Commuters are experiencing the first day of weeks of further travel misery to come as hundreds of services are removed from timetables to cope with months of staff shortages and industrial action threats.
Southern Railway implemented the temporary move at midnight on Sunday, cutting 341 trains a day for a month, to make services more “resilient”, the company has said.
Parent firm Govia Thameslink (GTR) said it would still be running “95 per cent of peak capacity to/from London Victoria and 86 per cent of morning and 84 per cent of evening capacity to/from London Bridge”.
Chief operating officer, Ryan Crowther, said it would offer “more certainty” and where a service has been removed alternatives are being offered, in the form of a bus replacement or another operator.
However, within the first hour of peak travel time on Monday morning, some commuters were complaining none of these replacements were on offer on certain lines.
