This week, I brought together Mark Goodall, regional director from Network Rail, Mathew Evans and Harry Riley from South Western Railway and local station manager Stephanie to discuss a number of issues, concerns, and ideas you’ve been raising with me:
???? The Cosham level crossing: Many of you have been in touch about how slow the level crossing has been recently. They’ve agreed to conduct a study on the timings of barrier closures, provide training for the signaling team, and explore what technology they can introduce to help make improvements.
???? Hilsea train station: Station manager Stephanie is doing great work improving the appearance of the station and securing a tenant for the old ticket office. We also discussed some additional funding to link the station to the sea defense work at Hilsea Lines.
???? Encouraging more train use: We’ve agreed to work together with local businesses to encourage more people to commute by train and improve connectivity to our local stations via buses, bikes, and foot.
???? Line improvements and upgrades: Work has begun to replace outdated cabling along the route from Portsmouth to Waterloo. This will help improve operations and, in the long term, hopefully speed up train times.
???? Great British Rail: Our plan to bring railways back into public ownership and what that will mean for improving services across all stations in Portsmouth, where we currently have three different train providers.
I’ll continue to engage with stakeholders from Network Rail and the three local train providers as we move to bring train and track under Great British Rail, raising your concerns, ideas and pushing for better service for passengers.
