please empty your brain below
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Thanks DG. A good analysis. The rail service between Sutton and Victoria via Mitcham Junction was reduced in September 2022 from 4 trains an hour (previously 2 calling all stations and 2 calling at Sutton, Carshalton and Clapham Junction only) to 2 "all stations" only per hour. This is despite the considerable high density housing development around Sutton station which is continuing. There is substantial over-crowding at times, made even worse by regular 5-car trains. The all station services to Victoria via West Croydon are desperately slow. The Thameslink service similarly run at a snails pace and has an astonishingly cancellation rate.
dg writes: post updated, thanks.
SUO user | 29.10.25 - 7:49 a.m. | #
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Is it true that Kingston lacks a tube station because they didn’t have the money to drill through Kingston Hill true?
dg writes: no
Roehamtroll | 29.10.25 - 7:54 a.m. | #
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A fascinating piece of research. Thank you!
Unless I'm misunderstanding the 'rules', you can get from Waterloo to Richmond station in just 16 minutes every half hour on the Reading train which trumps the shorter distance Waterloo to Barnes.
dg writes: post updated, thanks.
JP | 29.10.25 - 8:10 a.m. | #
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What a depressing start to the day.
There is a very short window of 15 minute services in the rush hour(s).
Whenever possible I schedule trips into town to return hime then to avoid the annoyance of either just missing a train or the even longer wait due to cancelation or breakdown (as happened to me just a fortnight ago).
Maybe it is just my perception but the frequency of short sets also seems to have increased. Bring back four trains an hour (six to Cheam, etc.). When do we want it - NOW!
Ken | 29.10.25 - 8:20 a.m. | #
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By my reckoning, Barking and Dagenham has eight stations (maybe Barking Riverside or Chadwell Heath were overlooked?) and Havering has nine (maybe Rainham was overlooked?).
dg writes: post updated, thanks.
(Chadwell Heath is marginally in Redbridge)
Carllo | 29.10.25 - 8:36 a.m. | #
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The 15 minute service window to Hackbridge only starts after 1700 and finishes with the 1849. There's been a few slow days where my boss tells me to leave 20 minutes early and I tell him there's no point. (This is my regular commute, fwiw)
The nonsense where the TL/Southern trains are each half hourly but only 4 minutes apart is really, really annoying. And since there's been a massive amount of housing built at Hackbridge, if they do bring the fasts back they'd be better off serving Hackbridge and skipping Carshalton. Though when I did on occasion catch one of the fasts in the past, it was a great excuse to drop into The Hope.
Chz | 29.10.25 - 8:48 a.m. | #
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Thank you. Very interesting. From my experience, the Thameslink Sutton loop, as well as being slow,seems often to suffer cancellations. Possibly as a result of delays elsewhere and the need for both directions to use the same platform at Wimbledon.
Chris Atkins | 29.10.25 - 9:02 a.m. | #
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A little tweak to your time for Bromley that'll bump it up the list a bit: London Bridge to Orpington at xx24 and xx54 takes 15 minutes.
dg writes: post updated, thanks.
Will | 29.10.25 - 9:05 a.m. | #
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Not to take anything away from your excellent analysis or the council leader’s main point, but I should point out that Sutton does actually have one TfL station: Beddington Lane on the Tramlink line, tucked up in the far northeastern corner. It’s admittedly quite peripheral, but it does count!
Mike | 29.10.25 - 9:06 a.m. | #
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Ignore the above comment. You do actually mention that in the post. As you were.
Mike again | 29.10.25 - 9:08 a.m. | #
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The 28 trains per hour to Barnet seems a bit low to me, given all Northern line trains reach at least Golders Green and Finchley Central, and then you have Thameslink & Great Northern Services.
dg writes: post updated, thanks
(I'd only counted one Northern line branch).
BP | 29.10.25 - 9:10 a.m. | #
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A recent Wimbledon - Carshalton journey had me thinking about how isolated it all is. This empty Thameslink train dawdling through suburbia, barely anyone getting on or off and to think they were going to extend the District by the same route.
ap | 29.10.25 - 9:13 a.m. | #
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Perhaps the mayor is missing the fact that Southern and Thameslink are part of National Rail and thus the DfT would have more influence over them than TfL or the mayor of London. Overall it's a good point though.
Anonymous | 29.10.25 - 9:13 a.m. | #
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KT4 tends to not get much love being split across 3 councils, but the difference mentally it makes going from 6 trains at peak to only 2 is quite something (and frustrating, particularly when one of the 2 gets cancelled).
