London Reconnections with one post in the last 3 weeks (and that was on
the cable car - yawn!), Mind The Gap going down the loo, and scarcely a
thread of note on here in weeks - there must be something interesting
happening.

There isn't that much happening which is really big headline news. Much
as I like London Reconnections it seems to me to have become
increasingly reliant on feed from press offices.

Aye - I'm not personally that fussed about "which company receives which
contract", and for someone pretty well plugged in (like yourself) I could
imagine that you'd read very little stuff on there that you wouldn't find
out about already - though it does form a nice single place where someone
else has done the hard work of sifting through guff, and "reporting" any
nuggets of interest. U Thant used to do an excellent job of that, where
he'd read it all, and find the single sentence in a 40 page doc that was
of genuine interest.

The new Thameslink bridge at Borough High Street is ready to be swung
into position very soon. I took photos of that recently. Lots of
Crossrail related holes are starting to be dug - I noticed a lot of
activity near Westbourne Park yesterday as I travelled out of
Paddington.

Again, this is probably the "problem" at the moment - there's obviously
shedloads going on for Crossrail/Thameslink, but it's so far into the
future that the's not so much to excite for now. The bridge at Borough
does sound interesting though - I went past Borough Market recently and
was noticed that the pillars to hold up the new stretch of bridge were
looking good. Re Crossrail holes - we're still quite a while from the TBMs
going into the ground though, aren't we?


To stir some debate, any updates on the following?

- When will London Overground hit the stage where we have no more
weekend engineering? Isn't that due to be around now....? What are they
actually currently doing on the weekend works on the line?

The Sunday NLL services are restored in three weeks time when the Summer
timetable commences. The all day, every day Stratford - Clapham Junction
service starts then as does the enhanced WLL frequency and the x15
Sunday GOBLIN service. It will be very interesting to see how patronage
builds given the vastly improved service levels. I am still surprised
at how busy the NLL and GOBLIN are given what they were like back in the
80s and 90s. I think if anyone had predicted the current levels of usage
back then they'd have been consigned to a mental institution.

When I lived in Hackney, I gave up getting the NLL during the rush hour,
as the experience was so unpleasant, it felt better to get the bus to
Bethnal Green and crush my way onto the Central Line than get the NLL to
H&I. However, I got onto a train recently at 6:15 at H&I to Hackney, and
it made all the difference to have the extra room (and probably a more
even timetable). Given such a wretched service (and this was only 6 or so
years ago) I can believe that the 80s and 90s didn't have good usage.

- Also, is there any decent analysis on the usage on London Overground,
esp since the Highbury and Islington stretch has opened? I've used it a
few times recently in the evening peak, and it still seems pretty
lightly used.

I am pretty certain that patronage growth is running ahead of schedule.
I think I read in TfL Board or Panel papers that TfL is happy with the
way ELL patronage is going but that excluded the Highbury section. To be
fair it has only been open a couple of months and journey patterns for
new links take longer than that to build up. I am sure we will get some
sort of commentary in due course - Board and Panel meetings are due in
May.

I have used it a few times at different times of the day and while it
has never been packed out it is pleasing to see people using the new
link. It has certainly got me to parts of South London I have not been
to for years. I suspect it is equally true that South Londoners have
been exploring bits of North London they've not been to for ages.

I still suspect that people *really* don't know about it, nor what it
could open to them. And I also think that it suffers from not QUITE going
to places (eg, not QUITE going to Canary Wharf, and not QUITE going to
the City) - but even if numbers don't grow as quickly as planned, they do
have one trick up their sleeve, being that they could reclassify
Shoreditch High Street as zone 2, and a marketing campaign on a number of
places to advertise the savings that could be made if you work in the
City (or even Canary Wharf) could build up a bit of extra patronage?

- Dare I ask about the DLR extension and when it might be open....?

I think the view seems to be Summer, about a year before the Olympics.
The DLR site has a short update saying this dated 13/4/11. I would
expect a date in July given that the major work to get three car working
on the Beckton branch is now complete and efforts can be turned to
getting the final stages of testing sorted out.

So was getting 3 car running on the Beckton branch a deal-breaker in
terms of opening up the new section then?