THE new transport secretary Chris Grayling says sorting out the tangled problems affecting Southern will be his first priority, and that he will be meeting managers from Southern's owner Govia Thameslink Railway again today. He took office last Thursday, but has already held preliminary talks with them.
He has also backed HS2, and is rejecting calls from opponents to the scheme that he should scrap it.
Mr Grayling told the BBC the standard of service at Southern, where one in six trains have been cancelled until further notice in a bid to match staff resources to the timetable, has 'got to improve quickly'. The company is restoring a small number of suspended services today in the light of experience last week, which saw the introduction of its emergency timetable in response to continuing high levels of sickness among conductors. Former rail minister Claire Perry, who resigned last Thursday, had described this as 'outrageous' and a 'work to rule'.
The main issue is the continuing dispute with the rail unions, particularly the RMT, over extensions of driver-only operation on Southern. This dispute has already resulted in several 24-hour strikes since April.
In Scotland, too, DOO is also a point of contention. The RMT staged another strike over the weekend over proposals for more DOO on ScotRail, and more walkouts are planned.
Both ScotRail and Southern say there will still be a second member of staff on board their trains, but unlike conductors they will no longer control the doors.
Meanwhile, anti-HS2 protestors have taken the opportunity of a change of transport secretary to renew their calls for the project to be scrapped. Mr Grayling's predecessor Patrick McLoughlin was a firm advocate of the scheme, and it seems unlikely that his replacement will be any different.
Mr Grayling told the BBC: "I have no plans to back away. The thing that's important for people to understand is that HS2 is not simply a speed project, it's a capacity project."
One of the opposing groups, Stop HS2, has already called on the new Prime Minister Theresa May to undertake another review of HS2, saying a failure to do so would be 'irresponsible'.
But Mr Grayling continued: "We have lines at the moment which have seen huge increases in the number of passengers, the amount of freight in recent years.
"Of course it makes sense if we're going to build a new railway for it to be a fast railway line, to increase travel times or reduce travel times from north to south -- that's logical. But actually we need a better transport system for the 21st century and HS2 is part of increasing the capacity of our transport system."