Southeastern has launched a consultation on its proposals for the December 2019 timetable, which will speed up journeys on Highspeed trains between Ashford and Canterbury West as a result of work undertaken by Network Rail to increase the line speed.
The work to improve Highspeed journey times, which has been funded by Kent County Council, will enable quicker trains between Ashford and Canterbury West in both directions as well as quicker trains from Ramsgate and Margate, to and from London.
In addition, proposals for the December timetable will make journeys on some Southeastern Mainline trains quicker, building on the progress we made to shorten journey times in the May timetable revision. Passengers who use our trains to and from London Charing Cross and London Victoria are in line to benefit from further reductions in journey time.
We’re also proposing to increase the boarding time at a limited number of stations so that we can accommodate the extra time needed, as a result of continuing growth in passenger numbers.
From May 2020, Southeastern is proposing to withdraw the three trains each day that call at Ore, which is currently served by both Southern and Southeastern. These trains call at peak times when our network is exceptionally busy, and our analysis indicates that the rolling stock could be better deployed elsewhere to make use of this spare capacity. There is a proposal for an additional Southern service to call at Ore in the early morning, in addition to the regular Southern train service that already calls at this station.
David Statham, Southeastern's Managing Director said:
"We were pleased to see a successful roll-out of a new timetable in May, following an extensive consultation process at the end of 2018. However, no sooner than implementing a new timetable do we start the process again to assess how the scheduling of our train services can be revised to the benefit of our passengers.
"Revising and improving our timetable is an ongoing process and a key part of this process is listening to the feedback of our stakeholders and passengers, whose views are invaluable to us in helping ensure we’re making changes which will deliver the greatest benefit to Southeastern’s users.
"In this document we have drawn together timetable changes which we are proposing to implement in December 2019, which we hope will build on the success of May’s timetable change by delivering further improvements for passengers. As always, our key consideration is delivering the most benefit to the greatest number of passengers. The timetable changes we are outlining are a result of careful assessment by our train planners to resolve inefficiencies in our service schedule and deliver new benefits, such as shorter journey times.
"It’s essential that we get your views before we make these changes and we look forward to sharing with you the outcome of this consultation later in the year, when we publish a report on our findings and how we intend to
proceed."
We’re inviting anyone who has a view on the proposed changes to the train timetable to read our December 2019 Consultation document, and submit their views via the online survey. The consultation closes on September 9.
