Public meeting announced over growing HS service concerns

The Southeastern stakeholder rail group Trains4Deal have announced an emergency public meeting to rally support in the face of  "real and growing concerns that neither Kent County Council, the Department for Transport nor Southeastern has yet committed HS services for DEAL & Sandwich when KCC's subsidy ends in March 2014." 

In addition to maintaining the existing service, Trains4Deal are urging the Department for Transport, Kent County Council & Southeastern to commit to vital improvements which are needed to local rail infrastructure and station facilities. Furthermore, the promise of an all-day timetable is still desperately needed to ensure East Kent fully benefits economically from the HS service.

Tom Rowland from Trains4Deal said, "Now Discovery Park needs a similar HS service down from London, timed so a visitor can spend a working day in Sandwich. This will also benefit other local businesses and tourism, for which the service also needs to run at weekends. The train company admits that it has spare HS rolling stock that could be used for this, but there is suspicion that funds are being set aside to create a new £10m Manston Parkway station instead of maintaining and expanding services we have today."

The longest train delay in history

PUBLIC MEETING

Thursday 19th September 2013 8pm
The Bohemian (1st floor)
Beach Street
DEAL


I encourage people to go and show strength in numbers.

DfT have final say on full HS service for DEAL from Oct 2014

PRESS RELEASE from Southeastern:

The current Southeastern franchise expires on 12 October 2014. Between then and June 2018 we’ll be entering what’s called a Direct Award period with the Department for Transport (DfT).

The DfT is responsible for specifying what services will operate and to help with their planning, Southeastern will prepare a proposal to submit to its officials which meets their requirements for service, access, station quality, ticketing and other improvements. The DfT will have the final say, but we want to ask anyone who travels with us or is any way affected by our services what they wish to see in the coming four years so we can factor these in to our submission to the DfT.

Full press release and details how you can send your views to Southeastern