Bank holiday Monday saw the unexpected re-appearance of the Rye shuttle. Some history may help (but move down the page if you’re familiar with this):
Pre-Covid, Rye had an additional two-car train service, the Rye Shuttle: this operated on weekdays providing an additional peak-hours, half-hourly service between Rye and Ashford which, during those hours, increased capacity and number of available connections at Ashford. It also, very usefully, provided additional capacity on Fridays and Mondays for tourists to Rye. So, during peak hours, the service was four cars per hour. Also pre-Covid, on some weekends, particularly bank holidays and high-season there was an additional two-car train service.
With Covid, social distancing was a major requirement on public transport so the units were re-formed into four-cars. However, the shuttle disappeared with the reduced demand for peak-hour travel and the cars being used for the hourly service. The four-car service throughout the weekend was also reasonably adequate to satisfy tourist demand as health restrictions permitted travel. It has to be said we were warned when the four-car units were formed that this was a temporary measure.
Post-Covid, the units were reformed again into three-car trains. In the view of MarshLink Action Group (MLAG) this put our service in a strange situation: we now have three-cars per hour throughout the week but without the ability for Southern Railways to increase capacity to meet tourist demand, particularly at the weekend. This was realised early on and MLAG has been making representations to Southern about this problem ever since. Southern has seen the issue but been restricted by the circumstances that the rail industry finds itself in at the moment.
So, what has changed? On Bank holiday Monday it was suddenly noticed that shuttle services between Rye and Ashford had appeared in the train schedule for the day. These additional services were at 17:18, 18:18 and 19:18, supplementing the normal xx:48 services throughout the day. Furthermore, there were to be two replacement bus services in case of need waiting at Rye station. We assume this is responding to MLAG’s concerns about inadequate capacity on bank holidays.
MLAG tried to get an idea of the use put to the train services on Monday afternoon – remember, that was a rather windy, somewhat unpleasant, day. Anyway the number of passengers on Rye up-platform (in the direction of Ashford) for the five most-likely popular trains for tourists were:
17:18 ex Rye – 48 passengers;
17:48 – 122;
18:18 – 39;
18:48 – 77;
19:18 – 59.
MLAG will hold a conversation with Southern Railways to discuss the future of the shuttle for tourism purposes.
Image Credits: Stuart Harland .