December 2019 Timetable report
December 2019 Timetable Report
Ahead of the changes we are making on 15th December 2019 we asked our stakeholders and passengers for their feedback on what we had proposed. We have around 1,000 stakeholders on our network, with 640,000 passenger journeys taking place on Southeastern services everyday. We therefore know how important it is to capture the views of passengers and stakeholders across our network, to ensure that the revisions we make bi-annually to our timetable deliver continued improvements.
The proposals we put forward provide new benefits for our passengers in a number of areas: shorter journey times on many Highspeed services; shorter journey times on many Mainline services and; more efficient planning of our train timetable to increase reliability.
Increased passenger growth across the Southeastern network has been an important feature across our network, and a development which we will need to continue accommodating as more people use our services. A high volume of growth has been particularly noticed on our Metro services, at stations within Greater London.
As a result of this, we will be increasing the calling time for some services in peak periods, to provide more time for passengers to board and alight our services. This change is expected to improve the reliability and the safety of the operation of these services, providing a greater overall benefit for passengers, though it may mean an increase to the scheduled journey time by 1-2 minutes on some of the services affected.
We also consulted on one important change further ahead on the south coast of East Sussex; the withdrawal of Southeastern services between Hastings and Ore. Usage on these services has tended to be extremely low and our assessment indicated that removing the three Southeastern services would improve reliability on this highly congested part of the network. Following the feedback we received from local stakeholders we have amended our plans to ensure we have more time to comprehensively assess the impact on local passengers and explore alternative solutions.
This report sets out the key timetable changes which we are bringing forward on 15th December 2019. It outlines the key pieces of feedback we received and the issues and concerns which our passengers and stakeholders raised, and highlights of the key changes which we have made to our timetables since the consultation took place in the Summer.
The changes we are introducing on 15th December 2019 will mean:
• Shorter journeys and better connections on many Highspeed and Mainline services.
• More boarding time at some stations to accommodate passenger growth.
• Changes to rolling stock and train lengths to improve accessibility and make best use of capacity available.
You can also view and download our December 2019 timetable, to see these new changes.
Our driving principle remains delivering the most benefit to the greatest number of users and it is an ongoing process to ensure we achieve this.
Any feedback we have been unable to consider for the December 2019 changes will be re-evaluated for the May 2020 and December 2020 changes.