campaign to Save our Services to Victoria
From SRUG (Southwark Rail Users' Group)
Please join the campaign to Save our Services to Victoria.
EMAIL THE TRANSPORT MINISTER & THE LONDON MAYOR
SRUG is asking rail users of Nunhead, Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill stations to email the Transport Minister, the Mayor of London and their elected representatives to say something like:
________________________________________________________
I use and value the Victoria services because ... ... ... ... ... ...
From 2012, there will be big gaps in the Victoria services, after we lose the South London Line. We need to have those gaps filled. We need 4 trains an hour as we have now, but regularly every 15 mins and day & evening, 7 days a week. If we can't have 4 trains an hour when we lose the SLL, we need at least in the interim a full 7 days a week regular service of 2 trains an hour, every 30 mins. Please can you ensure this can be arranged for 2013?
And add anything else you want to say.
See below for email addresses
____________________________________________________________
EMAIL ADDRESSES TO WRITE TO
* Theresa Villiers (Transport Minister) at: theresa.villiers@dft.gsi.gov.uk
* Boris Johnson at: Mayor@london.gov.uk
cc to your elected representatives the emails you send to the Minister and Mayor, or write directly to your MP, London Assembly Member, and your ward councillors, giving your views and asking them to press the Minister and the Mayor to help save the services to Victoria
cc these emails to the local press, or write separately to them.
All the names and email addresses are here: http://www.bellenden.net/victoria#emails
BACKGROUND
We lost the campaign to save the South London Line (SLL) which will now end in December 2012 because of the rebuilding of London Bridge station. The extension of the East London Line (ELL) to Clapham Junction will open in January 2013, and provide promising new journey opportunities. But it will do nothing to get us to London Bridge or Victoria. You can see the way this shift will affect our direct services into London by comparing the two maps we have produced - see http://www.bellenden.net/SRUG-maps
VICTORIA GAPS
The ending of the South London Line (SLL) will leave big gaps in services to Victoria from Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill, as well as remove them altogether from the other SLL stations (see http://www.bellenden.net/victoria for more details). The service at Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill, will be reduced to 2 trains an hour and limited to weekdays, with only patchy irregular services in the evenings and weekends.
Possibilities to fill some of these gaps have been identified by TfL & LTW (report here: http://tinyurl.com/3nmzvkm) They concluded that Option 7 in the report provided the best possibilities. This involves timetable adjustments and extension of existing train services from Kent. The decision to enable these and other changes to happen is with the Department of Transport. Key decisions will probably be taken in the next few months. To strengthen the case for action, the Transport Minister needs to know how important this is to Southwark rail users.
We need the Minister and the London Mayor to work together to fill some of the gaps in the services to Victoria that will appear in Jan 2013, by introducing changes using a combination of a new Bromley-Victoria service, or an extension of the existing Dartford-Victoria service, and/or introducing peak hour stops in some Kent trains, to give 2 trains an hour 7days a week and evenings. (Details of these are in the TfL/LTW report: http://tinyurl.com/3nmzvkm). After that, when new franchises and new timetables are being designed, we want them to move towards a full 7 days a week regular 4tph every 15 minutes service to Victoria from Nunhead, Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill, Clapham High St and Wandsworth Rd. For further information about the Victoria services see: http://www.bellenden.net/victoria
LONDON BRIDGE & BLACKFRIARS/ST PANCRAS
This immediate campaign deals with the gaps in Victoria services. But we haven't forgotten the other key services to London Bridge and Blackfriars/St Pancras. On London Bridge, services for Peckham Rye, Queen's Rd Peckham, Sth Bermondsey will reduce from 6 to 4 an hour in Jan 2013. We aim to get that back to 6 an hour (which will also benefit North & East Dulwich). On Blackfriars / St Pancras the signs are that we will retain the current service when the new Blackfriars Bridge is fully open (in 2012), but that service is only Mon to Fri and stops at 9pm. We aim to press for that to be expanded to 7 days a week and a full evening service. See http://www.bellenden.net/all_services for our overall approach to all the services. We may be asking you in due course for email actions in support of campaigns for various aspects of these.
ACTIONS TO TAKE NOW
in the meantime, our urgent priority is to achieve Ministers' agreement to fill the gaps in the remaining Victoria services, that are looming with the cut of the SLL. So please, if you are a user of Nunhead, Peckham Rye, or Denmark Hill stations:
* email decision makers, elected representatives & local press. See email addresses to write to above and: http://www.bellenden.net/victoria#emails
* distribute flyers – these can be downloaded from: http://www.bellenden.net/victoria#actions The leaflet is in A6 pocket size so you can print to carry with you - please hand them out to fellow passengers waiting for, or on your train, to or from Victoria.
We need as many emails as we can to the Minister, the Mayor and your elected representatives, so please spread the word as much as you can.
SRUG MAPS
The rail services that serve our stations are part of a complex network of different routes and different companies. So we have developed a very local Rail map, which is at an early stage:
* to help understand the way they inter-relate and to show the impact of removing the SLL services.
* to show how well connected we are potentially to the Tube if only we had full and regular Rail services.
For the maps and further explanations about them see here: http://www.bellenden.net/SRUG-maps.
Your feedback on the maps, queries or comments, will be welcome to help in their development - please email SRUG@southwarkrailusers.net We hope you find them helpful.
If you have any queries please visit
http://www.bellenden.net/victoria
http://www.bellenden.net/all_services
http://www.bellenden.net/SRUG-maps
or email SRUG@southwarkrailusers.net