Southeastern night train to return to encourage people to leave cars at home

By Kiro Evans, local democracy reporter

Southeastern is set to reintroduce night trains from Charing Cross to South East London for the first time since March 2020.

The railway company say they want to boost the night time economy and encourage people to leave their cars at home.

The service will see South East London stations such as Woolwich Arsenal, Sidcup, Bexleyheath and Orpington once again receive trains from Charing Cross after midnight until 1am.

This will begin from December 12 and will be available Monday to Sunday, giving commuters greater flexibility in their schedules during the working week.

Steve White, Southeastern’s managing director, said: “Our number one priority is to win back our customers and reverse the shift from public transport to cars that occurred during the pandemic.

“Rail is the greener way to travel and we want to make our service an easy and compelling choice for people to make.

“We’ve listened to our passengers and stakeholders and we’re pleased to be able to respond with a timetable that adds in extra late-night services, with 92 per cent of our pre-Covid capacity available, allowing passengers to enjoy theatre, restaurants and bars, boosting the night-time economy.

“The timetable is another step in our plan to win back customers.

“We’ll continue to increase the number of services to match demand and we’ll be delivering more improvements for our customers.”

In September, Southeastern faced a barrage of bad headlines when their trains were taken over by the government after failing to pay more than £25 million of taxpayers’ money.