Southern Rail need to get their shit together

There were train strikes this week, you might have heard. No, not the tube strikes, they happen like once a year; you can take a bus for a day, get over yourself, no one cares. I’m talking about Southern Rail, whose staff are on strike for three days this week, causing a genuine total shutdown of all services.

300,000 people, including me, commute into Victoria each morning using Southern Rail, which, unsurprisingly, runs to the south of London, and provides essentially the only travel links into central London. You’d think that preventing – and I really do mean preventing – that many people from getting to work would make a point, job done, boom. But no, these three days are three out of at least six days without any service this month, on top of many last year. The train drivers have been on a permanent overtime strike since December, and the conductors have been striking periodically, meaning that even when the trains are running, they’re subject to huge delays, cancellations, and general unreliability. Although the strikes can hardly take all the blame for this: Southern were failing to provide the trains that they promised long before the staff stopped showing up to work.

Due to my general state of poverty as a past-the-end-of-funding PhD student, I’m currently living in Croydon. It should take me an hour to get to college, not much worse than living in Woodward, so not a problem. But of course, this assumes that Southern do their jobs. Last week, when there were no strikes, I spent a total of eighteen hours commuting over four days. Five hours a day travelling – and by that I mean largely waiting at freezing cold stations for a train that won’t be cancelled at the last minute – is exhausting, and a waste of my time. There are alternatives, sure. It should still be possible to get into London, it might take a little longer. Which is fine, in principle, but in practice the additional pressure on alternative services such as trams and tubes is so great that the stations offering these shut down completely as a safety precaution. I could take five buses, taking around four hours if it goes smoothly, then have to immediately turn around and start back home as soon as I get into college. These aren’t sustainable options.

I understand why the staff are striking. I don’t really blame them, it’s shit for them too. I’ve read enough thinkpieces in the Guardian, I know that they’re miserable, and it’s all for our safety, and they’re being forced to work outside their contracts and aren’t being compensated. Southern is a shit company with apparently zero management structure, who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, let alone the timely passage of hundreds of thousands of people, or, if that’s too much to expect, at the very least update the expected arrival times at the stations. They say that they’re losing money, and can’t afford to employ the number of staff that they need to maintain their timetable. They say that being a train company means running at a loss. Well tell that to every other rail company operating on National Rail tracks, coming in and out of National Rail managed stations. They’re all managing to keep trains running and turn a profit – maybe ask them for advice.

Or if you’re really running at that much of an unsustainable loss, give it up and hand back over to the government so then at least someone accountable is in charge.

But enough is enough. This is not public sector. Southern is a private company and there comes a point where it is not acceptable to inconvenience such a vast number of people because they do not like the conditions of their job. Of course, Southern, in releasing a timetable and taking government transport grants, has a responsibility to its passengers, particularly the ones who spend a fortune on season tickets. As much as the staff who choose to stay with Southern need to accept that their roles may change slightly, Southern needs to get its act together and do whatever it takes to provide the service it promises, or else hand over the reins to Sadiq Khan or someone who’ll do the job properly. Or me, even. I’m certainly more competent and my main experience is playing Railroad Tycoon.

I hate Southern Rail as a company much more than I resent the staff that work for them on the ground. They’re taking so much abuse from angry delayed passengers every single day, and they’re taking it with better humour than they could possibly be asked to. Certainly these strikes have brought out a sense of community amongst fellow sufferers, and we all like the excuse to write sassy tweets. But we’re bored now. The torture that commuters are facing is completely disproportionate to the point that the unions are trying to make, and the damage that this mess is causing to the economy is obscene. Enough with these negotiations and just get the fuck over yourselves so I can go back to complaining about my fellow passengers instead.