The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has today written to Chris Grayling for the second time repeating his offer to put a TfL team in charge of the ‘failing’ GTR Southern franchise.
On top of this week’s strike action, Southern Rail passengers have faced months of delays, cancellations and disruption on routes in and out of London. In today’s letter to the Transport Secretary, the Mayor welcomed the news that this week’s strike had been suspended, but reiterated the urgency of putting a TfL team temporarily in control of the franchise that has failed passengers for many months.
Sadiq Khan said that in any other walk of life the service offered to paying customers by GTR Southern would not be tolerated, ‘so enough really is enough.’
The Mayor believes that TfL are best placed to sort out the problems with Southern. He repeated that TfL would get a grip of this situation as they have expertise in running public transport services that are relied upon day in day out by millions of people.
The Mayor’s letter criticised the Government’s refusal to look into changing the management of the franchise, saying that TfL can deliver a far better service than Southern Rail by ‘immediately assigning an experienced team to fix the service.’
The principle of TfL taking on more rail services in the long term has already been accepted by your Department of Transport, as set out in the joint DfT/TfL rail prospectus earlier this year.
Sadiq Khan’s letter urged the DfT to take action immediately as ‘passengers should not have to suffer any longer the appalling level of service they are currently forced to endure.