loss of East Croydon-London Bridge serivce

[shaun]

The 8.05/8.15 services have been shocking this week. Southern Trains are a complete shambles and clearly couldn't organise a p*ss up in the proverbial. I've sent them several scathing missives but nothing will come of passenger complaints, they don't give a toss. They have their goldmine of revenue with no competition so why should they bother to invest in the service? Let's face facts if they were in a proper free market they would have gone bust a long time ago through lack of customers! Let's all hope and pray they lose their franchise next Sept, in fact I am going to contact Passenger Focus to ask how I can submit a protest against their retention of the franchise.

[LibraCarr]

Hi,

I got to East Croydon Station at 5.15pm yesterday and was told that I would have to change at Streatham Common, to get to East Dulwich. The train that I needed to get to Streatham Common was some 20 mins later (the fourth train in the queue) I got to Streatham and then had to wait another 20-30 mins (this time three trains came in before the one that I could board to get me home. One train was for Watford Junction - at most it had four passengers in each carriage!

In all a journey that would take about forty minutes, took well over a hour and half.

Today we utilised our gas guzzling Mercedes Viano that can hold eight people in luxury with a guaranteed seat to work, we beat the train! The only annoying factor was that the driver made two announcements 'We will be arriving at East Croydon Station 16 minutes ahead of the usual train time' and 'When leaving this vehicle please make sure you take all bags (Mother in Law included) when you depart.

The Merc is fully insured for hire and reward and has public liability insurance cover as well. It is free to travel in but you contribute to fuel and expences, which is 17% cheaper than the train (calculated at 2 journey's x 5 day's a week) In short you might as well go back to your car, travel in a comfort capsule, not get coughed and sneezed upon, and not suffer the innane attitude of Southern Railway staff.

Oh by the way, the facility has been fully signed up and there are no seats currently available (a bit like Southern).

Kind regards,

Libra, Carr.

[Eileen]

It would be really good if travellers suffering from the loss of the East Croydon-London Bridge service would email their experiences, like these detailed in this discussion, to the Southwark News and South London Press.

[email protected], [email protected]

This way we can keep the issue in the public eye. If you post a comment in this discussion, just copy and paste and edit as necessary and send off as an email. Just another few minutes effective effort!

[hoser]

Is this service completely gone at all times? I ask because I'm trying to get to Gatwick Sunday afternoon, and all the suggestions on the National Rail journey planner are E. Dulwich - E. Croydon - Gatwick. I tried going to Southern's website directly, but it is quite crap and doesn't seem to list any schedule from E.D. station.

[Jeremy]

By road has always been easily the quickest way to get to Croydon, anyway.

But it's a shame that our worsening public transport is leaving people with no choice.

[Cassius]

I now have to leave work early and rush to get the 16.57 from East Croydon (rather than strolling to get the 17.14), and then instead of a fairly civilised 10 minute wait at Norwood Junction it is a freezing and unpleasant 17 minute wait at the warm and cozy Tulse Hill, where the wind blows right through your many layers of cold.

Thank goodness the morning one hasn't changed (yet).