On 22 Jan, 11:12, Mizter T wrote:
On 22 Jan, 00:37, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008, Jamie Thompson wrote:
I was looking at the South London options for developing the network
the other day, and it seems to me that the Hayes branch is pretty much
the only option for the DLR, so it should probably go to that, with
the Bakerloo going elsewhere,

A better option for the DLR is not to go any further at all. The DLR is an
excellent short-distance transport system, but it's too slow and
low-capacity to be a sensible thing to send great distances. It's a bus on
steroids (or a tram on a pie and mash diet), not a substitute for a real
railway.

I have to broadly agree with you on that one - taking the DLR all the
way to Hayes seems improbable. Also, bear in mind that the DLR model
involves there being many more stations, which would increase journey
time quite significantly - that's unlikely to please many Hayes line
users. Plus, even if it were more frequent, could even a three car DLR
train provide equivalent capacity to the existing service.

The only argument for a Hayes conversion to DLR that makes any sense
is that a great many of the passengers are commuting to the Docklands,
and are currently changing at Lewisham. Even then I still think that
converting the Hayes branch to DLR is a pretty unworkable idea. Maybe
I'm just not imaginative enough.

Among a great many other things, I've no idea about the mechanical
characteristics of a DLR unit, so can't comment about things such as
acceleration nor top speeds (say the Hayes branch would maintain it's
current stations and not adopt the DLR-style of almost tram stop
frequencies ), but the same argument could be said that the DLR is
insufficient for serving Canary Wharf itself, given the number of
commuters, hence the need to increase the number of units per train.
Don't get me wrong, I think the DLR is a great system that did/does
it's job near enough perfectly, which is to cheaply provide mass
transport on the cheap to spur regeneration. Eventually though, you
hit a point when that phase is complete, and you have to move more
people than you can deal with, and then it's the time to move to
something with more capacity, e.g. medium or even heavy rail. Though,
if they can get the DLR capacity up to tube levels, that's probably
just as good. It's the capacity that matters, not the means. The only
reason I suggest the Lee Valley to Hayes is that it would provide a
downstream heavy rail crossing between the GE lines and SE lines that
could be quite useful, though I suppose we'll (hopefully!) get the
Abbey wood CrossRail tunnel, so perhaps it'd be a fringe benefit at
best.

My main aim with linking things up is to remove services upstream, to
provide better interchange viability as the outer services could then
get to the central area faster (and there would be more terminal
capacity for them). The same can be achieved with shuttle services
though, but opening up new direct journey opportunities is always a
good thing. IIRC, I read something somewhere about the DLR plans for
it to head south to Catford ( or maybe Beckenham Junction? ), but they
built Lewisham station in such a fashion (below the road, but not
deep enough for tunnel nor high enough for viaduct) that it become
much more difficult. So not *totally* random ideas.