Festiball, July 15

Crofton Park Ryan writes:

"I’m hosting a family fun day and a dads football tournament down at St Dunstan’s in Catford called Festiball. It’s an urban fete with stalls of kids clothes, toys, books and local crafts.

"Then there’ll be a bakeoff competition judged by a local VIP. We’ll have big family picnic while the dads play football with a BBQ and a local craft beer tent.

"We’re putting on entertainment for the kids, face painters, magicians, balloon blowers and a penalty shoot-out competition.

"The Football Tournament is World Cup competition, with up to 20 teams involved, all getting a national team from the real World Cup to play for.

The reason we’re doing this is to raise money and awareness for mens cancer. We’re supporting Prostate UK and a smaller local charity called Ballboys that educates younger boys about the perils of Tesicular cancer.

We want teams to sign up for the football tournament and families to come to the event to enjoy. It’s on the 15th July and we’d love it if you could help us out in any way possible.

www.festiball.net

Crofton Park Trains All Messed Up. Bibbidi bobbidi boo.

"Well, serves you right, spoiling people’s best dreams."
- Cinderella

Until now, the Cinderella Line group, which campaigns for a better Crofton Park service, has operated in a parallel universe, where people just ask for things and public transport organisations deliver them promptly and efficiently.

Now, thanks to massive disruption on the Thameslink line, they have rejoined the rest of us in the real world. They write regarding the ongoing problems passengers are experiencing:

The message we have been feeding back to Thameslink, based on our experience is that this is simply unacceptable and cannot continue.

As always, it's the pressure from all our supporters that allow us to keep holding Thameslink to task so please continue to stand with us so we can do this. Our MP Vicky Foxcroft has already been in touch with Thameslink.

Why do services keep getting cancelled?

The national timetable planning process across the entire national rail network has been significantly delayed. Railway timetables are normally published 12 weeks in advance, however, rewriting the timetable from scratch across such a huge network is a massive undertaking and was not completed until a few weeks ago.

In addition to running passenger services, the timetable changes define the scope of engineering work to the track. This, in turn, affects the deployment of trains and train crew and the access they have to train maintenance depots. Less time than usual has been available to re-plan the driver allocations as well as the train stabling and maintenance requirements.

On top of all of this, there simply arent enough drivers trained to drive all of the new routes. Train drivers can’t simply turn up and drive any train – they need to understand and be cleared for, the routes that they drive.

We anticipate that it will get better as time goes on, however right now, Thameslink have been unwilling or unable to confirm how long this disruption might last so check before travelling and have a plan B.

Why are some of our services back to 4 carriages after being told they would always be 8 carriages?

Due to the implementation of the new timetables, SouthEastern have been drafted in by Thameslink to run some of our services on a temporary basis.

SouthEastern use older trains that can be split in two, and as they have a shortage of trains on their own network it means that some of our services may run short.

Why aren't there any more fast services from Catford? Our journey times have now increased for some services?

On the Cinderella Line, there is limited capacity for our Thameslink passenger services to run. The only way for us to have more services overall is for all our trains to stop at all stations, so they move in unison – exactly like they do on the tube.

Since Thameslink either can't or won't be clear about how long we might have to endure the current issues, thinking up alternative routes and checking before you travel are about the only things we can do.
For the full horror, click here.

Hilly Fields CPZ proposed

Lewisham's neverendum on CPZ's continues. This time, the Council has proposed a zone that covers the back streets of Ladywell and a patch of the Brockley Conservation Area that runs from Hilly Fields to Lewisham Way down Tressillian Road.

Mike writes:

"Lewisham Council are consulting yet again for a Ladywell CPZ extension, calling it the 'Ladywell Study Area'. It seems extensive too. We are one road outside one of the 2 areas and knew nothing of it until we saw a sign on a lamp post today."

Another BCer Jane adds:

"I'd be interested to hear what other people think. I think it’s crazy. Once we have that one it will spread across the whole area."

The arguments for and against CPZs are well rehearsed. They promise to make it easier for locals to park, but cost money and faff for local residents. They risk harming local small businesses, but also could reduce local traffic as fewer chancers from outside the area look for inner London parking spots.

Brockley Central proposes five tests for parking zone membership:

1. Does it solve a significant problem?

No one has the divine right to park outside their house. Even people with young kids or heavy bags (I have had both in my life). Most of the time, most people can park within a stone's throw of their front door. For those with disabilities, disabled bays are an option. Do we really need to inconvenience an entire area just because a few people have to walk a few yards sometimes? Are the Brockley roads covered by this scheme really that bad?

2. Could it have negative consequences for those outside the zone?

Time and again, CPZ's create problems on their borders for people just outside the zone. The Council's attitude seems to be that this is an appropriate punishment for those who have the impudence to vote against one in their area and the solution offered is more CPZ, and so the inexorable expansion continues. If we're going to have these things, why not go the whole hog and make the whole of SE4 a CPZ? That is the unspoken question in the consultation.

