I took the ELL from Highbury this morning for the first time in about 6 months.
Even after the obligatory 7 minute wait for the train to leave it was still
only a 3rd full in the middle of the morning rush hour. Compared to last time
I used it this is virtually empty. I can only assume the poor service
frequency and slow journey times (25 mins to do the 4 miles to canada water
this morning) have put people off as they did me. What a waste of an asset.

--
Spud

On 2015-11-18 09:36:14 +0000, d said:

Even after the obligatory 7 minute wait for the train to leave

They always start counting down from 7 mins when they see you coming.

E.

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 12:48:06 +0000
eastender wrote:
On 2015-11-18 09:36:14 +0000, d said:

Even after the obligatory 7 minute wait for the train to leave

They always start counting down from 7 mins when they see you coming.

I was being kind. 7 minutes is the official gap. When I got it regularly it
was often somewhat longer.

--
Spud

On 2015-11-18 13:24:44 +0000, d said:

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 12:48:06 +0000
eastender wrote:
On 2015-11-18 09:36:14 +0000, d said:

Even after the obligatory 7 minute wait for the train to leave

They always start counting down from 7 mins when they see you coming.

I was being kind. 7 minutes is the official gap. When I got it regularly it
was often somewhat longer.

The ELL interval from Highbury is 7/8 minutes and it runs to a timetable.

As for passenger numbers, there's no pleasing you as you're moaning
about getting on an uncrowded train. They do get very crowded though -
passenger numbers for the whole Overground have nearly tripled since
2010.

E.

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 09:36:14 +0000 (UTC), d wrote:

I took the ELL from Highbury this morning for the first time in about 6 months.
Even after the obligatory 7 minute wait for the train to leave it was still
only a 3rd full in the middle of the morning rush hour. Compared to last time
I used it this is virtually empty. I can only assume the poor service
frequency and slow journey times (25 mins to do the 4 miles to canada water
this morning) have put people off as they did me. What a waste of an asset.

This is sad to hear. The Overground has such great potential. But,
the speed on its routes are excruciatingly slow. Surely all that
investment should allow for a more sprightly system.

Last Weekend we took a train from London Bridge to the South Coast. I
was surprised to see the stations between New Cross Gate and Norwood
Junction appear to be under Overground management. One had assumed,
wrongly, that the Overground has been serving New Southern Railway
managed stations.

On 2015-11-18 18:48:13 +0000, e27002 aurora said:

On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 09:36:14 +0000 (UTC), d wrote:

I took the ELL from Highbury this morning for the first time in about 6 months.
Even after the obligatory 7 minute wait for the train to leave it was still
only a 3rd full in the middle of the morning rush hour. Compared to last time
I used it this is virtually empty. I can only assume the poor service
frequency and slow journey times (25 mins to do the 4 miles to canada water
this morning) have put people off as they did me. What a waste of an asset.

This is sad to hear. The Overground has such great potential. But,
the speed on its routes are excruciatingly slow. Surely all that
investment should allow for a more sprightly system.

They can seem slow especially between stations close together but they
are main line not underground trains.

Incidentally, someone was describing a journey to me this morning and
she said "I get the... vertical bit of the Overground and change to
the... horizontal bit of the Overground". She sounded like she felt a
bit foolish describing it in such terms, but TfL have left people with
little choice. On querying it turned out that she has lived in Surrey
Quays for decades and is well aware that the vertical line used to be
called the East London Line, but as a young woman working in fashion she
would be particularly keen to avoid looking out of date, and she has no
up-to-date term to describe the line. The experience gelled with recent
thoughts of mine.

My own recent foray around East London presented me with confusing signs
to multiple DLR platforms at Stratford, and confusing new signs in
Hackney Central / Downs pointing from one half of the station to the
other. As I arrived at Hackney from Chingford, robobint said "Change
here for trains to Enfield Town" but didn't mention Cheshunt. And the
part of the tube map between Seven Sisters and Mile End looks like an
explosion in a spaghetti factory, utterly defeating the eyes' ability to
plan routes without having to think too hard.

I believe that the Overground brand, and to a lesser extent the DLR
brand, are obfuscating rather than enlightening.

I don't even know what promise the Overground brand is supposed to make.

"Underground" means that wherever I may have ended up, I go in here and
I can get frequent trains through Central London where I can make one
change to another frequent line that will take me home. There are a few
exceptions, like Roding Valley, but the Underground largely lives up to
that promise.

"Overground" - what is that promising? It used to mean orbital travel,
for the most part, but that doesn't hold any more. If someone stumbles
out of a party at 7am on a Sunday morning and finds himself at Turkey
Street station, what does that Overground roundel represent? 2tph to the
edge of Zone 1, and probably two changes before he gets home? That's
hardly anything for a station to brag about - there are very few
stations in Greater London that offer less (Emerson Park is ironically one).

