Govia Thameslink Railway


Govia Thameslink Railway is a train operating company that operates the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern rail franchise in England. Within the franchise, GTR runs the Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express airport services.
GTR is a subsidiary of Govia, which is itself a joint venture between the British Go-Ahead Group and French company Keolis.

History

Thameslink and Great Northern services were merged into one franchise in 2006 due to the upcoming Thameslink Programme. In 2012, it was announced that services of First Capital Connect, Southern and some Southeastern routes would be merged into a single Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern franchise. The Invitation to Tender was to have been issued in October 2012, with the successful bidder announced in Spring 2013 and TSGN originally due to start in September 2013. However, due to the collapse of the InterCity West Coast re-franchising process, all franchising competitions were frozen until January 2013. In January 2013 the government announced that it would extend the contract until March 2014, intending to negotiate with FirstGroup to operate the franchise on a management contract for up to two years.
In March 2013 the Secretary of State for Transport announced that the franchise would again be extended, until 13 September 2014, and that the future franchise would be a management-style contract due to the level of investment and change on the route. In September 2013 a revised invitation to tender was issued. Govia Thameslink Railway was awarded the franchise on 23 May 2014.
On 14 September 2014, Govia Thameslink Railway took over services from First Capital Connect, serving 122 stations and operating a fleet of 226 trains. In December 2014, full control was taken of the Sevenoaks Thameslink service. The separate Thameslink and Great Northern were maintained upon the GTR takeover. Southern and Gatwick Express became part of GTR in July 2015, making it the largest rail franchise in terms of passengers, staff and fleet in the UK.
The franchise has an unusual structure: it is a management contract where fare income does not go to GTR. Under their original contract, Department for Transport will pay GTR £8.9 billion over the first seven years and receive all revenue. Consequently, the company carries less revenue risk. This form of franchise was chosen because of long-term engineering works anticipated around London, which would be a significant challenge to organise within the normal form of franchise.
In June 2016, amongst criticism of the performance of its services, Go-Ahead warned of lower than anticipated profits on the franchises, leading to 18% drop in the Go-Ahead share price. Passengers had previously rated its Thameslink service as the worst in the country. Only 20% of Southern trains arrived on time in the year from April 2015 to March 2016, and there was an ongoing industrial dispute over driver-only operated trains. On 12 July 2016, after 15% of Southern services were cancelled for a period of weeks to improve service reliability, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan called for GTR to be stripped of the franchise. On 15 July 2016, Rail Minister Claire Perry resigned.

Thameslink and Great Northern services

Govia Thameslink Railway has operated Thameslink and Great Northern services since 14 September 2014. Thameslink is a 68-station main-line route running north to south through London from Bedford to Brighton, serving both London Gatwick Airport and London Luton Airport, with a suburban loop serving Sutton, Mitcham and and on weekdays a suburban line via and to. Great Northern is the name of the suburban rail services run on the southern end of Britain's East Coast Main Line and associated branches. Services operate to or from and. Destinations include,,,, and.
In May 2018, the company introduced a new timetable which included the first regular services through the Canal Tunnels and to other new destinations previously not served by Thameslink. However, due to frequent disruption of services on the whole network, Govia decided to create a new interim timetable with a reduced number of trains; this came into operation in July 2018.

Thameslink service pattern

The published Thameslink off-peak service pattern as of May 2020, with frequencies in trains per hour, includes:
During peak hours, additional services run, including to and.

Great Northern service pattern

Since the introduction of regular services through the Canal Tunnels in May 2018, many GTR services on the East Coast main line were rebranded from Great Northern to Thameslink. Most of these services are now extended through central London and incorporated into the Thameslink network, although as of October 2019 some services are yet to be extended. The only services to retain the Great Northern brand are those on the Northern City line and the express services to/from Cambridge, Ely and King's Lynn, as well as Peterborough at peak times.
The Great Northern off-peak service pattern, with frequencies in trains per hour, consists of the following:

Southern and Gatwick Express services

The Southern and Gatwick Express brands joined Govia Thameslink Railway on 26 July 2015. Southern routes run from London Victoria and London Bridge through the South London suburbs of Battersea, Norbury, Peckham, Sydenham, Crystal Palace, Norwood, Croydon, Streatham, Purley and Sutton to towns surrounding London including Caterham, Epsom and Tadworth. Further afield, Southern also serve Redhill, Tonbridge, Uckfield, East Grinstead, Gatwick Airport, Brighton, Ashford, Worthing, Hastings, Portsmouth, Eastbourne, Horsham, Southampton, Littlehampton and Bognor Regis. Additionally, Southern run West London route services from Milton Keynes to South Croydon via Watford and. Since 2008, Southern has operated the Gatwick Express service from London Victoria to Gatwick Airport and Brighton.

Airport Rail Link

Southern

Franchise commitments

This franchise is different from many other franchises let since privatisation in 1996. Now the operator, in this case Govia, gives all revenue to the government, rather than paying set premiums. The Department for Transport will pay Govia, totalling around £8.9bn over the franchise period of seven years, from the expected revenues of £12.4bn. With this Govia expects to make a 3% profit, and the risks on costs will be Govia's, while the DfT will profit or lose from fluctuations in revenue.
Govia plans to invest £50m in all 239 stations it will manage. It plans to:
Other plans include:
In 2011 the consortium Cross London Trains Ltd. consisting of Siemens Project Ventures, 3i Infrastructure plc and Innisfree Ltd was announced as preferred bidder with Siemens to manufacture and maintain the rolling stock to run on the Thameslink routes from 2016. This was a politically controversial decision as the competing bidder Bombardier Transportation had a train factory in the UK. Both the procurement process and final close of contract were significantly delayed, resulting in the expected first delivery date moving from 2012 to 2016. The trains are known as s and the £1.6 billion contract to manufacture and provide service depots for the trains was finalised in mid 2013. A fleet of 115 8- and 12-car trains is expected to enter service between 2016 and 2018. A new-build rolling stock depot was completed at Three Bridges in 2015, and Hornsey depot was extended northwards and had several new buildings added in 2016.
Because of the delay in procuring the Class 700 trains, 29 trains were ordered for the Thameslink route, releasing the trains to newly electrified routes. Delivery was completed in 2014 and the trains entered service later that year. The order includes provision for an extra 140 vehicles. It was originally planned that once the Class 700s began entering service, the Class 387s would be transferred to Great Western Railway for use on routes in the Thames Valley. However a change of plans saw GWR order an entirely new fleet of Class 387s, so the Thameslink units were cascaded to the Great Northern route following delivery of the Class 700s.
In addition to the introduction of the new Class 700 units, GTR also ordered a further 25 new 6-car trains to replace the 40-year-old units on the Great Northern Moorgate suburban services. In December 2015, Siemens was selected to provide these as a follow-on to the Class 700 order. They were designated as the in June 2016, and are currently being introduced since September 2018.

Current fleet

Past fleet

Former units operated by Thameslink and Great Northern include:

Driver depots

Driver depots are located across the network at;

Thameslink

In February 2015, Thameslink and Great Northern came at the bottom of Which? magazine's Best and worst UK train companies customer survey, scoring a customer satisfaction score of 43%. Thameslink and Great Northern were also scored 2/5 stars in each of the specific categories covered by the survey – which is the worst performance of any UK train operator. In the Which? 2017 survey Thameslink and Great Northern improved their performance slightly with a rating of 46% also, their position in the table was second to bottom.
Passenger numbers on Govia Thameslink Railway have risen from 262 million annually in 2010/11 to 327 million annually in 2015/16.