Southeastern outline forthcoming winter rail timetable improvements
Southeastern are set to increase rail services this winter across a couple of Metro routes.
One such change is a modest increase in loop line services via Slade Greenwich from the Sidcup line to the Woolwich line including linking areas to Elizabeth line services at Abbey Wood.
Controversially these long-running all-day services were cut in 2022 just as the new £18 billion line opened.
A couple of peak time trains now run and from December that slightly increases but no all-day service will resume. Given the incredible popularity of Elizabeth line services and leisure travel this seems a missed opportunity to link more areas to the line, but is constrained by just what government will fund.
Southeastern is of course now entirely owned by government and the Department for Transport controls the service.
To improve service levels the new government would need acknowledge investment can bring greater revenue. That requires altering short-termism seen for some time from the DfT.
Cuts remain
The other change is Victoria to Orpington services off peak services – which were cut from running every 15 minutes to every half hour – will revert back to pre-covid levels.
Other cuts including two per hour along the Greenwich line are not scheduled to return nor the cut Bexleyheath line train to Charing Cross which went from every 30 minutes to none at all before coming back at one per hour.
Better spacing of services along the Greenwich line has helped but it’s still not at “turn up and go” levels and one cancellation can result in substantial waits.
Another no show in the list of improvements are a return of the limited-stop fasts along the Sidcup line.
Future?
What happens now with Southeastern Metro remains a big unknown. Will the new government change tack and invest to reap the rewards?
We know that TfL didn’t cut on the DLR and London Overground and have seen far stronger recovery in London even with the advent of the Elizabeth line.
You may think that SE have the benefit of an interchange with the line at Abbey Wood and thus would be keen to feed many services into it from Dartford and Kent as well as loop line services from both other Dartford lines as once mooted in the late 2010s, but this hasn’t happened.
Government could decide to devolve Metro services as once agreed between then-Mayor Boris Johnson and Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin which even saw Kent County Council get on boards before Chris Grayling pulled the plug. However Labour didn’t seem keen before the election.
The other option is to subsume with a potential Great British Railways but this still requires funding. Given Southeastern is already state-owned it could become part of GBR quite quickly.
Whatever happens, the network remains ripe for growth sitting among areas of the highest housebuilding in the UK, but government would need to make a decision to embrace that potential. This winter’s changes don’t really show much sign of that.
