Greenwich passengers face a nightmare journey home today after Southeastern put together a revised timetable in order to cope with the snowfall and freezing temperatures.
A statement on the company website says:
“Freezing temperatures, snow and ice have been forecast over the next few days. To ensure we’re able to run the best service possible in these weather conditions a revised Metro and Mainline timetable will be in place from Wednesday 6 January 2010.”
Tonight’s final Southeastern service out of Cannon Street to Dartford, calling at Greenwich, Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Charlton will depart at 19:47.
The news has angered many passengers, especially as the snow on the ground is not yet as bad as has been predicted.
Updated 21.16
Local MP, Nick Raynsford, described the Southeastern’s train services as the “weakest link” in the local transport network and accused railway bosses of failing to learn the lessons of last February’s snow.
In a letter to Charles Horton, the Managing Director of Southeastern Trains, Raynsford writes:
“This morning there were no problems with buses running through Greenwich & Woolwich; the DLR was running without delays and the Jubilee line through North Greenwich was running without incident. I understand from TFL that de-icing trains were run on overground tube lines to lessen the impact of the weather on the underground network.
You will, therefore, understand my dismay at hearing that trains run by Southeastern through the borough on Metro services were at a frequency of two per hour during rush hour despite the relatively light snow fall in South East London on the night of the 5th January. I am also quite taken aback to hear from Mike Gibson at Southeastern that the last train to Greenwich tonight will depart at 19.51.
Given that other forms of transport were running without problems it is unfortunate that overground rail services were the weak link in the network. Following the disruption from the snow last February I would have hoped that appropriate contingency plans would be in place to deal with snowfall to keep the network running. Given that the cold snap is forecast to continue for some time I hope that Southeastern will put a plan into place to keep the network running throughout the winter.”
And more of the same planned tomorrow! Why bother.
Dipped in and out of the awesome phenomenon that is uksnow.benmarsh.co.uk all day today. Seem to be only a handful of people tweeting from SE3, SE10, SE7, and one of them reports that passengers are being turned off a bus at Shooter’s Hill (too steep?)
Even newspapers are twittering there (“come and look at readers’ photos of the snow” type thing), and Heathrow has twittered there to tell people where to find information about the travel situation.
Hmmn, even the Beeb is tweeting there to thank viewers for their videos, some of which will appear on the 6.pm London news.
Hope Ben Marsh’s server stands up to the hammering 🙂
My journey to Charing Cross wasn’t too bad this morning. The train arrived about the normal time and was less full than normal; I even got a seat! I had to change at London Bridge, though. The journey back was worse. I waited ages for a bus to Charing Cross, gave up and cought one to Waterloo instead. Of course I then had to get to London Bridge. I managed to cram myself onto a jam-packed train, and then waited for 10 minutes on a dangerously crowded London Bridge platform until the half-hourly Greenwich line train arrived. I arrived home about a quarter of an hour earlier than usual, although I’d left work an hour earlier than the regular leaving time.
I suppose Southeastern are damned if the do and damned if they don’t in this sort of situation. If they take no action overnight they are accused of being unprepared of the snow is bad, and if they wait until the morning they risk being accused of going off half-cocked.