Not *strictly* Sutton related, but as Sutton adjacent as you can get :)
A3Warrior | 29.10.25 - 9:18 a.m. | #
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Believe CrossRail and South Eastern Abbey Wood Station is on the border of the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley but just inside the the border with London Borough of Greenwich.
dg writes: not entirely
Rogeressex | 29.10.25 - 9:42 a.m. | #
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The irregular spacing thing makes trains per hour into a misleading statistic. Better perhaps would be average wait time, if you turn up at a random moment. Though that is much harder to measure.
Malcolm of Kent | 29.10.25 - 9:47 a.m. | #
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The leader of LB Sutton certainly has a point, but this quote is not helping his case much, is it, given his four quoted examples are two things that are the same thing, one thing that hasn't happened, and one thing that has indeed come to Sutton...
"Sutton has been a London borough since 1965 and for too long we have missed out on investment in our transport infrastructure. Over the past 30 years there has been major capital investment in London's transport infrastructure, with the Elizabeth Line, Crossrail, the Bakerloo extension and even Tramlink, none of which has come to Sutton."
Jo Kibble | Homepage | 29.10.25 - 9:58 a.m. | #
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I think St Helier is in Merton, did you mean Sutton Common?
dg writes: post updated, thanks.
TW | 29.10.25 - 10:03 a.m. | #
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The lack of a proper bus station in Sutton town centre has restricted the number of services. If only one would be built!
RSM | 29.10.25 - 10:18 a.m. | #
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As you pointed out, local interests sabotaged the best option, doubling the frequency on the loop and by default between Sutton and Wimbledon would have made the journey to/from Waterloo a palatable alternative - it may not be quicker, but it would have felt quicker.
Still Anon | 29.10.25 - 10:26 a.m. | #
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The Sutton fuss about the Thameslink loop not only spoilt their service, but also reduced the number of longer main line Thameslink trains which could use the core city link.
Rather dubious about how your statistics define 'central London'.
dg writes: feel free to present alternative statistics.
kev | 29.10.25 - 11:11 a.m. | #
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London expanded now is of course still London, but Hackney, while quite well served by Overground, remains I think, with only one tube station, Manor House on its borders. Are there any other inner London boroughs the same with one or less, tube station?
Patrick | 29.10.25 - 11:37 a.m. | #
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Arguably parts of old street station are in hackney.. very close if not
nothing else comes close to the low number of tube stations though
Alistair twin | 29.10.25 - 11:52 a.m. | #
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The average wait time is the same, whatever the spacing of the train times. What you could compare is the standard deviation of the wait times.
Bryn Davies | 29.10.25 - 12:36 p.m. | #
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As noted average wait time gives the same answer as frequency. The useful measure is the maximum wait time.
As for fast trains Sutton always had difficulties with them. I commuted in the 80s there was one fast in the rush hour and everyone piled on to it and there was a reasonable quick train just a couple of minutes later so getting into Victoria only 5 minutes later. A BR staff man asked why dod everyone pile onto the uncomfortable train as he could see no reason. I pointed it out as being obvious, trains get cancelled often (yes 90% running which was good for BR is one train every two weeks - and that is an average usually the same train gets cancelled so weekly.)
So that makes the time you want to see the time between two trains assuming the middle one is cancelled.
Mark | 29.10.25 - 1:16 p.m. | #
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Send Sutton back to Surrey.
Bruce Perkins | 29.10.25 - 1:50 p.m. | #
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Lewisham (0) and Greenwich (1) are two inner boroughs that can compete with Hackney on Underground stations.
Sutton's public transport connections to central London are great compared with its connections to nearby towns in Surrey. In the outer boroughs, not everyone travels to/from central London.
Open House visitor | 29.10.25 - 2:57 p.m. | #
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Years ago you awarded Sutton the cachet of most boring London Borough. Now that you've found something interesting about it I'd like to ask for a recount.
Peter (of Cambridge) | 29.10.25 - 3:12 p.m. | #
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The political (meaning grass roots) pressure to keep the Sutton loop is a cause of unnecessary junction conflicts and unreliability.
Furthermore, when they start planning the Great Britain railway timetable, they now have to begin at Blackfriars junction.
The people demanding the loop service (and Sutton council and their former MP) have brought this upon themselves as far as I am concerned. It's a shame others have to suffer as well.
Pedantic of Purley | 29.10.25 - 5:16 p.m. | #
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I have memories of an even better offpeak service in the 2000s that ran semi-fast Cheam->Sutton->Clapham Junction->Victoria. Along with semi-fasts on the Epsom to Waterloo line that were than serving Worcester Park, which serves the western end of Sutton though it's literally on the Kingston side of the borough boundary, the service for that end of the borough wasn't as bad unless you lived by Belmont.
