Gatwick queues as demand exceeds bus provision

BANK Holiday engineering works closed the Brighton Main Line between Gatwick Airport and Three Bridges on May 6/7, leading to a situation whereby around 2,000 passengers had to queue for an hour at Gatwick Airport to board replacement buses.

The warm weather, combined with the start of the Brighton Fringe Festival, enticed more passengers to travel by rail. The weight of numbers was so great that Southern, via its official Twitter feed, eventually advised passengers not to travel.

Trains with capacity for 1,700 passengers were serving Gatwick Airport station, where buses capable of carrying 70 passengers were meeting them.

However, coaches are unable to travel on motorways if passengers are standing, and a RAIL source said some of the delays were due to the rail replacement buses being slowed down because passengers refused to sit down, leading to journey times that were longer than expected.

A Govia Thameslink Railway spokesman told RAIL: “We anticipated that the service would be busy and, given the engineering works and need for rail replacement bus services from Gatwick Airport to Three Bridges, we put a queuing system in place at Gatwick.

“On May 6, at around 1130 to 1230, three trains arrived in quick succession and there was a spike in passengers with about 1,500-2,000 waiting for up to an hour, so we used additional contingency buses that we had in place to clear the queues.

“For much of the rest of the day there was a steady flow of passengers with no or regular queuing through the stations onto buses, including on return journeys from the South Coast.”

The engineering work was to enable points to be refurbished, to allow access to Tinsley Green sidings. Network Rail spokesman Chris Denham told RAIL that without this work, the new timetable starting on May 20 (that involves 8,000 changes) could not happen.

GTR ran buses instead, with communications published in the local press. Sixty buses were hired for the rail replacement bus services, with a further 30 sourced to clear the queues.

Denham told RAIL that land sheriffs and British Transport Police officers were sent to assist. He explained that a diversionary route via Horsham was also closed for engineering works that involved wetbed and ballast regulation work. The former repairs poor drainage and requires digging works. Denham said NR attempted to get a diversionary route open quicker.