15 November - Leaves on the Line and Leaves you on the Platform
The Southeastern man zoomed into last week’s Transport meeting and started his presentation
with the bad news, from tomorrow train frequencies are to be cut; “to build resilience into the timetable”, as if
putting 50% on journey
times since 1988 is not enough resilience already. The excuse this time is
fewer available staff. The reduction means that only 84% of ‘old’ services will be running
to serve no more than 30% of the normal number of passengers.
Councillor Stefano Borella - or Borello as
The Transport Chairman as well as the Mayor call him - should
probably chair the Transport meeting as he is the only member who knows his
fishplates from his sleepers. He was the first to speak.
He praised Network Rail for the work at Hither Green which has fixed most of the
signal failures in the area but noted that there seemed to be more elsewhere and
the absence of 12 car trains. There were plenty during lockdown
No. 1 but “they
have literally disappeared”. With reduced services they should be restored, the
days of travelling in a carriage alone are gone, he said.
The Network Rail representative said there is still an enormous amount of
resignalling work left to do and it won’t be completed until the middle of next year
The other bane of Southeastern life is the nonsense of ‘station skipping’.
Stefano said “it’s appalling and I still have not had a good explanation of why.
Albany Park has three trains off peak but you may have to wait half an hour.
it’s a ridiculous practice off-peak. It needs to stop.”
Councillor Borella (Labour, Slade Green & North End) has run a long term
campaign to have a turnaround facility on the Bexleyheath line. There are two
that I know of on the North Kent line and there is one on the Sidcup line but if
there is a problem on the Bexleyheath line all services tend to stop because
there is no way a train can be reversed. Network Rail said that such a facility
is now being actively considered.
Councillor Eileen Pallen (Conservative, Barnehurst) was pleased to note that Network Rail
had provided funding for replacing trees following
the extensive embankment works at Barnehurst.
Councillor John Davey (Conservative, West Heath) was puzzled by why we need
station skipping due to ‘leaves on the line’ when there will now be big gaps in
services due to the new reduced timetable. The Southeastern man said “there was
going to be a review in April but we didn't get around to it, circumstances changed”
but he was thinking about a further timetable stretching instead of skipping stops.
He said the skipping is “to improve performance”. I suspect that means reducing
penalties for late running rather than trying to help the travelling public.
Note: This meeting was chaired by Councillor Nigel Betts
because the regular Chairman, Councillor Val Clarke, was said to be unwell.