Can anyone remember the actual campaign about the Thameslink Loop? Did the petitions and campaigns talk about frequency or was it all based around the idea the people of Sutton needed a direct service to City Thameslink?
dg writes: yes
Tim Roll-Pickering | 29.10.25 - 6:03 p.m. | #
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A more meaningful average wait time can be created by "weighting" the intervals.
Where there is an alternating 4-then-26 minute interval every half hour, and you randomly turn up at the station, the chance that you turn up during the 4-minute gap is only 4/30, while the chance of turning up in the 26-minute gap is 26/30.
In each case, halve the interval (e.g. if you turn up randomly during the 26-minute interval, you could be waiting anything between 0 and 26 minutes, so take 13 minutes as an average).
On an alternating 4-then-26 interval, the average waiting time is:
( 4 / 30 ) x 2 minutes, plus
( 26 / 30 ) x 13 minutes
= ( 8 / 30 ) + ( 338 / 30 ) minutes
= ( 346 / 30 ) minutes
= 11.53 minutes (or 11min 32sec)
If the trains were evenly-spaced, every 15 minutes, average waiting time would drop to 7.5 minutes.
Malc M | 29.10.25 - 6:55 p.m. | #
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I remember that campaign and the MP's comment. See DG link in his comment. For 'marginal seconds in efficiency gain' read 'totally screw up the timetable'.
MalcM... Doable in principle but it is the sheer number of services one has to calculate this for which makes it a difficult, or at least onerous, task.
Pedantic of Purley | 29.10.25 - 8:03 p.m. | #
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Pedantic of Purley is too modest to mention that he wrote about the Thameslink decision at the time.
My memory was that the campaign was led by Wimbledon MP Stephen Hammond but DG's link suggests there was plenty of support for it in Sutton as well.
cjw714 | 29.10.25 - 8:37 p.m. | #
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Peter - I would suggest that the poor transport links are linked to what makes Sutton so dull. There are whole swathes of the borough, particularly North Cheam/ West Sutton that are just housing and nothing else - few streets of local shops that you can walk to, few pubs to create a sense of community, few places where locals can work without having to face a lengthy commute and little decent public transport.
Tim Roll-Pickering - Worcester Park station may be just outside the borough but traffic congestion makes it frustratingly difficult to get to from most of Sutton
cjw714 | 29.10.25 - 8:43 p.m. | #
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Using the formula for expected waiting time with a 4/26 gap, we integrate (4-t) from 0 to 4 plus (30-t) from 4 to 30, and multiply it all by 1/30, which indeed gives 11.5 minutes.
Alan | 30.10.25 - 7:53 a.m. | #
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Very good. I live next door to Sutton, in Epsom & Ewell (a Surrey Borough). Many years ago, when a previous surrey council re-organisation was being proposed, a mention was made of merging Epsom into Sutton. I could see how travel on the tfl network with 60+ Oyster card would be excellent. I hoped for this but it never happened. Now people are crying into their beer over the new structures. Sod them.
Marmaduke Jinks | 30.10.25 - 12:37 p.m. | #
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Living between Carshalton Beeches and Wallington, the train timetable is so bad that it's often quicker to get into and out of town via the tortuous route of a bus to Morden and the Northern line, which is ridiculous. I think we lost a couple of trains an hour to make space in the timetable for the Overground. For a while the 154 ran all night on Fridays and Saturdays to meet the Night Tube and the late trains to East Croydon, but that disappeared in the pandemic and doesn't look like it's coming back.
TfL would say they've doubled the frequency of the SL7, but at the same time they're trying to reroute it so we'll have to change in Sutton to get to Kingston or the airport.
The renationalisation of GTR and replacement of the MPs who argued for through trains could give an opportunity for the Thameslink issue to be revisited.
Nick L | 30.10.25 - 10:26 p.m. | #
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I love your posts but Earls Court isn't in Hounslow, think it is in H&F?
dg writes: it's in K&C
John | 31.10.25 - 7:46 a.m. | #
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Brent could be quicker if you look at Paddington to Kilburn Park (7 minutes). Also to be incredibly technical, parts of Finsbury Park Station are in Haringey!
dg writes: post updated, thanks.
gfa | 31.10.25 - 4:07 p.m. | #
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Never understood how the crappy 2 trains an hour service survived when we could have had 4. The Tooting to Blackfriars route is fantastically convenient and also barely useable. I suppose it's crapness is doing it's bit to keep the immediate area around the station sort of nearly affordable ish.
MK | 03.11.25 - 10:43 a.m. | #
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