Shoreditch Moves Into Zone 1

A couple of bits of transport news filtered out of south-east London in the last week or so: the proposed Victoria-Bellingham service has been scrapped in the wake of the East London Line Extension Phase 2. The current London Bridge-Victoria, via south London suburbs, service won't be possible when London Bridge starts its Thameslink work, so the Bellingham service was supposed to reduce overcrowding between Denmark Hill and East Dulwich. But it's been sacrificed to the great gods of ELL funding - London Reconnections has the full story.

Another insidious little move is that the new Shoreditch High Street station will be in Zone 1 - the only station on the new ELL in the expensive central zone. The DfT has confirmed (PDF, sorry) that the zoning is purely for financial reasons: "it was suggested that the additional [sic] of the new Shoreditch High Street to Zone 1 would reduce the revenue loss to national rail operators associated with East London Line Phase 1 implementation and also East London Line Phase 2".

We know the new Shoreditch station is a couple of hundred yards away from the old one, but this TfL leaflet from 2007 (another PDF) clearly shows it in zone 2. There isn't even going to be an interchange to other lines, so all it's doing is penalising anyone who wants to travel between north-east and south-east London. We appreciate the money for Phase 2 had to come from somewhere, but we don't appreciate such a cynical move - and not mentioning it when the original 'Phase 2 is go' announcement came out.

So there you have it: when it comes to transport, TfL and the government giveth and they taketh away.