2015
will be a challenging year for many commuters who use London Bridge on a daily
basis. From mid-December 2014 most SouthEastern and Thameslink trains will not
stop at London Bridge. SouthEastern trains to Cannon Street will continue to
stop at London Bridge for 18 months, and then the situation will switch so that
the Charing Cross trains will stop at London Bridge, but not the Cannon Street
trains.
Southern
trains will continue to terminate at London Bridge but there will be no
interchange with trains to Waterloo and Charing Cross.
As
a slight compensation for this loss of connection we will be getting longer
trains on Overground, with 5 carriage trains (that's one additional carriage)
being phased in from December 2014.
The
train operators have told us that tickets will be valid on any reasonable
route. The Jubilee line runs to Southwark, Waterloo, and from there the
Northern and Bakerloo lines run to Charing Cross. This does mean that the
Jubilee line is going to be exceptionally busy for more than a year, but this
is the cost of major improvements to London Bridge and future interchange.
While
we suffer through the rebuilding and diversions, we can look forward to 2019
when connections at London Bridge via Thameslink will make crossing London a
little bit easier. The Thameslink programme is also expected to double the
number of trains using Crofton Park, with 4 trains per hour expected to stop
there.
More
needs to be done to improve train services in Forest Hill and the Mayor of
London has recently published a 25 year plan for transport. We will examine
some of the ideas in that document in the next edition of the newsletter.
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