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News and Comment October 2022

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3 October - Nationalise the railways

The Southeastern rail representative at Bexley’s recent Transport Users’ meeting said that a revised timetable was to be issued the following week. As I left the building with Councillor Sally Hinkley (Labour, Belvedere) I predicted that it would be another exercise in running trains for the convenience of the operating companies rather than for the travelling public.

And so it has proved to be.

The priority is to avoid using sets of points with the result that all Southeastern trains through Erith and Abbey Wood will run only to and from Cannon Street. Trains through Bexleyheath will suffer the same fate except in peak hours and the loop line trains providing a service from Sidcup to Abbey Wood will end. The Elizabeth Line services will be put out of reach of those living to the south of the borough.

Total idiocy.

As the Bexley Labour Group say in their Press Release, this has been done without consultation or any regard for passengers, particularly the disabled, the platform interchanges at London Bridge having been designed to maximise passenger inconvenience.

Unsurprisingly, the Labour Group (and others) are saying that “the railways should be brought back into public ownership in the interests of the travelling public”.

Who is going to tell them that Southeastern was nationalised in October 2021 after £25 million of taxpayers’ money was misappropriated by the franchisee?

 

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