Sign the Southeastern Public Refund Petition

11.52.50pm GMT Wed 13th Jan 2010

These days the Southeastern Railway website opens with a photo of a man holding an enormous watch in front of his face, the caption says "it's time for change". At seeing it many will think "indeed".

There's a widespread feeling among South East London commuters that over the last couple of weeks suffered the consequences of a severely reduced timetable, they feel badly let down.

As freight and high speed trains were running seemingly as normal, commuter trains operating on the same lines were few and far between and so overcrowded that one could hardly fit in, if at all. Many couldn't go to work, self-employed lost income, countless trips had to be cancelled. Central London was almost out of reach from many areas of South East London and Kent.

It wasn't an exceptional weather, temperatures were just below zero and only a few inches of snow fell over a few days. That's a normal winter weather, as normal as it can be, and services should be able to stand that.

Southeastern underperformed so badly when compared to all other operators around London that measures must be taken.

That's why the Lib Dems are now collecting signatures on a petition that aims at giving a strong message to Southeastern: put your house in order!

When a company accepts a £136m public subsidy to run a public service it must provide the service all year round, it must have measures in place to run the service in normal winter weather and since the railway is an essential and strategic service it must be prepared to make an effort even when providing the service is not easy.

Last week Southeastern threw in the towel even before the match started.

Today we ask Southeastern to return a share of that subsidy equivalent to 3 days of service (£1.1m) to Network Rail to be invested in improvements at stations served by Southeastern. It's a practical way to compensate those that for 3 days have been inconvenienced and to publicly acknowledge that it must do better if it wants to keep on running this strategic public service.

Please either download the petition sheet, print it and collect signatures at your workplace, home or at the station or sign online. Improve your train service.

Related Link:

Sign the pettion here.