Tag: Southern

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May Timetable changes station guide

May Timetable Changes

The massive Timetable consultation is over and in a weeks’ time, the new GTR timetable will be in place for better or worse.

We should remember that this change is about making the service more regular not faster, to make the service more reliable not faster and to contain disruption affects to individual routes rather than across the network, not faster. We believe Redhill has not come out well but do understand the reasons are one of infrastructure (we need to cross fast lines to access them for all services) not a war against Redhill.

We will find all our London Bridge services run by Thameslink and all continuing through the Thameslink core in Central London to strange places north of London. The benefit will be getting to more of London directly rather than having services to Peterborough.

Many of our stations will see the majority of trains run by Thameslink as Southern will only provide a few trains in the peak South of Redhill towards Gatwick. This has led to the loss of useful cheaper tickets (“Southern only”) for London Bridge, increasing season tickets by around 17%. We will continue our fight for Fair Fares on this issue.

I’ve prepared some short PDF’s talking about the changes for each station and some timetables for morning and evening peaks to London (except Merstham as your service improves so much). I have also done a sheet for Redhill & Earlswood to/from Brighton in the peaks as well.

Additionally

For Godstone and Salfords I’ve added you as supplementary to Nutfield and Earlswood respectively as all trains that call at one call at the other.

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Southern isn’t working, RMT contempt for East Surrey Commuters

RRDRUA is very disappointed that the RMT and GTR Southern have been unable to resolve their differences and that Rail Users are again going to find total failure again in trying to go about their daily lives.

The members of the RMT have guaranteed Jobs, a good salary and a reasonable work/life balance. Whereas, the long suffering commuters are under threat of losing jobs, losing salary, losing holiday and being unable to get home to their families. The RMT leadership shows utter contempt to the Rail users by ruining their daily lives for the honour of pushing a button to close train doors.

Along the Redhill route, the 10,000 daily East Surrey commuters find their daily commute which has already heavily suffered cuts since 2012 is now even worse. Today:-

  • Earlswood & Salfords stations are closed;
  • The Entire Tonbridge line is closed;
  • Coulsdon South, Merstham & Horley have a limited off-peak only service so virtually closed for the majority of users.
  • Services to London from Reigate are not running at all, leaving a limited connecting service
  • Trains from Redhill are one-third of the normal level (a 60% cut in a service that has been cut consistently since 2012).

Last trains this week to Redhill are around 7pm, meaning that commuters and visitors alike have little choice but to cut their day short in London. GTR Southern and Thameslink will still be running 8 trains per hour to Gatwick straight through Redhill but are unable to plan a service to stop at Redhill.

All in all another heavy slap in the face for the poor, tired and frustrated commuters in East Surrey. The Government needs to step and make sure Redhill route commuters get a better normal service and some respect from themselves and the Rail Companies.