10 July (Part 3) - ThamesLink fined
It’s transport time again. Those who use the most northerly of the
three cross borough railway lines will remember the havoc caused by ThamesLink when they supposedly started
a Rainham to Luton Service 14 months ago. Their
incompetence caused the loss of the ten minute interval service on the Greenwich
line. Locally Abbey Wood and Slade Green were the most affected.
A ten minute interval service means there is no need to consult a timetable, you
just turn up and a train quickly does the same. Thameslink took over two of
those six trains an hour from Southeastern and then cancelled almost all of them.
Even when they began to get on top of the problem they only attempted to run one
of the two scheduled services and just to make things more exciting they didn’t
bother with the xx:58 (to London from Abbey Wood) in the morning but it was the xx:28 that
didn’t run in the afternoon. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever it
was it was hard to remember.
I was frequently inconvenienced when the DLR brought me back to Woolwich Arsenal and I’d
find myself with a 20 minute wait. So would many other people.
Things have been pretty much normal for the past couple of months but that
wasn’t good enough for the Department of Transport. As Bexley’s Labour Group are
telling people in their Slade Green heartland, Govia Thameslink has received a
£15 million penalty for inflicting so much inconvenience on passengers.
As they explain in
a Press Release,
Slade Green station is going to get a £30,000 share of the pot.
What do you want to spend it on?