MP Attacks 'Appalling' Hampton Train Services

2.36.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 19th Apr 2004

MP Vincent Cable has obtained statistics from SW Trains showing the trend in train punctuality on the Shepperton line, serving Fulwell and Hampton.

These show that from a level of 90% of trains arriving within five minutes of the timetabled time in the summer of 2000/1, just below the target of 92%, the level fell to below 75% and in the last year has been around 80%, showing little sign of a return to anything like target levels. All these figures related to periods when there was no leaf-fall; if these are included the average punctuality (within five minutes) has been 76% over the last financial year as against an 82% target.

Vincent Cable said: "this is a pretty appalling record, 1 in 4 trains are seriously late. SW Trains at least have the good grace to acknowledge that they have a long way to go before meeting their Passenger Charter objectives. Ever since 2000/1 regular passengers on this route have had to be paid a 5% discount on their season tickets as compensation; frankly, they would rather get to work on time. For people who live in Hampton and Hampton Hill and commute by train an already slow and infrequent service is being made totally unacceptable. They can reasonably ask where all the billions of pounds being poured into the railways are going. They certainly aren't going to support this service".

Dee Doocey, London SW region candidate for the Greater London Assembly and a regular commuter from her home in Hampton said: "we are having carrots like Crossrail dangled in front of us and vast sums of tax-payers money put into rail but the brutal reality is that the service is now worse than it was before the Conservatives privatised it. London commuters from the Hampton area have a legitimate beef that they are being pushed out of their cars by the congestion charge but are being offered no satisfactory public transport alternative".