“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
Please sign our petition below to stop our excellent C2C and Greater Anglia railways going backwards
Southend is lucky to have two quality railway connections to London run by good operators. Out of all the issues facing our community, meddling with our railways was the lowest priority.
Yet last week the Labour Government announced that both C2C and Greater Anglia railways will be taken back into Government ownership and management next year as part of their plan to re-nationalise the railways.
In the last 12 months, C2C has run 93.7% of its services within 3 minutes of their scheduled time with only 1.0% of trains cancelled. Similarly Greater Anglia has scored 94.3% with only 1.5% of trains cancelled. In general, the trains are clean, the rolling stock is up to date, the service is reliable. C2C also make very welcome charitable investments into our community.
Services on both C2C and Greater Anglia are very likely to deteriorate from July next year when the new Labour government takes them back into public ownership. As the saying goes, “if you don't learn from history, you are destined to repeat it'.
Nationalisation of the railways in 1948 was a bad idea. The Fenchurch Street line on which we all depended to get into London was known as the “misery line” in the 1970s and 1980s. Dirty carriages, delays, doors that were often hard to open, surly union service who were often on strike and terrible BR sandwiches. Companies in the City avoided employing people who used the line due to the lines notoriously unreliability.
Decades of under investment is what caused major problems, that privatisation has started to overcome with major investments in new rolling stock. We do not want to go back to that poor, dirty service.
We, the undersigned, call on the Government to stop the re-nationalisation of the C2C Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness line.