On 28/11/10 13:29, Mizter T wrote:

On Nov 28, 12:28 pm, Tim wrote:

On 26/11/10 00:54, Mizter T wrote:

It's that time again folks:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/17529.aspx

I'm going to post this as a quasi public service announcement if for
no other reason than having ballsed up the dates of the strike the
last time round I wish to demonstrate that I'm not completely
calendrical-phobic (to coin a particularly dodgy phrase!).

I'm sure there's a business opportunity here for canoeists on the
river or some such - of course if it gets really cold then skate hire
might be the thing.

Sorry if I've missed this:

does the strike affect the London Overground, specifically Clapham Jnc
to Kensington Olympia?

No, LO will be running, though will be busier than normal as people
divert away from the Tube network. There may well be delays due to of
slow boarding because of mass of numbers on the LO network. Note that
stations managed by LU where LO calls might be affected.

OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk...

Either that or a No 9 from CHX to Hammersmith but I saw the scrum there
last strike day - had a contingent of police on duty!

--
Tim Watts

In article ,
Tim Watts wrote:
OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk...

I'm curious as to what the demand for Boris Bikes has been like on
strike days?

-roy

On 28/11/10 14:52, Roy Badami wrote:
In ,
Tim wrote:
OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk...

I'm curious as to what the demand for Boris Bikes has been like on
strike days?

-roy

Higher last time, but do-able if you started as early as I did (7:10 at
CHX).

A *lot* of people were walking in the area of the Mall +/- couple of miles.

--
Tim Watts

On 28/11/10 14:52, Roy Badami wrote:
In ,
Tim wrote:
OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk...

I'm curious as to what the demand for Boris Bikes has been like on
strike days?

-roy

On another aside - Crow really isn;t going to be popular with the public
this time around given the extreme cold...

I personally lodged with a mate who is a train driver (mainline not LU)
and do have some insight and sympathies with the working railwayman.

But TBH I'm getting thoroughly fed up with all this...

--
Tim Watts

On Nov 28, 4:55*pm, Tim Watts wrote:
On 28/11/10 14:52, Roy Badami wrote:

In ,
Tim *wrote:
OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk....

I'm curious as to what the demand for Boris Bikes has been like on
strike days?

* * *-roy

On another aside - Crow really isn;t going to be popular with the public
this time around given the extreme cold...

I personally lodged with a mate who is a train driver (mainline not LU)
and do have some insight and sympathies with the working railwayman.

But TBH I'm getting thoroughly fed up with all this...

It's not mainly drivers that are RMT members.

Anyway, walking keeps you a lot warmer than standing on stations.

On 2010\11\28 14:52, Roy Badami wrote:
In ,
Tim wrote:
OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk...

I'm curious as to what the demand for Boris Bikes has been like on
strike days?

The streets have been staggeringly full of them IME.

On Nov 28, 2:52*pm, (Roy Badami) wrote:

In article ,
Tim Watts wrote:

OK - thanks for that. I can Boris Bike but SWMBO works in Hammersmith so
a slightly tortuous route to Ken Olympia and she can do a 25 min walk...

I'm curious as to what the demand for Boris Bikes has been like on
strike days?

Oliver O'Brien is a UCL academic who also has a blog called
Suprageography - basically he's got this great excuse to play with
maps all day called research - I wrote about this all a bit beforehand
he
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.tr...6c8666063092fb

To the point - he's got a visualisation of the cycle hire scheme he
http://oobrien.com/vis/bikes/

It now includes an animation of the last 48 hours (see the links at
the top [1]) - though I did just play it and it was rather jumpy, with
some strange leaps between the different sample time points (with a
few small steps thrown in too) - but I just quickly ran it a second
time and also clicked on the 'faster' button which seemed to improve
things, but that's as much playing around as I've done.

Re the demand for 'Boris bikes' - observed this evening whilst milling
around for a few minutes near Waterloo, specifically at the docking
station on Concert Hall Approach, were some of the police on bikes -
though they weren't actually on their bikes at that time, and were in
fact quite possibly PCSOs - but anyhow they were guarding a great
stack of cycle hire bikes leant up against a wall, and were in fact
releasing (with a magic key) further bikes that were being deposited
in the docks and adding them to this stack. Then a LCHS electric
vehicle and empty trailer turned up, and the driver and PCSOs
proceeded to load it up completely from the stack, before it whirred
back off to wherever across the river - there were still bikes in the
stack, and the PCSOs continued to release bikes from the docks and add
them to the stack.

From a snatched moment of overheard conversation not all the faux
coppers seemed completely familiar with the workings of the scheme,
and I haven't seen the old bill get involved like this before so I can
really only assume this duty was a 'strike special' (maybe they've
done it during previous strikes, I dunno). There was what appeared to
be a single police type character next to the docking station round
the corner at the Jubilee Gardens docking station on Belvedere Road,
not quite sure if there was a bike or two stacked up there as well or
if it was just his - it was pretty cold out and I felt I'd done my
observational duty by this point so wasn't paying intense attention.


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[1] Which also include a link to this which I think is neat:
http://casa.ucl.ac.uk/bom/