TRAINS OF THOUGHT (1)

I think the theme of the week is going to be transport. I chaired Sutton Council’s Public Transport Liaison Group today and tomorrow I have a meeting with Peter Hendy, Transport Commissioner in Victoria Street to discuss the new Mayor of London’s Transport Strategy amongst other things. Then on Thursday Peter is paying a visit to Sutton to see the progress we have been making with Smarter Travel Sutton.

CHANGES AHEAD
Today we spent some time talking about the impact of Network Rail’s South London Route Utilisation Strategy (RUS). The strategy has some good news and some bad news for us here in Sutton.

On the good news side I was very pleased to see that my concerns about overcrowding and the time it takes to travel from Sutton, Carshalton Beeches and Wallington have been addressed:

• We will be getting longer trains on the Victoria services from Sutton, staring with 10 cars by 2010/11 and 12 cars by 2015;
  
• We will have a faster service to London Bridge via Wallington from 2010/11. They will stop at Waddon, West Croydon and Norwood Junction but then run non stop to London Bridge;
  
• There will be more morning peak Thameslink trains from Sutton via Hackbridge;
  
• And for those of you who hate Clapham Junction, the station will undergo major improvements by 2015 – at last I hear you cry!

On the other hand I was very disappointed to hear that Network Rail proposes to make changes to the existing Thameslink service from Bedford which will mean that the service will not come through Sutton.

I will be taking this up with Network Rail along with the depressing news that our new direct service to St Pancras International will also stop before sometime between 2011 and 2015 in favour of a service that requires us to change trains at London Bridge.


USEFUL LINKS:

Smarter Travel Sutton
http://www.smartertravelsutton.org/news

South London Route Utilisation Strategy

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browseDirectory.aspx?root=%5CRUS%20Documents%5CRoute%20Utilisation%20Strategies&pageid=4449&dir=%5CRUS%20Documents%5CRoute%20Utilisation%20Strategies%5CSouth%20London