Southeastern sees strong growth in passengers travelling to London

Southeastern has seen a new post-pandemic record last week for passengers heading to central London terminals.

The company’s Managing Director tweeted the news which revealed a 8.9 per cent increase from last year.

On a wider level the most recent quarter’s data from the Office of Road and Rail show Southeastern saw a seven per cent rise on the same quarter last year – though that was only up to June. Unfortunately we cannot see how that is broken down by HS1, long distance and Metro (and also by individual lines).

Other journeys

Central London journeys are of course the mainstay of Southeastern but now many will be travelling to Abbey Wood to connect with the Elizabeth line.

Substantial numbers of passengers now change between Southeastern and the Elizabeth line. It may well be more if services to meet the new line hadn’t been cut in 2022.

In December further “rounder” services to the Sidcup line will be added but it still lacks the all-day service it had prior to 2022.

There’s also those that travel to connect to the DLR at places like Lewisham and Greenwich from major growth areas such as Kidbrooke.

As mentioned above when it comes to cuts, Southeastern services connecting to the Elizabeth line reduced as soon as the new line opened presumably as the thinking was people would use it – but without considering people would want to travel on Southeastern services from various areas to connect with it. Or it was considered but government insisted on cuts anyway.

Southeastern are still short of a number of services seen until 2022 when two out of six trains per hour along the Woolwich line were cut.

A turn-up-and-go service – which is often a train every 10-15 minutes – was reduced in places to a near 30 minute interval.

That improved in June but still below turn-up-and-go at 18 minute intervals.

Improvements are on the way for other lines including London Victoria to Orpington reverting back to four trains per hour weekdays during the off-peak. That was another line that saw cuts in recent years and dropped to two per hour outside the peaks.

Unfortunately weekends will keep the low service frequency and 30 minute gaps. That line passes busy inner city areas like Brixton but like so much about the metro routes it’s far from what it cold be. A scarcely staffed, filthy station is unwelcoming enough without such poor service levels.

A London Overground-like transformation would work wonders, but it requires investment for long term rewards so that’s a no from the Treasury and Department for Transport.

In the short term small-scale improvements are welcome but the network within the capital and in north Kent retains huge untapped potential.

Staffing

Restoring all 2022 cuts would be a good first step, and then working to improve staffing and safety would be a big boost.

Southeastern did launch a big recruitment drive this year after things got so bad lack of station staffing and closed ticket offices were reaching triple figures a day (I think the record was about 103 stations having some sort of issue with the vast majority being short staffing), but much of that is just restoring staffing to levels across Metro routes already below that seen most TfL services.

Many stations continue to see new homes rise in the vicinity as well as plans for many more. If Southeastern can tap into that (and government assists in funding), growth could rise sharply adding to that recently seen.

After all, London Overground passenger numbers are now all but back to 2019 levels despite the Elizabeth line. SE Metro could get there too.