Life-saving heart restarters, LED lighting and landscaping are among the improvements being delivered by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) during the first phase of an investment programme to directly benefit passengers.
Almost 60 of 274 stations served by Thameslink, Southern, Great Northern and Gatwick Express trains from as far afield as King’s Lynn and Brighton are to be completed by the spring (see list in editor’s notes).
The initial work has been selected from a list of projects identified during a consultation with 4,200 responses from local people into how money from a passenger benefit fund should be spent.
Improvements that are being finalised are likely to include LED lighting, repainting, toilet refurbishment and landscaping. At four stations – Knebworth, Potters Bar, Hadley Wood, Welwyn Garden City – GTR will pilot the introduction of life-saving automatic defibrillators as early as this month. If the trial is successful, then GTR intends to roll these out to as many of its stations as possible.
Further phases will follow which will look to provide additional platform shelters, extra seating, better toilets, landscaping and living walls, and water fountains, where bottles can also be refilled.
Keith Jipps, Infrastructure Director at GTR, said: “I’m delighted we are beginning to deliver real improvements for passengers at our stations. The consultation we carried out was a huge success and I’d like to thank the thousands of passengers, stakeholders and community members who took part.”
This first phase of work sees an investment of £1.2m from a passenger benefit fund of £15m. This is in addition to an existing investment of £15m which is being made in GTR stations, giving a total investment of £30m.
