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ES Views Letter of the Day: Waterloo chaos is just unforgiveable

Off the rails: engineers attend to the train that derailed outside Waterloo on Tuesday
Off the rails: engineers attend to the train that derailed outside Waterloo on Tuesday

The Waterloo station upgrade was announced a year ago, with ample warning for commuters to prepare for a vastly reduced timetable. But no one could prepare us for the shambles it has become, with nearly every day seeing new delays, usually passed off as “signal failures”, leading up to Tuesday’s derailment.

The train derailed at 5.40am, yet the backlog still affected commuters more than 15 hours later. Laughably, South West Trains’ answer was to recommend passengers avoid their services. This

contempt ignores the fact that thousands use its services to get to and from work and cannot afford to take an impromptu day off.

The Mayor, Sadiq Khan, is calling for fares to be frozen this January — I wholeheartedly support him on this issue. Given the disgraceful service companies such as Southern, C2C and now South West Trains have offered Londoners recently, surely the train companies should agree to this too.
Oliver Pearman

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