The experience of the first week of the London Bridge rebuilding has shown that Cannon Street and London Bridge services are bearing the brunt of the load while Charing Cross and Waterloo East services are emptier than usual.
City workers need greater encouragement to switch from overcrowded London Bridge/Cannon Street services to Waterloo/Charing Cross and Victoria services and then complete their journey on TfL, and vice versa in the evening. (Evenings are probably most important: every passenger who avoids Cannon Street creates a space for a passenger to board at London Bridge.)
During the week Southeastern have finally published their rationale for the current arrangements. Basically the arrangements only cover travel between the Southeastern rail stations directly affected by the London Bridge project. On BBC Radio Kent Southeastern’s Managing Director described them as enabling people “to get back to London Bridge at no extra cost”. That assumes that people travel into London to go to train stations! Real people are not like that – we travel into to London to get to work or for other needs, and many people walk from the most convenient terminal to where they want to go. The arrangements now in place show that the company does not understand its customers.
Southeastern’s train-centric thinking, so typical of the company, also leads to nonsensical situations. For instance, if your office is the City near Mansion House and you want to go to Charing Cross to avoid Cannon Street you have to go to Cannon Street first – which rather defeats the object! The fact that the suggested tube route calls at Mansion House on its way back to Charing Cross is a further sign that the current policy is bonkers.
Southeastern also say that they have restricted ticket acceptance to “manage demand at TfL stations that are already extremely busy” and to “be fair to TfL’s existing customers”. However what if rail passengers bought a travelcard or used PAYG on TfL services to use an acceptable alternative no longer available on their rail ticket? Presumably Southeastern and TfL would happily accept their money, without a care for TfL’s existing customers! So this excuse looks more like greed than customer care on the part of the transport operators; they are hoping that people will pay more because Southeastern are not providing the service for which they have already paid.
Fixing this would greatly help spread the load. It would mean that people who don’t have to use Cannon Street and London Bridge could use alternatives – and leave more of the limited space for those who actually work near London Bridge. Since all the tickets now have the necessary codes, and there are also arrangements for Oyster and Contactless PAYG, it should be simple to implement quickly.
We would like to see a more liberal policy, including as a minimum allowing ticket acceptance:
- On the District/Circle line as far east as Tower Hill – offering an alternative to those who currently walk to/from London Bridge.
- On the District/Circle line as far west as Victoria – offering an alternative for those in North Kent and the Sevenoaks area who have access to Southeastern services to Victoria, and so who could avoid the rebuilding area altogether.
- Between the Waterloo/Southwark area and the City, particularly the Cannon Street catchment area. This would be a good way for City workers to avoid Cannon Street and London Bridge altogether. The acceptance should include the Waterloo & City line and useful bus routes like the 521 and 100 (to the Bank/Cannon Street area) and the 45 and 63 (to Blackfriars and City Thameslink). While the “Drain” can sometimes be busy at the peaks, additional buses should be put on the relevant routes.
- Between Blackfriars and London Bridge via Monument.
- At all intermediate tube stations and bus stops in the ticket acceptance area – this would actually shorten alternative tube journeys and so reduce the impact on existing passengers.
What do you think please? What other services or ticket acceptance would allow you to avoid the busy and crowded Cannon Street and London Bridge stations? Let us know by using the comment box below.
Don’t totally pan the attempts by railway managers to fix the issue – they are only doing (a) what they understand and (b) have confidence to try (public transport operators really fear the unknown and innovative)
Providing additional capacity on RV1 might be an idea – along with highlighting the connecting routes on foot to the preferred bus stops (bus stops where the extended dwell time of a surge of passengers is less of a problem for safety and traffic flows) The may mean’deckers or even bendybuses (ask the longer serving drivers on 507/521 about the major issues when bendybuses wee replaced by rigid ones)
A real nuisance is the inability to get people off trains East of London Bridge – The East London Line – gets people to Shoreditch High Street, just North of Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate for the City. The disused station at Spa Road Bermondsey last used to evacuate trains stranded by an incident at London Bridge, and convenient for Bermondsey JLE and a major bus corridor, could have been provided with interim platforms for some lines, or even reopened for Dartford Loop services?
