November 2010
Station Investment
- The landlord/tenant relationship with Network Rail meant that any investment scheme had to adopt a partnership approach.
- Because funding is limited, c2c/NR have to work together to maximize the inward investment from third parties such as DfT and local authorities. There is also a need to coordinate programmes to maximize the impact of investment on a given station.
- However, despite the prevailing economic climate, there are still improvements scheduled at 19 of the 26 c2c stations in the coming 2 years, which represents a major investment in facilities for customers.
- The National Stations Improvement Programme sees projects commencing at Chafford Hundred, Shoeburyness and Southend East in January, with tranche 2 schemes at Chalkwell, Ockendon and Limehouse to have the design phase completed in 2011 and construction in 2012. This represents around £4m of funding in total.
- The Access for All programme will see 3 major footbridge and lift schemes at Pitsea (about to start), Tilbury Town and Laindon (starting early 2012). Minor investment at stations (ramps, automatic doors, DDA ticket windows) has been a feature of recent years, but the DfT funding of this is under review.
- 12-car platform extensions on the Tilbury Loop are scheduled for 2011, although it is disappointing that the additional rolling stock will not be available to make full use of them.
- Network Rail has its own renewals programme, and recently this has involved the re-levelling of platforms at Basildon.
- Southend Borough Council has received Cycle Town funding, and is using some of this to improve cycle facilities at stations.
Rolling Incident Review
c2c’s Operations Director reported a disappointing period for performance, with PPM down to 92.5%, largely as a result of a number of infrastructure and fatality issues:
- Multiple track circuit failures at Grays
- 2 dewirements at Chalkwell in a week
- Fatality at East Tilbury
- Unstable lighting mast at Ripple Lane, Barking
He also stressed that Network Rail had changed some of their response procedures to infrastructure failures, which had added time to the repair period – in some cases more than doubling it. This was clearly unsatisfactory and would be discussed with them as part of the regular reviews.
He was confident that the service plans put in place for each incident were robust, but some of the problems had been with the dissemination of information to staff and customers. c2c’s Customer Service Manager Kim Gorman confirmed that reviews were being carried out internally to assess the performance of the ‘hub and spoke’ method of informing staff. Once this was fully established and working satisfactorily, it would be easier to identify those members of staff who needed further encouragement and training on how this information should be passed on to customers.