Greater Anglia has announced that they have drawn up an action plan to improve punctuality and manage train crowding on the Lea Valley line.

The Lea Valley line on the West Anglia train line includes busy commuter railway stations such as Brimsdown and Ponders End, which serve the London area.

Trains from Hertford East and Bishops Stortford reach these stations very full at rush hour, this can cause problems and lead to delays for passengers.

The West Anglia line say 90% of trains on time last year, but when there were delays at Brimsdown and Ponders End, the delays rippled across Hertford East and Bishops Stortford throughout the day, causing knock-on delays up to triple the original delay.

The train operator has looked at different ways to improve the situation and has come up with a number of different solutions, which will be implemented in the coming months.

These methods include putting extra staff on at Brimsdown and Ponders End to guide passengers to less busy carriages, improving the PA systems at the stations to that announcements are clearer and installing customer information screens which will tell passengers which carriages are less busy.

There is also plans to install new platform shelters and review the contingency plans for the stations.

Some of these actions are already in place, with extra staff being deployed at Brimsdown and Ponders End to direct passengers to the less busy carriages. Staff at Brimsdown are identifying the busier carriages, and where needed, will telephone ahead to Ponders End to alert them to the busier carriages and to direct passengers to the quieter carriages.

In the future, Greater Anglia is replacing all of the trains with new ones with more seats, which, from 2019, should help ease the crowding problems along the Lea Valley route.

Here are a few videos to visualise what the train operator is doing to help:

What did the officials say?

Flavio Lopes, Greater Anglia Right Time Railway Manager for the West route, said:

“If trains leave Brimsdown and Ponders End on time, they should then arrive at Stratford and Liverpool Street stations on time, and consequently services back into Hertford East /Bishops Stortford can then run on time.

“You will shortly see at these stations a number of posters and banners encouraging customers to move down the platforms to board using all available doors.”

Amy Brown, Area Customer Service Manager for stations from Stansted Mountfitchet to Lea Bridge said:

It’s important to note that the West Anglia railway is only a two-track railway, just one northbound and one southbound track, so trains cannot overtake other delayed trains and one delayed train has a knock-on effect to those behind it.

“We want to show our customers we take this seriously for them and we are trying to do all we can to improve and reduce delays.”

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