Southern Rail Services – London Bridge to Victoria service update

 Plan to run service only during rush hours and at weekends
 
During lockdown, Southern services on the “loop line” between London Bridge and Victoria were suspended, leaving only two Southern trains per hour running between London Bridge and East Croydon. There was an expectation that the service would return to normal this autumn. But when the new Southern timetable was released two months ago, the loop line service began operating an intermittent service at weekends only.
 
A meeting with Southern to discuss the situation was convened last week with our local MP Ellie Reeves and the Forest Hill and Sydenham Societies. Present at the meeting from Southern were Olivia Barlow - Stakeholder Manager; Chris Fowler- Customer Services Director and Paul Codd - Stakeholder Manager for timetables.
 
The good news is that Southern intend to reintroduce services between London Bridge and Victoria on 4th January. However, this will only be a partial service, running throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday but only during rush hours on weekdays (7.30-9.30am and 4.30-6.30pm).
 
Train occupancy levels (which Southern presented at the meeting) show that passenger numbers remain stubbornly under 60% of pre-Covid levels. Southern also reported that they were suffering from significant staff shortages due to Covid-affected drivers having to isolate, and this is the main issue for reduced service, rather than budgetary constraints or train occupancy rates.
 
In the meantime, Southern’s advice is to travel to Norwood Junction and change there for trains to Victoria.

Fewer Trains — Not If We Can Help It!

Earlier this year Govia Thameslink Railways (which includes Southern) consulted on changes to be made to services from 2018. Together with the Sydenham Society we met with rail planners and discussed our concerns about the planned changes.

Initially, Southern were planning to remove extra peak services from our line, leaving just four trains per hour from Forest Hill to London Bridge. Local residents responded that they did not wish to lose peak services of six trains per hour, and these now appear to be safe.

The first draft of the consultation included plans to scrap all direct services from Forest Hill to East Croydon — diverting the existing services to West Croydon. Following our representations, we understand that the existing half-hourly services to East Croydon will be retained.

Nevertheless, three outstanding issues remain where we need to ensure that Southern does not cut our services, as proposed in the latest draft timetable:
Although most East Croydon trains will be retained, no trains are scheduled to run between Norwood Junction and East Croydon before 8:30am. At certain times of the day, particularly in the morning peak, passengers from Forest Hill would need to travel via London Bridge to get to East Croydon and beyond.
In the opposite direction — from East Croydon to Forest Hill — there will be no direct trains during the evening peak (as is the case today), but services between East Croydon and Norwood Junction will be reduced to half-hourly, making it harder to connect from East Croydon to Forest Hill.
There is to be a reduction in late-evening trains from London Bridge to Forest Hill, resulting in a half-hourly service after 10:30pm.

We had hoped that the completion of the Thameslink upgrade would mean a better service for South Londoners, but in the latest plans this is not the case. We will continue to fight to retain our train services and look for further improvements, such as upgrading all Southern’s services via Forest Hill to 10-carriage trains.

Southern Rail - Consultation on Cuts to Services

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) has launched an extensive consultation which sets out proposed changes to the timetable which will be operated by GTR in 2018 following completion of the Thameslink Programme.

These proposals include:
a) Diverting all our East Croydon services to West Croydon - making it take longer to get to Gatwick and other destinations in Sussex.
b) Reducing our peak services to London Bridge to four trains an hour (the same capacity as the rest of the day). These services would be replaced by five carriage Overground trains to Dalston Junction.
c) Increasing services via Crofton Park to four trains per hour

The Forest Hill Society opposes the first two of these changes and supports the third. But it is important that local residents respond to this survey to show the strength of feeling.

Survey responses should be completed at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/2018timetableconsultation
To help you respond to the large number of questions across all the Southern, Thameslink, and Great Northern Services, we have compiled a list of the nine questions we believe you should answer, with some explanation of each.

