Nobody likes it when the railway is closed for engineering work. But insight from passengers reveals they are far more willing to accept such closures if they are well organised and well communicated.
Traditionally, the railway has made use of weekends, particularly bank holidays, and the extended period at Christmas to carry out major work. But the Covid pandemic has changed travel patterns – although commuting remains crucial to the railway, leisure travel and the discretionary market have become more important, making weekend and holiday closures less palatable.
To that can be added the fact that a two-day weekend closure is quite inefficient from a productivity perspective. Given the time taken to set up at the start and then to hand back the railway at the end, the volume of work which can be carried out is restricted. A longer closure provides a much better opportunity to really crack on with those important maintenance jobs.
That approach has been taking hold on parts of the railway, and in particular on Network Rail’s Southern Region. Here the trailblazer was the Three Bridges to Brighton (3B2B) closure in February 2019. Even before Covid, this proved very effective – and now the Region is bu…
