Insider says more timetable troubles in store for Island Line – and SWR doesn’t deny it

At the end of February, South Western Railway (SWR) announced they needed to reduce their regular timetable to an hourly service, so that they could run a two-train service during the busy holiday seasons, including Easter, the May Day bank holiday and throughout the summer holidays.

Last week, in response to questions about the reliability and performance of the service, an SWR spokesman told the IW Observer: “By reducing the timetable now, our fleet of trains will be ready for the two trains an hour timetable during the busy holiday periods, which we know are so important to the Island.”

This week we were tipped off by an insider that the Department for Transport is now considering a proposal from SWR to reduce the trains to 40 minute intervals over the summer holidays. We asked SWR whether this was true. They pointedly didn’t answer our question, instead issuing a statement saying: “We’re sorry for the disruption our Island Line customers have experienced recently. It has been a difficult decision to reduce the Island Line timetable, but one we had to make because our trains need more maintenance

“We continue to review our timetable in light of the challenge currently posed by our trains requiring additional maintenance, as well as monitoring the performance of those operating.

Before the £26 million paid out to upgrade the lines and trains in 2021, the DfT was providing a subsidy of £5 million a year in 2018/19, the last year for which a figure is available. The investment in reconditioned trains and infrastructure improvements was supposed to reduce the subsidy and provide better connectivity and reliability. As the annual number of passengers has reduced by half a million since the line was closed for most of 2021 for the refurbishment, it is hard to see how any of the aims have been achieved.

The suggestion that SWR is still unable to provide a regular half-hourly train, even during the peak summer period after such significant investment, is said to be a PR nightmare for the government in advance of a difficult election, particularly as the upgrade included installing a passing loop at Brading specifically to facilitate the two-trains-an-hour service.