3. Would it be properly enforced?

The galling thing is that we already have plenty of parking restrictions that are ignored by rogue traders and the anti-social because the Council doesn't enforce existing rules. We have a French coach company regularly parking across public rights of way, with impunity. Without proper enforcement, this is just a tax on the law abiding.

4. Is the cost and hassle worth it?

Taking all this into account, does the cost-benefit analysis work for residents? It's not just the money, it's also one more bit of admin to deal with, compounded when friends come to visit.

5. Are there bigger priorities?

EV charge points and car club bays are in short supply. What is being done to encourage greener forms of car-use? Do we need more short-stay bays to support local businesses? Will residential bays diminish the opportunity to address these challenges.

Click here for the online consultation.

Wild swimming comes to Lewisham

Our new Lewisham Mayor has pulled a rabbit out of the hat in first weeks in post.

Beckenham Place Park will receive £440,000 of funding from the Mayor of London to create a wild swimming pool, as part of a major development project, which will be overseen by Brockley Councillor Sophie McGeevor. Lewisham Council explains:

The award is part of the mayor of London’s push to make London the world’s first National Park City. Beckenham Place Park was one of six winning projects to get a share of the £2m funding pot from the mayor’s Greener City Fund.

We will use the funding to:

• plant thousands of new trees
• support the restoration of the park’s Georgian lake, which will create a new wildlife habitat and be used for open water swimming

It's great to see such an ambitious and imaginative project in the borough. More please.

Budgie, regard!

MISSING: My neighbour’s little boy’s much-loved budgie, Nelson. Last seen on Manwood Road. If you see or even hear him, please let us know. Thank you #SE4 #croftonpark #ladywell @BrockleyCentral pic.twitter.com/NAvgYKbpOV

— Jenny Wood (@WoodyJen) May 20, 2018

Labour chooses Daby to fight Lewisham East election

Congratulations to @JanetDaby, Labour’s candidate for Lewisham East! pic.twitter.com/OdJ2mT3Lua

— London Labour (@LondonLabour) May 19, 2018

Lewisham East has dodged a Momentum bullet. Janet Daby - the sensible, moderate, serious candidate on the Labour shortlist for the upcoming by-election - has been selected as their prospective MP.

Daby likes talking about housing, health and education rather than lurking in chatrooms muttering about Zionists. Her analysis of political problems extends beyond personal anecdote and posture. She cares about Lewisham more than she does about re-writing Venezuelan history. Needless to say, she was a local choice rather than a national plant.

Given Labour is a shoo-in in this election, this is an important outcome and a signal that Labour's Lewisham grassroots are resilient.

Full list of candidates coming up.

New timetable and more trains for Crofton Park

New trains come into service soon

A completely new timetable will apply to Crofton Park trains from Sunday, May 20th.

And since there is nothing harder and more confusing than trying to write about train timetables for a service you don't use, the Cinderella Line campaign for better rail services through Crofton Park has summarised it instead. They say:

Thanks to everyone, from 21st May we will be enjoying our well-deserved 4 trains an hour on the Cinderella Line, doubling current capacity and giving us vital new services across London.

Here are the key changes:

Our core service

4 trains an hour all day every day Monday – Saturday. Sunday will initially have 2 trains an hour increasing to 4 once Network Rail have completed some engineering works that will allow Thameslink to run the full service on Sundays too.

You can read more about the engineering works here.

Two of our services will terminate at Blackfriars and two will go beyond to Kentish Town, linking us up to Farringdon for Crossrail and Kings Cross St Pancras.

Weekday mornings into London

On weekday mornings we will have 4 trains an hour and Crofton Park and Bellingham will also have some direct services to London Victoria:

The 4 Thameslink services will be spaced at 10 and 20 minute gaps. This is to pave the way for eventually increasing our service to 6 trains an hour and we're going to be pushing for this to happen.

Just imagine: a train every 10 minutes!

But there is a catch if you want to go to Victoria

From Crofton Park there are currently three direct services to London Victoria on weekday mornings departing at 7:36, 8:23 and 8:43. In the new timetable from May, these times have been amended to depart at 7:46, 8:15 and 9:21, so our third service will be more than 30 minutes after it currently is.

We have raised this with Southeastern Railway and the reason for this is that under the new timetable with all of our core services through Blackfriars, it is not currently possible to have a train that stops at Crofton Park at around 8:45 to Victoria as this could cause a knock-on delay to other services.

And the new services won't be fully operational straight away

From 11th June the initial phasing will be complete and our services will run as planned. During the phasing in period, some of our services will either start from Blackfriars or Terminate there, but after 11th June they will run the full length of the route.

For the full rundown of changes, click here.