South London needs more trains.

Even if you haven’t heard of the South London Line (SLL) you may well have travelled on it. It's the line which has trains running every half hour between Victoria and London Bridge via Battersea Park, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham High Street, Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham and South Bermondsey. It makes a neat U shape through the north part of Lambeth and Southwark and we particularly value it because, unlike long distance services, its possible to find space to get on at our inner London stations and moreover, it serves 3 of London’s major hospitals – Kings and the Maudsley at Denmark Hill and Guys at London Bridge.

Network Rail have said that the planned reduction in terminating platforms at London Bridge - to make way for the Thameslink works - means there will not be room for the SLL in the future. They proposed to divert the service to Bellingham instead and still run the service to most of the SLL stations. The Office of the Rail Regulator agreed that this new service and the phase 2b East London Line extension service would compensate for the loss of the South London Line.

So we all celebrated in Feb 2009 when it was announced that the Mayor and the Government had agreed on phase 2b of the East London Line and that it would open in May 2012, giving us a direct service to East London. But it emerged that TfL had also proposed to fund the East London Line by withdrawing the South London Line entirely and cancelling the plans for the Bellingham diversion.

If this goes ahead hundreds of local residents, patients and staff at the hospitals who had used the South London Line service to get to Victoria or London Bridge will have been robbed without consultation or warning. Journeys will be complicated by hitherto unnecessary changes en route. The SLL will be ‘replaced’ by a completely different service, the East London Line, which we supported warmly when we believed it was to be an additional service rather than a replacement. Not even installing the Bellingham – Victoria service is an appalling broken promise. South London badly needs more public transport services, Camberwell in particular. And has anyone mentioned climate change in all this ? Fewer cars should mean more trains!

We have until 2012 to fight off the loss of the South London Line or to at least achieve the promised Bellingham –Victoria service replacement. Sign the petitions, write to Mayor Johnson and Transport Ministers and let’s show the rail industry that we are not going to be robbed!

Help us save the South London Line and sign our petition at:
http://tinyurl.com/SouthLondonLine

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South London needs more trains.

Even if you haven’t heard of the South London Line (SLL) you may well have travelled on it. It's the line which has trains running every half hour between Victoria and London Bridge via Battersea Park, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham High Street, Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye, Queens Rd Peckham and South Bermondsey. It makes a neat U shape through the north part of Lambeth and Southwark and we particularly value it because, unlike long distance services, its possible to... (read more)