London Banter - View Single Post - Planned engineering work between Acton Town and Hammersmith this weekend

[email protected] · January 6th 13, 08:22 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (Mizter T) wrote:

On 06/01/2013 00:03, wrote:
I find the choice of this weekend to block the route from Heathrow to
central London particularly inconsiderate to passengers. I'm sure this
is one of the busier weekends at Heathrow with people on Christmas and
New Year breaks returning. There were a lot of people with luggage
everywhere.

I flew off on a holiday on 27th December with no mention of the works
and got back this evening recommended to change at Acton Town and Ealing
Broadway to reach King's Cross via the Central Line and Oxford Circus.
TfL's Journey Planner suggested a journey time of 1 hour 20 minutes, not
too bad.

With no indication at Heathrow T123 we discovered the train we found and
took terminated at Northfields. That is just taking the **** when the
service was terminating at Acton Town anyway. It's not as if the
frequency was high. The next train at Northfields was a 10 minute wait.
Then the PA at Acton Town was directing people to replacement buses when
the signboards were telling them to go over the bridge to get a District
service from platform 2 to Ealing Broadway (as had the Journey Planner).
The west end of platform 1 had stop blocks so was out of use. All that
luggage would have been interesting on replacement buses!

Does the signalling at Acton Town really not allow a District Ealing
Broadway shuttle to and from platform 4? That would have allowed a
cross-platform connection from Heathrow to Ealing Broadway, where there
is a level connection to the Central Line. There was a huge queue for
the Acton Town lift from people with luggage and little staff presence
to help people with the disruption (none at all at Northfields).

In the end our journey to Kings Cross St Pancras took and hour and forty
minutes with four changes. Not good, especially with three large cases
plus smaller bags, a wife with a broken arm and six-year-old
granddaughter.

Why oh why don't they let airport passengers use Heathrow Express or
Connect as an alternative when there are blockages like this and why
can't they avoid the busiest holiday weekends?

Who are "they" in the above sentence?

If "they" are TfL, then do you think TfL should accept being held
over a barrel by LHR Airports Ltd (nee BAA), owner of HEx, for the
amount LHR/HEx wishes to charge to allow acceptance of LU tickets on
HEx? (I understand the demand for recompense is rather significant.)

If that is the attitude of the HEX owners then the sooner that farce is
brought to an end and the branch integrated into the national rail network
the better.

You say you flew off "on a holiday on 27th December with no mention
of the works" - just wondering if you looked out for any posters on
your outbound journey? There would certainly have been mention of the
works on the TfL website here (under "Future dates"):
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/realtime/tube/default.html

I did look at King's Cross St Pancras and Heathrow but only at notices in
the routes taken by travellers like me. I didn't think I had to go and hunt
something like that out.

Perhaps it was a bad choice of weekends, but in a sense no weekend is
a good choice given how busy Heathrow is.

I think the point is that holiday periods involve more passengers with large
amounts of luggage, especially in the winter and that, if the choice was
unavoidable they needed to staff it up properly.

Also, no-one here seems to have come up with a justification for short
workings from Heathrow to Northfields. If it was platform capacity at Acton
Town (which I doubt given the low frequency of the shuttle) TfL seem not to
have helped themselves by blockading platform 1 there as well as the other
works. And no platform staff at all at Northfields was just not good enough.

--
Colin Rosenstiel