Today we have published our “Survival Guide” to the major rail service changes for Sevenoaks area passengers from 11 January 2015 to August 2016. Our key advice:
- You need to plan your journey – both to London and back to Sevenoaks – carefully.
- Avoid London Bridge and Cannon Street stations if you can.
- Morning trains to London Bridge and Cannon Street will be very crowded; the slow trains from Platform 2 take longer but guarantee you a seat.
- Read the rules for ticket acceptance on the Underground carefully; the concession is very limited, and it does not cover intermediate stations.
- Daytime, evening and Saturday trains are split between Charing Cross and Cannon Street; so there are longer gaps between the trains you want.
- All trains go to Cannon Street on Sundays until May 2015 (except for the London Marathon Sunday 26 April when trains will go to Charing Cross).
- If your first plan does not work for you, try another route or a different time, if you can.
- Passenger information services still have serious shortcomings. Think “snow” and you are unlikely to be disappointed!
The full eight-page guide as a PDF document can be downloaded here.
We intend to revise the guide in the light of experience. Please let us know your experiences or your own top tips, as well as anything else you would like the Guide to cover. Please use the comments box below or email to enquiries at srta dot org dot uk.
Southeastern’s information on the London Bridge Rebuilding – which they call the “Thameslink” programme – is also online.
You can also read SRTA’s recent paper to the Sevenoaks Joint Transport Board.
PS: If you find this guide and the other material on our website useful, please consider joining the Association or making a contribution towards our costs. Your support would be very much appreciated.
Consider planning to include a bike ride. Closing Thameslink for 6 months (2004-05) saw an increase in cycle used from St Pancras exceeding 1000% in 2 months. A similar effect came from the closure of The Drain between Waterloo & The Bank on 2006-07, and persiste to this day with a majore part of the morning cycle traffic crossing Blackfriars Bridge, beginning its journey at Waterloo.
Consider hiring a Brompton (from £2.50/day with no limit on hire duration) but you’ll need to go to Tonbridge (or Maidstone) to collect and return it.
Waterloo has over 600 spaces to park overnight – Cannon Street and Charing Cross need action to deliver this but note that St Pancras had only 6 spaces at the start of 2004 – sheer pressure from the mass of bikes chained to any fixed object forced Network Rail to take action & provide places to park. Now over 200 spaces
Option for coach & bike also – very popular for West side (Oxford Tube) less so for East.
This is an excellent suggestion, and it is a pity that cycling has not been promoted as an alternative. We’ve asked Southeastern and Network Rail to look at providing extra cycle storage at Cannon Street and Charing Cross.
Even if extra parking is not immediately delivered (it would be difficult for both sites) it would be a valuable detail to monitor properly, as my own observations and photographs did not have the resources, or time to do daily or weekly review of the numbers, nor was the number of bikes coming in on the trains checked as a before/during/after figure.
A key option may be to boost the number of Boris Bikes available from WAT to cater for those getting off at WAE, and consider on street parking provision outside the NR curtilage at CST and CHX