New Cross station’s booming passenger numbers
New Cross station saw a big jump in passengers to 3.74 million in recently released figures – a 13% rise on the year before.
The station serves both London Overground and Southeastern.
Growth is possibly focused on Southeastern services given sister station New Cross Gate, which serves Southern and London Overground, saw a very small 0.4% fall.
Just a few years ago in 2013/14 the station saw 2.6 million annual users. The station will likely see further growth given a number of large developments nearby.
One such is a tower scheme just to the north named Deptford Foundry with 316 homes:
200 other flats were submitted for planning on Trundleys Road.
By the time commuter trains get to New Cross, very few people can get on and only a handful who want to catch London Overground trains, get off.
Much of the apparent rise is probably because of booming season ticket sales. The National Conditions of Travel now permit season tickets to be split at New Cross, providing welcome relief of more than £700 for many Kent commuters who have been price gouged by Southeastern’s above average fare rises for many years !
https://www.kentlive.news/news/train-fare-loophole-southeastern-commuters-916291
The split-ticketing option is only valid for trains passing through New Cross – so, for example, a Sevenoaks-London season would only be valid on trains that pass through London Bridge, New Cross, Orpington etc. You couldn’t use a split season ticket for the Thameslink services from Blackfriars. Obviously, that loses a fair bit of flexibility.
Few Sennockians would choose to commute to central London on slow Thameslink trains with painted concrete seats ! To reach Blackfriars or City Thameslink they’d just use their split season ticket on a fast train and change to Thameslink at London Bridge.
Victoria is the only London Terminal that Sennockians can’t easily reach on NR via New Cross, but they’d buy a season ticket to New Cross and bolt on Underground Zones1 & 2 (thereby also getting travel on all London buses, not just those in Z1 & Z2). The total cost of all this extra flexibility is just £8 more than the £3608 basic NR ticket to London Terminals.
Why upgrade to the ‘official’ £4328 Z1-Z6 ticket when you can get most of the benefits for only £3616? Your train doesn’t even have to stop at New Cross, whizzing through is fine.
Worthwhile savings are also available from Dartford and many other Kent stations.