With a big sporting weekend coming up and engineering work scheduled on major routes in and out of London, rail passengers are being advised to plan ahead.
Trains and stations will be much busier than usual on Sunday, with spectators travelling to and from the London Marathon and the FA Cup semi-final, so passengers are warned to allow plenty of time for their journeys.
Buses will replace trains along the West Sussex coast between Littlehampton and Brighton as we carry out long-planned essential work.
Essential track and signalling maintenance and work to structures will be taking place at more than 30 sites.
No Thameslink trains will run between London Bridge and St Pancras International or Finsbury Park. Thameslink services from Brighton, Horsham and Rainham will run to amended timetables and terminate at London Bridge.
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In other news, work to reduce ticket gate congestion at London Victoria is progressing.
To keep people moving freely to/from platforms the number of ticket gates at the station is increasing from 86 to 125, adding 8 wide (accessible) gates for passengers with wheelchairs, buggies and bulky luggage. The plans include opening up the concourse serving platforms 15-19 with an access route created from platform 14 and the existing escalators to Victoria Place shopping centre.
To create space for the extra ticket gates the Gatwick Express ticket windows will be moved and gateline retail units moved elsewhere in the station. Demolition of the retail units is now almost complete. The project will continue into 2024.
Crowborough station’s new lifts and footbridge have now been officially opened.
Two new lifts and a brand-new footbridge have been installed to allow passengers to easily get from one platform to another.
New tactile paving has also been installed along the edge of both platforms to improve accessibility for people with a visual impairment and additional CCTV cameras have been installed which aim to keep passengers safe when using the station.
Finally, the 'passenger experience' at Gatwick has reportedly been 'transformed'.
If you haven't used the station lately, a visit will reveal that the station entrance is now hardly recognisable compared to how it looked before the project started.
An additional 500 m² of space has been created for passengers on the station concourse and the overall passenger experience has been transformed by the following:
- New flooring (a total of 2,200 m² which is around 6,300 floor tiles).
- New customer information screens which provide a much better quality of display and show the next fastest train, platform number, stopping pattern and train operator.
- New gatelines with wide access gates making them easier to use for those with luggage or those needing mobility support. They also all have a barcode reader meaning all ticket types are accepted (including Google and Apple Pay), which gives passengers complete freedom to choose how they want to pay for their journey.
- A much bigger self-service ticket vending machine area with 17 machines.
- New bright, energy efficient LED lighting.
- New and improved wayfinding which is helping passengers see where they need to go much more easily.
- A new special assistance point which has been designed to make the journeys of passengers in wheelchairs, with visual impairments, the elderly, families with buggies and travellers with a lot of luggage as easy as possible.
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