Nick  today condemned the poor service provided by Southeastern Trains during the wintry weather.

Despite buses, riverboat, DLR and tube services running in the borough without suffering major delays, rail passesngers suffered a reduction in service to just two trains an hour on metro services in the morning rush hour and rail services in the evening were set to be drastically reduced with the last train to Greenwich and Woolwich Arsenal stations leaving Charing Cross at 19.51. Whilst the rest of London’s transport network seems to have learned the lesson of the snow last February, the trains were left as the weakest link for commuters.

Nick has written to Charles Horton, the Managing Director of Southeastern Trains to express his concern at the poor level of service provided to Greenwich & Woolwich Commuters saying:

“This morning there were no problems with buses running through Greenwich & Woolwich; the DLR was running without delays and the Jubilee line through North Greenwich was running without incident. I understand from TFL that de-icing trains were run on overground tube lines to lessen the impact of the weather on the underground network.

You will, therefore, understand my dismay at hearing that trains run by Southeastern through the borough on Metro services were at a frequency of two per hour during rush hour despite the relatively light snow fall in South East London on the night of the 5^th January. I am also quite taken aback to hear from Mike Gibson at Southeastern that the last train to Greenwich tonight will depart at 19.51.

Given that other forms of transport were running without problems it is unfortunate that overground rail services were the weak link in the network. Following the disruption from the snow last February I would have hoped that appropriate contingency plans would be in place to deal with snowfall to keep the network running. Given that the cold snap is forecast to continue for some time I hope that Southeastern will put a plan into place to keep the network running throughout the winter.”