalling, and so on) that their leased trains run on.
UK rail infrastructure is actually owned, run and maintained by Network Rail, an arms-length publicly owned body. The recent track fire at Gatwick Airport station, for instance, was caused by a power supply problem which had nothing to do with operator Gatwick Express (another brand part of the Govia monolith), but was instead under the auspices of Network Rail.
The stats show that around two third of Southern’s delays are caused by factors not under the control of the operator. A new operator won’t have any more influence over the infrastructure than Southern does. And so, delays of some kind will probably still persist.
Sorry about that.
The problems outlined above suggest that a change in operator won’t be enough to fix all the problems on the network: rather, it’ll take significant investment. Sorting out those devious flat junctions and introducing more quadruple tracking might be a good start.
But this work will be far from straightforward. Firstly, projects of this nature tend to be really complex and take a loooong time. The Thameslink programme for instance, was once known as “Thameslink 2000”. It’s due to finally be completed in 2018.
Finding the space might be difficult, too. A lot of the land up right to the tracks on the Southern network has been sold and redeveloped. Viaducts and tunnels can be built – but these can be expensive, noisy and visually problematic.
Oh, and all of this stuff is really expensive, and there might not be the money anyway.
Happy times.