The advantage of replacing the Southeastern trains with Bakerloo line ones outweigh those who wish to go to London Bridge. If people really prefer to stay overground, they’ll be able to change at Lewisham and continue to use Southeastern or whoever the TOC franchise goes to by the long time it comes to Lower Sydenham with a much more frequent service than now on the Hayes branch.
I heard that they wanted to send the Cannon Street services to Victoria before 2022 (instead they went via Sidcup). Now while it sees a cut in the service to LB from 4tph to 2tph, there will still be frequent services by changing at Lewisham, while adding new connections to Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill from Lower Sydenham. There is of course still a frequent service to London Bridge from Forest Hill and Sydenham.
I don’t see why we must lose the mainline trains, if the Bakerloo line comes to Catford Bridge. Forest Hill has the Overground and Southern Region mainline trains.
Our Overground is the same as a train in technical terms, but the Bakerloo Line isn’t. While there might be a technical solution to make both use the same tracks (I don’t know if there is), it would certainly make the project far more complex and therefore expensive. At the same time you would likely lose many benefits. So it’ll be one or the other.
I believe that underground and mainline trains have previously run along the same lines. There may have been two sets of tracks. Personally I favour the extension to Lewisham. It will then be like it was on the Forest Hill line where about 50% of the passengers got off at New Cross Gate and got on the East London Line trains.
One thing for sure, if this does get even to just New Cross Gate, we will have some great connections from Forest Hill \ Honor Oak.
Bakerloo from NCG
Jubilee from Canada Water (an I guess London Bridge)
Crossrail from Whitechapel (as well as Hammersmith and City, District)
Not to mention trains in London Bridge, Overground into essentially Canary Wharf and the City and 2 Catford stations and Crofton Park within reasonable distance for most, plus 171, 172, 185 and 122 routes taken us to these stations if required, looking good!
89% of respondents made positive is supportive responses, while 7% were opposing it’s negative.
Unsurprisingly there were more negative or opposing contents from those that live above the proposed tunnels:
Opposition to the line of route is higher for respondents who live above the line of route of the tunnels: 11 per cent are in opposition compared to four per cent of all respondents [to Question 3].
Breaking from Internet tradition, the name ‘Tubey McTube Face’ was not a well supported choice of name for the station at site 1 or 2:
Beyond statistics on responses to each question, specific comments from societies, councillors and stakeholders of various sorts are also listed in a later section of the report:
After 110 pages, the report ends with a summary of the next steps:
Am I being daft here? I dont see how this will benefit residents of Forest Hill.
Lewisham already has the DLR and if Lewisham was convenient to get to from here I’d go there and get DLR then central line to work rather than go through the nightmare I had on Monday when a fire near the line meant no trains from Forest Hill going east-leading to 2 hours to get to work with 2 bus changes and a walk (meaning I arrived an hour late and therefore had to stay late to make up the time.
THEN this evening on my way home at 7.45pm (I left home at 8 this morning) at New X gate the overground train told us all to get off-signal failure no trains going south…
to cut a long story short I finally got home at 9pm this evening.
I left work at shortly after 7pm.
Thats twice this week its taken me 2 hours to get into zone 1.
It really sucks especially as New X Gate feels like the twilight zone with no direct route back to FH
Faster access to Oxford Circus and Paddington via New Cross Gate (certainly more direct than the Whitechapel interchange to Elizabeth line)
Slightly faster route to Waterloo and Charing Cross and less crowded than the Jubilee
Prospect of further extention south of Lewisham to Bell Green - adding a new station serving eastern SE23 (also helpful if stranded at New Cross Gate wih no trains going south, as described)
Further extention south might also connect to Bromley town centre - bringing Bromley residents to the shopping paradise of Bell Green
I completely feel your pain. I work long hours away from home. Those people not WFH definitely have been slapped in the face by public transport during the pandemic. Fare hikes, reduced services and some routes just completely cancelled.
I think it will just give an option to change at Lewisham instead of London Bridge, for a train to Charing Cross. Also, it will give an extra option of taking a bus to Lewisham and catching the train from there. Otherwise, I cannot see an advantage to us.
But you have to get to Lewisham 1st and the traffic is often so bad getting through Catford that It could easily take 25mins in rush hour traffic to get to Lewisham.
My other point is that it seems a little absurd having to travel 3.5 miles to Lewisham when my place of work is 7.5 miles door to door.
My dream would be for the No 12 bus to terminate at Forest Hill rather than Dulwich Library !
Years ago the 12 bus did serve Forest Hill directly! In fact I think it used to terminate at South Croydon. Before I moved here I used to take it at weekends all the way from Shepherds Bush!
I seem to recall in the dim & distant past that the 12 bus route was the longest in London, with the southern terminus at South Croydon and the northern terminus somewhere up in North London - Harlesden if memory serves.
I’m not sure if there was ever a single run which took in the full route from one end to the other - and if there was there would obviously have been a change of drivers/conductors somewhere in the central London area…
Charing Cross is already a stop on the Bakerloo line so changing from London Overground to the Bakerloo extension at New Cross Gate would take you straight there! However as the Bakerloo doesn’t directly connect with any of our current services from Forest Hill it will also enable journey options with just one change to stations such as Oxford Circus.
