c2c to restore full peak services from Monday

DESPITE the ongoing industrial dispute on the c2c route instigated by the RMT guards' union, the company will be in a position to restore full morning and evening peak services from Monday (22 October).

The company's ability to bolster services is due to additional guards coming on stream. On days when the union has not been holding strike action or staging overtime and rest day working bans, which also severely reduce services, c2c has been running a semi-permanent timetable which has been able to deliver 80 percent of peak services.

This timetable provided customers with a stable, consistent service and did not rely on overtime, as full timetables do to an extent, so was not vulnerable to wildcat action by the RMT refusing overtime at the last minute or calling in sick at short notice when due to work peak trains.

But for many customers, although stability was restored on non-strike days, as there were fewer services there were some delays and, in particular, overcrowding, which resulted in continued dissatisfaction and complaints.

While the intention had been to continue with this service for the duration of the dispute, the availability of extra train crew resources means it will be possible to revert to the full timetabled peak services of 47 trains to London in the morning and 44 out again in the evening. During the off-peak, services will continue to be restricted to roughly half-hourly while the dispute continues.

c2c Route Director David Taylor said: "We now have the resources at our disposal to restore peak services to pre-dispute levels, which is what our customers have been pleading with us to do since the dispute began, although it will still leave our off-peak fairly thin.

"But it makes sense to do this if we can, as we are the most intensively used commuter route in the country - by which I mean 85 percent of our customers use our services to travel to work in London, a much higher proportion of total customers than on other routes.

"Our management negotiating team is still available for talks with the RMT and will continue working to bring this dispute to an end as swiftly as possible."

Despite having signed an agreement for the implementation of the Driver Only Operation (DOO) of trains in December 1999 and a subsequent one in May 2000, which guaranteed no compulsory redundancies, the RMT has reneged on these deals this summer, saying it wants DOO abandoned on the route and guards to stay on all trains.

c2c has said guards would stay on 12-car units when its full fleet of new trains is in service next year and is in favour of there being an additional member of staff on trains, including four and eight-car units, as well as the driver.

In line with what passengers have told the company they want in terms of enhanced safety and security, c2c envisages that role being more customer-facing with the train crew member walking through carriages to assist anyone who needs help getting on or off trains, answering journey questions and checking tickets.

The RMT has opposed this move, saying this would reduce their role to nothing more than "Kit Kat sellers." It wants guards to remain locked out of sight in the guard's van of a train just ringing the bell when the doors are clear to enable the driver to depart.