Southern Rail

How do we get our services back to normal?

Report from Ellie Reeves MP

Before lockdown, we had a minimum of four Southern services per hour calling at Sydenham – two between London Bridge and East Croydon and two more on the “loop line” between London Bridge and Victoria. Since the beginning of lockdown, only the services to and from East Croydon have been in operation, leaving us with only a half hour service on Southern. With Ellie Reeves, the Forest Hill and Sydenham Societies met with Southern (part of the Govia Thameslink Railway) twice in the last three years, when we were promised a swift return of the loop line. But since then we have remained at only two trains per hour, many with fewer carriages than normal.

Below is a report from our MP:

“This week I met with the CEO of Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) to outline the challenges we have been facing and to lobby him to take action.

As you know the main issue has been timetable changes between Sydenham / Forest Hill and London Bridge. There have also been issues around overcrowding on the services because of shorter trains as well.

I am pleased to announce that following our meeting GTR have now agreed to increase the number of carriages per train on the service from 5 as it currently stands to 8-10 from September onwards.

I also outlined how disappointed we all are with the timetable changes and whilst I was unable to get concessions on this, we have managed to get the trains back up to 8-10 carriages, which should help reduce the overcrowding.

Whilst this is a win, I will continue to lobby GTR to get our services restored to what they were pre covid. I hope this comes as good news in the meantime and will let you know as soon as I have any other updates.”