Trains to run non-stop through London Bridge to prevent Olympic overcrowding

"London Bridge will be difficult to manage," Robin Gisby, Network Rail's managing director of network operations, told MPs on the transport select committee on Wednesday.

"There are certain hotspots on certain days that will be difficult and quite clearly we have flagged London Bridge as one of those, particularly on the day of the equestrian event at Greenwich.

"We have worked very closely with TfL and the train operators and we have put in plans that will prevent some people getting off at London Bridge.

"We will run some trains straight through non-stopping and take people into London and back out again.

"If you look at the flows of people we expect to get through London Bridge – and particularly the contraflows of people wanting to get on and off trains and change mode from the tube to the overland railway and vice versa – there are some pressure points on certain platforms.

"The easiest solution to that is to prevent people from getting off certain trains at certain times of the day and take them straight through [to Charing Cross or Cannon Street] and back again."

Transport for London commissioner Peter Hendy told the committee that TfL and its partners are working hard to raise awareness of the impact that the Olympics will have on the transport network.

"We hope that people won't turn up at London Bridge without having some appreciation [of the crowds] after all the work we've done, but if they do we'll have people there to help them," he said.