Telegraph Hill Society: Lewisham: A vision for Rail

Notes on the Lewisham document: “A vision for Rail”

Capacity at New Cross Gate Station

Since the conversion of the East London Underground line into the Overground line extending to Croydon and Crystal Palace, overcrowding at New Cross Gate Station in the rush‐hours has become endemic. East London line Overground trains are packed to capacity and beyond, often they are impossible to board and are unusable if you are elderly, infirm, disabled or travelling with heave luggage during peak periods.

It can be particularly galling to see a number of fast Southern trains passing through New Cross Gate station each morning with clear capacity, whilst our own trains are overcrowded. It often appears that out‐of‐London passengers, both in terms of seating capacity and in terms of speed of journey, are being given priority over those of us who live in Inner London.

The position is likely to become worse with the opening of Crossrail as Whitechapel will become a major interchange.

Additional capacity at New Cross Gate Station is urgently needed.

No consideration should be given to building more housing at New Cross Gate until the Bakerloo line extension has been completed. Depending on plans there could potentially be up to 1,500 new houses on the site: even assuming that each property only has one resident who is travelling that is likely to mean an extra 1,500 places required on public transport each way each day. There is no such capacity at present. (In practice it is likely to be mainly housing for couples both of whom will be working and so be a higher number than this.)

Brockley interchange

We fully support this proposal and, indeed, have raised the issue in the past with RailTrack (and were told that the additional signalling required made it infeasible). However with the additional number of travellers now using the Overground services, it must surely be worthwhile and should be re‐examined. It could potentially go some way to relieving congestion at New Cross Gate as travellers from outer London could change at Brockley to get to Blackfriars/City Thameslink and Victoria without having to travel into Canary Wharf or London Bridge.

Key to making this work would be more frequent services into City Thameslink and Victoria.

New Cross Gate to Charing Cross.

Until a few years ago we had direct services into Charing Cross from New Cross Gate. These were stopped despite a large campaign (which culminated in a meeting with Lord Adonis, then transport minister) to retain them. The reason given was congestion at London Bridge caused by trains having to cross from the southern lines to the through lines.

That pinch point has now been removed with the flyovers north of New Cross Gate.

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The direct services were much used as many residents of Telegraph Hill work in the entertainment industry around Charing Cross/Covent Garden/Leicester Square – and others used the services to watch performances put on in the theatre district. The loss of them has created great inconvenience ‐ to illustrate: prior to the closure of the services the average journey time for the 6 miles to Charing Cross was 12 minutes. It is now, with the change at London Bridge, 32 minutes (averages taken from a 1985 timetable and online today from the NationalRail timetable).

The current journey therefore averages about 5 miles an hour.

Add, say 15m walk to the station and 15m walk to the theatre at the far end and the journey can be over an hour each way.

The Mayor of London wishes to encourage people to stop using cars. The current services from New Cross Gate to do support this policy.

As indicated, there is now no infrastructure reason for not reinstating a service to Charing Cross. The current franchises (Southern and SouthEastern) do not facilitate this but when the franchises come to an end, the service pattern could be altered.

And additional bonus of terminating, say, half the Southern trains at Charing Cross and an equivalent number of SouthEastern Trains at London Bridge would be that it could potentially reduce the number of changes of train required by passengers as they would chose the service which went to their destination where possible.

Lewisham Council should lobby to have Charing Cross services reinstated on the Croydon line.

Other Service patterns

Interconnectivity is the key to reducing car usage. Unless one is travelling into central or east London, connectivity from the New Cross Gate area is poor.

We reference the issues as regards Charing Cross and central London above

The frequency of services from Nunhead to Blackfriars/City Thameslink and Victoria is half‐hourly. For a central London service this is insufficient. Again, like the New Cross services to Charing Cross, the frequency now is less than it was 20 years when there were quarter‐hourly services during the peak. After some intensive lobbying, Thameslink have recently agreed to add two extra morning trains and two further evening trains and we understand that the frequency is planned to double to four trains per hour on the City Thameslink route by 2020.

These improvements must be followed up and similar improvements are required on Victoria services.

As yet we are not aware of the final service pattern for the Thameslink services through London Bridge. In view of our comments above about the capacity issues at New Cross Gate and the difficulty of north‐south travel through central London and the need for improvement in journey times into Central London, we would hope that Thameslink services will stop at New Cross Gate. Thameslink‐London Bridge service provision needs to be considered in the light of these issues.

The addition of the Overground extension to Clapham Junction was much needed, but it still remains difficult to go from south east to south west London by train (thereby obviating the need to drive on the South Circular). In the longer term still more needs to be done for cross‐south London connectivity.

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Facilities

There is a history of diminishing facilities at all four stations serving the Telegraph Hill Conservation Area (New Cross Gate, Brockley, Nunhead and Queens Road Peckham). Only Queens Road has any internal shelter with seating for waiting commuters, none have toilets. This is a far cry from the provision that was available at each station 30 years ago. Even where new works have been carried out, such as the lifts at New Cross Gate, no waiting room accommodation was built even though there was clearly space for it.

The lack of such facilities does not encourage passenger transport particularly, again, amongst the elderly, disabled or infirm.

Lewisham Council should work with Network Rail and TfL to ensure that adequate provision of toilets and warm waiting rooms are included in future station works and that works are progressively carrried out at stations to make them more amenable to the elderly and disabled.

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