The Westcombe Society and the Greenwich Line User Group (GLUG) have submitted their responses to the Southeastern Railway’s stakeholder consultation on the proposed January 2015 timetable. Links to the documents can be found below:
Stakeholder consultation document Dec 14
GLUG response to January 2015 timetable consultation submitted February 2014
Westcombe Society response to January 2015 rail timetable consultation submitted February 2014
Although the consultation period is officially over we encourage anyone concerned about the changes to our rail service to contact the Southeastern Public Affairs manager directly via Mike.Gibson@southeasternrailway.co.uk. In particular we remind users that the long term plans do not currently include restoration of through services from the Greenwich Line to Charing Cross once the London Bridge rebuild is finished. We continue to lobby for restoration of Charing Cross services on the Greenwich Line but our voice is small when compared to other users of services out of London Bridge and we therefore encourage individuals to make their voice heard as well by writing to Southeastern themselves.
GLUG can be contacted on greenwichline@outlook.com
I think the long term situation is even worse than you outline: as far as I can tell, no direct Greenwich / Charing X services will be restored even after the London Bridge rebuild is complete.
It is true that the proposals as they currently stand remove the link from the Greenwich Line to Charing Cross permanently. We apologise if this has not been made clear in our post and have amended the post to make this point, although it was made in earlier posts on this subject. Despite this consultation only being about the timetable for January 2015 to August 2016 you will see that in both the Westcombe Society and the GLUG responses to the proposals we continue to push for the proposals to be changed and the link to Charing Cross maintained. In fact it is the first point in both letters.
Southeastern have already admitted that users of the Greenwich Line will be the long term losers as a result of the ThamesLink project. Unfortunately for us the powers that be seem to think that this is far outweighed by the improvements to other services and to London Bridge.
We will continue to lobby for the Charing Cross services to be restored in the longer term as well as trying to improve the difficult situation we are all facing from 2015 to 2018.