9 February (Part 3) - Politicians on platforms? There must be a train or an election due
I don’t think my new parliamentary candidate has got the hang of Erith and Thamesmead yet. She was
at Abbey Wood station late this afternoon standing on the Up Platform gathering the signatures of commuters arriving on
the Down Platform, while pursuing yet another Tory election wheeze. A petition to South Eastern Trains
to get them to run a better service.
I suppose it is a little more realistic than expecting residents of this unremarkable parliamentary constituency to
stop the Scots
poking their noses into our business, but maybe not a lot. Does Anna Firth think that no
one has campaigned for better train services before?
If Ms. Firth
lingered on Abbey Wood station more than a couple of minutes she may have
noticed that a train sets off for London every ten minutes with an extra one
flung in for good measure every half an hour. By far the best train service in
Bexley (OK it’s 50 yards over the border but never mind that) and equal to
anything found in the borough of Greenwich.
It’s true that rush hour capacity has been reduced but that is caused by the long
overdue total reconstruction of London Bridge station. Little can be done about that.
The 12 car train situation is rather silly but we are stuck with a maximum
of ten. Woolwich Dockyard station is sandwiched between two tunnels and cannot
be extended. Ten coaches is the limit. It was very short-sighted to
have bought trains that did not come with selective door closing and unable to be
retro-fitted with it, so the option of stopping with the tail end coaches in the
tunnel is unavailable. Maybe Ms. Firth would prefer to close Woolwich Dockyard
station as a quick fix, but there are no spare coaches available in the rush
hour anyway or we might not see the occasional four or six coach train running at that time.
I’ve always thought it peculiar that every railway user knows more about running
trains than professional and often very enthusiastic railwaymen - and women.
So it’s another waste of time by Conservative candidate Anna Firth. She would be
better advised to campaign for something that is attainable. How about step free
access to Erith station Platform 1? At present the disabled have a half hour
diversion via Dartford. But
someone got there first - and there wasn’t an election just around the
corner at the time.