New timetable from 2nd June 24 on West Coastway
Published: 21 February 2024
Good morning,
As you may remember, last summer, we were in touch with customers and stakeholders to request feedback on proposed changes to the timetable for the West Coastway – the railway that connects the villages, towns and cities between Brighton, Horsham and Southampton. All designed to:
• Provide extra trains where they are needed most.
• Make regional journeys more attractive.
• Provide more evenly spaced departure times.
• Improve reliability across the route.
We would like to thank everyone who responded. We have listened to the feedback and have considered every suggestion carefully. They have played an important role in improving our plans for the better.
Where possible, we have amended our original plans to better serve our customers’ needs. We have made eight main amendments to the original proposals, which incorporate hundreds of smaller changes to the times of individual trains.
We are pleased to share with you our new and improved timetable. Following the national timetable change on 2 June this year, West Coastway customers will benefit from:
• Faster regional journeys, such as between Brighton, Chichester and Southampton, designed to beat the road network.
• New half hourly services between Brighton and Southampton.
• New half hourly services between London, Gatwick and Portsmouth Harbour, improving connections to local ferries and destinations.
• Retained hourly services between Brighton and Portsmouth following public engagement.
• Double the space and frequency on the busy route between Brighton and Worthing, with trains doubling from two to four per hour all day.
• Improved service reliability through more robust turnaround times at destinations, reducing the likelihood that customers will be affected by delays earlier in the day.
• More even departure times, where trains depart at the same times each hour and at even intervals.
The new timetable is expected to be available in journey planners on the Southern website or National Rail Enquiries from Monday 11 March.
Full details on the new timetable, the outcome of the engagement process and an explanation of changes we were - and were not - able to make as a result of customer and stakeholder feedback is available on our website:
www.southernrailway.com/westcoastwayWe are confident that the new timetable will support us to provide a better service for customers on the route and help to attract more people to use the railway.
If you would like to discuss any of this further or have any questions then please let us know. We look forward to working with you to raise awareness of the change to services and will be in touch soon with details of a new marketing campaign.
Kind regards,
Martin
Martin Darby
Stakeholder Manager
Govia Thameslink Railway
Contact the GTR stakeholder team at: GTRPublicAffairs@gtrailway.com