Q No.	Our View	Notes
14	We recommend you respond to this based on your circumstances, but in favour of later running services on Friday and Saturday	We support the introduction of late night services from London Bridge or Canada Water. However, early morning services may be important to you.   Please mention late night services on Friday and Saturday in the comments section of this question.
17	We recommend you select Yes	This supports services through Crofton Park
29	We recommend you support this	This supports services through Crofton Park
30	We recommend you support this	This supports services through Crofton Park
58	We recommend you select No	These services would replace Forest Hill services to East Croydon
59	We recommend you select No	This makes more services fast on our line rather than stopping at Forest Hill
60	We recommend you select No	Unnecessary duplication of London Overground services to West Croydon. Enforced interchange at Norwood Junction, a station that has no step free access for interchange (on the way to Gatwick Airport).
61	We recommend you select No	These services world replaces Forest Hill services to East Croydon
67	We recommend you support SN3.1 and reject SN3.8. We also recommend you reject the reduction in peak hour services to London Bridge

Coming Down the Line

Network chaos

Since the last newsletter in the spring, train services have improved considerably — well, they really couldn’t have gotten much worse, after half of the evening peak services from London Bridge were cancelled between January and May of this year due to poor planning of services around London Bridge station’s improvements. Since May’s timetable changes, Southern trains have managed to run on a relatively reliable schedule, although there still continues to be more cancellations than anyone would like to see.

As a result of the appalling service at the beginning of the year, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) severely criticised Network Rail for their inadequacies in planning for the impact of Thameslink’s engineering work and timetabling. The ORR subsequently fined them £2m, which is not a great deal for a company that receives a £10m per day subsidy from the taxpayer; no doubt, any higher a fine would only have made it harder to achieve passenger improvements. In addition, the chairman of Network Rail was sacked and Sir Peter Hendy, one of the most respected managers in UK transportation and who had been head of Transport for London (TfL), was appointed as his successor this summer. We can only hope that Network Rail will now improve services.

The Forest Hill Society had been asking questions about changes to ticketing and timetabling — which would occur during Thameslink’s planned upgrade work at London Bridge station — for the four preceding years. Despite our continued expressions of concern, Network Rail and train operators proved that they had not adequately planned for the chaos that was to result from the temporary removal of so many tracks into or out of the station.

On a positive note, work around Bermondsey appears to be progressing well; and, this time next year, train services should be running to and from Charing Cross again albeit without direct services to and from Forest Hill (as was once the case).

Bakerloo line

You may remember, at the end of last year, TfL consulted about plans for a Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham and Hayes; and, possibly, Bromley. Not surprisingly, 96% of 15,000 respondents were in favour of such plans. Notable amongst the 4% who opposed TfL’s plans was Bromley Council, which was concerned about slower connections to London for people who would use the proposed extension to Hayes. Despite the objections, the idea of extending the Bakerloo line seems to be gaining traction, with many candidates for 2016’s London mayoral election expressing their support for the concept.

Recently, mutterings have been heard from Croydon Council about a different route for the Bakerloo line that would run to Croydon. Why this is necessary, when there are fast services from Croydon to most main line stations in London, is not clear at this stage. The location for such a route is also not clear but, given the congestion around Norwood, it is possible that tunnelling close to Croydon is being considered rather than taking over busy tracks and junctions - but all of this is speculation.

The Forest Hill Society continues to support the concept of extending the Bakerloo line. Our belief is that almost any route would be advantageous to large areas of South London, and the sooner an extension is started the better!

Reinstating Evening Peak Trains

The Forest Hill Society have received confirmation from Southern that most of the evening peak services that were canceled in January will be reinstated in the May timetable change (16th May).

The following services will run again from May (in addition to the existing 2 trains per hour):
16:27
17:06
17:38
18:36

The 18:06 will NOT be reinstated, continuing to leave a 30 minute gap in the evening timetable.

We welcome the reinstatement of these services which might make our journeys home a little better than they have been for the last four months.

Five-carriage Trains on The Overground

From the beginning of December 2014, we are likely to see some of the first five-carriage trains on the Overground rail network appearing on Crystal Palace routes. During 2015, all trains will be gradually upgraded to five carriages, with an existing train being converted every two weeks.

This is great news for passengers on the Overground line, and will help to provide some of the additional capacity that is needed as a result of the changes being made at London Bridge station. We have previously reported that there will be no interchange at London Bridge for trains to Charing Cross for 18 months; in fact, transfers between Southern and SouthEastern networks is likely to involve walking via the Underground station when work starts on the redevelopment of platforms 6-8. However, tickets to London stations will be valid on Underground routes from London Bridge to Waterloo and Charing Cross stations.

We have found out that two trains will be removed from the morning timetable from Forest Hill to London Bridge: the 06:50 and the 08:31. Unfortunately, this will leave a couple of gaps in the timetable.

Please note that there will be no Southern services to or from London Bridge between Saturday, 20th December 2014 and Friday, 2nd January 2015.

All Change at London Bridge

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.