Finally no discussion on cycling – in 2004 the Thameslink Blockade at St Pancras saw cycle use rocket up by over 1000% in 2 months as the fastest and most convenient solution for many commuters. A similar surge was seen in 2006 when The Drain closed for 6 months and the impact was noted both at Waterloo (bike racks jammed up at over 200% of theoretical capacity) and Blackfriars Bridge, where the level of cycle traffic at peak times continues to rise and cycle counts may soon provide the highest % of any of the vehicle types moving across the bridge. This would create an even worse position with the Boris Bike scheme, where there are added costs to put around 500 bikes out/back through the 126 docking points which lie idle for much of the day, due to the severe tidal flows created by commuter use of a system NOT set up for commuter use. SWT’s Brompton Hire (100 bikes) from Waterloo is fully subscribed with a waiting list, but those able to get to Tonbridge could always hire a Brompton (£20 membership and £2.50/day) on a long term basis – keeping the bike with them in the office and at home. Commuters who have ‘converted’ report that they have saved the £1200+/year of paying for Zones 1&2 Bus/Tube and cut 20-50% from their door to desk journey times. The folding bike also offers the option of cycling to Victoria (10-20 minutes from most of central London) when your London Bridge options go skywards.
A further option being side-stepped is to re-commission the line going in to Waterloo International which connected to the Dover Boat Train routes and thus pretty much all of the Kent-London rail system, and run trains in to the currently mothballed 4 platforms.
Of course some of the options are not in the scope of what DfT requires Southeastern or Network Rail to provide, and if for example paying for spare drivers to sit drinking tea as a contingency measure for when ‘traincrew are delayed on an incoming train’ is not allowed for as a cost in the franchise then it isn’t going to happen – and experience of almost every activity is that when you try to wring 90% of greater utilisation from the system and equipment the potential for it falling over rises exponetially with every percentage point. That is why Southwest Trains ‘slack’ timetable of 2004 delivers a far greater certainty on journey times, often arriving ‘early’ and waiting
@Dave H: Thanks, some interesting ideas here. We asked Southeastern and Network Rail about extra overnight cycle storage at Charing Cross and Waterloo East, but all they would talk about was cycle storage at London Bridge! If they want people to avoid London Bridge then the cycle storage needs to be elsewhere!!
Allowing ticket holders to use Victoria would me a massive help for many I’m sure. I get trains from Otford to Sevenoaks and then from Sevenoaks I need to reach London Bridge. If Victoria was available then I would certainly just get the train to there and then use the tube to Monument, it would mean avoiding London Bridge / Cannon St altogether. At the moment I am having to go to Waterloo East, then back to London Bridge on the tube, and then the 15 minute walk to the office. I am closest to Monument tube but I am unable to use the tube to there!
Very sound suggestions and I agree with them all. I would add one other – to allow those standing in overcrowded trains to be able to use unused first class seating. It makes sense to use all available space. Thanks for pushing them on these points. They really don’t seem to be able to figure it out on their own! Which is a little worrying…..
@Adam Thanks. Conductors have the ability to “de-classify” First Class accommodation at times of disruption, but it’s never been clear what the criteria are or whether they are applied systematically. One possibility that has been suggested in the past is that the rule could be that after a train has left London going outward, or after a train has left its last stop before London going inward, then any unused First Class seats could be taken. That would still give First Class ticket holders the seat they have paid for, but not of course the empty seats that they haven’t paid for! Enforcement could be a problem though. It would be interesting to hear more views on this please
Why isn’t City Thameslink one of the permitted stations? A 15 bus is valid between CS and CX. It goes past City Thameslink (a valid Southeastern London terminus) and a good way to avoid London Bridge but I cannot board a bus there since I lose my ticket on exit from the station. If I get off at Blackfriars my ticket is returned and the map says I can board the 15 bus if I walk up to Ludgate Hill right outside City Thameslink station!
Whilst working approx 6 mins from cannon St, I start my journey at Otford and would seriously consider going via Victoria to avoid overcrowded trains. The journey is only slightly longer but why should I pay £5 a day to do this?