At one point before the Thameslink service started, Greenwich had an off peak 10 minute service from London Bridge
Only to a limited extent, because the funders have told them what to cut.
Which part?
Because the TOC has been told to identify Diagrams to strip out. Rewriting the timetable to 15-minute intervals may have knock on effects on crew or stock diagrams or even junction margins etc and there's only so much people can check at the pace of current change.
The diagrams will have been selected and offered by TOC, not DfT who just sign off.
DfT wont even know what a diagram is. It will be if we do this service pattern we can save these train crew costs and variable access charges
Thameslink paths through the core can't easily be changed due to all the knock on implications. To shift the Southeastern to 15 minutes spacing makes it a gap of five minutes on the Bexleyheath line. Moving the Victoria to Dartford services is also tricky due to Catford Loop, Lewisham and Dartford plus any other required changes needed elsewhere. That's before considering how efficient the driver or unit diagrams would be with the revised timings.
looking at the timetable on Woolwich, Bexleyheath and Sidcup corridors it seems to me that there are simply missing trains that haven't been enacted and Southeastern are keeping those slots available instead of requiring a complete rewrite,
They don't - part of the sort-out of crossing moves there.
This is the point. If there are four trains per hour, they should run 15 minutes apart. If the Thameslink paths are set in stone, then the South Eastern trains should be timed to fit the gaps. On the Sidcup line, all trains are provided by South Eastern but they can't even get those evenly spaced. Even better, the first train stops at Lewisham, but the second does not, so they are even closer together at Hither Green.
Yes, that is an excellent theory, but the knock-on effects are challenging:
Correct - the timetable is designed to have extra trains added back in, without rewriting the rest of it, according to a presentation made by Scott Brightwell (Train Services Director?) to the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport.
That serves me right for not checking first before posting!
i thought so,
But rewriting a timetable takes about 3-5 years, depending on the scale of change. Doing it twice at a time when the industry is struggling to meet the planning demand anyway is overall a worse service to passengers, as although SE London may get it's nice neat 15-minute intervals somewhere else in Kent there'll be a horrible set of clashes that would otherwise have got sorted out.
That's what I suspected, so thanks for the confirmation.
Anecdotally from a friend who uses the service regularly, they still go via Lewisham most of the time, even though they don't stp there
www.southeasternrailway.co.uk
There's 4 Orpington to Cannon Street trains booked for via Lewisham non-stop during evening peak 5pm to 6:30pm. They cross over at Lewisham the same time as the Cannon Street to Sidcup trains and at Parks Bridge Junction a mainline train from Cannon Street is often switching to the fast conflicting with where the Orpington train would normally go.Anecdotally from a friend who uses the service regularly, they still go via Lewisham most of the time, even though they don't stp there
"And our simpler timetable is designed so that as more customers travel with us in future, it’s possible to add more trains, and takes other factors, such as future housing developments, into consideration."
Timetable updates | Southeastern
Time will tell how accurate that is!
Looking at the 2004 NRT, each route had four trains per hour fairly well spaced apart in both directions. I can see one 12/18/12/18 combination, but most are better.