Overground is actually a negative concept. Just as the Volkswagen brand
means "This is made by the same people who make Audi's, but it would
harm the Audi image if we wrote Audi on a car like this", Overground
means "This is run by the same people who run the Underground, but it
would harm the Underground brand if we wrote Underground on stations
that have infrequent service which only touches Zone 1 or avoids it
completely. So the Overground brand exists purely to avoid tarnishing
the reputation of the Underground.

And yet, the Overground management act as if they have an inferiority
complex, writing Overground everywhere and doing their best to
obliterate the historic line identities as if writing Overground on
something is the finest praise imaginable.

We need different colours and line names. We need the trains to
Chingford to have a different colour on the map from the trains that
call at London Fields and Cambridge Heath.

And the DLR needs to get line names too, so that the signs at Stratford
and on the District Line line guides can start making sense.
http://www.metrolondres.es/wp-conten...-mapa-tube.jpg
has four different DLR interchanges, and no clue as to which you're
supposed to use to get to which part of the DLR.

Basil Jet wrote:

Incidentally, someone was describing a journey to me this morning and
she said "I get the... vertical bit of the Overground and change to
the... horizontal bit of the Overground". She sounded like she felt a
bit foolish describing it in such terms, but TfL have left people with
little choice. On querying it turned out that she has lived in Surrey
Quays for decades and is well aware that the vertical line used to be
called the East London Line, but as a young woman working in fashion she
would be particularly keen to avoid looking out of date, and she has no
up-to-date term to describe the line. The experience gelled with recent
thoughts of mine.

My own recent foray around East London presented me with confusing signs
to multiple DLR platforms at Stratford, and confusing new signs in
Hackney Central / Downs pointing from one half of the station to the
other. As I arrived at Hackney from Chingford, robobint said "Change
here for trains to Enfield Town" but didn't mention Cheshunt. And the
part of the tube map between Seven Sisters and Mile End looks like an
explosion in a spaghetti factory, utterly defeating the eyes' ability to
plan routes without having to think too hard.

I believe that the Overground brand, and to a lesser extent the DLR
brand, are obfuscating rather than enlightening.

I don't even know what promise the Overground brand is supposed to make.

"Underground" means that wherever I may have ended up, I go in here and
I can get frequent trains through Central London where I can make one
change to another frequent line that will take me home. There are a few
exceptions, like Roding Valley, but the Underground largely lives up to
that promise.

"Overground" - what is that promising? It used to mean orbital travel,
for the most part, but that doesn't hold any more. If someone stumbles
out of a party at 7am on a Sunday morning and finds himself at Turkey
Street station, what does that Overground roundel represent? 2tph to the
edge of Zone 1, and probably two changes before he gets home? That's
hardly anything for a station to brag about - there are very few
stations in Greater London that offer less (Emerson Park is ironically one).

Overground is actually a negative concept. Just as the Volkswagen brand
means "This is made by the same people who make Audi's, but it would
harm the Audi image if we wrote Audi on a car like this", Overground
means "This is run by the same people who run the Underground, but it
would harm the Underground brand if we wrote Underground on stations
that have infrequent service which only touches Zone 1 or avoids it
completely. So the Overground brand exists purely to avoid tarnishing
the reputation of the Underground.

And yet, the Overground management act as if they have an inferiority
complex, writing Overground everywhere and doing their best to
obliterate the historic line identities as if writing Overground on
something is the finest praise imaginable.

We need different colours and line names. We need the trains to
Chingford to have a different colour on the map from the trains that
call at London Fields and Cambridge Heath.

And the DLR needs to get line names too, so that the signs at Stratford
and on the District Line line guides can start making sense.
http://www.metrolondres.es/wp-conten...-mapa-tube.jpg
has four different DLR interchanges, and no clue as to which you're
supposed to use to get to which part of the DLR.


I agree. We need line numbers on the Underground, Overground and DLR, just
as bus routes have numbers. Maybe they could have an alpha prefix, but it
would be much clearer if every route had a unique number.

It's particularly confusing to non-locals on the subsurface Underground
lines where similar looking trains serve many different routes from the
same Circle line stations.

On Thursday, 19 November 2015 07:19:44 UTC, Recliner wrote:
Basil Jet wrote:

Incidentally, someone was describing a journey to me this morning and
she said "I get the... vertical bit of the Overground and change to
the... horizontal bit of the Overground". She sounded like she felt a
bit foolish describing it in such terms, but TfL have left people with
little choice. On querying it turned out that she has lived in Surrey
Quays for decades and is well aware that the vertical line used to be
called the East London Line, but as a young woman working in fashion she
would be particularly keen to avoid looking out of date, and she has no
up-to-date term to describe the line. The experience gelled with recent
thoughts of mine.

My own recent foray around East London presented me with confusing signs
to multiple DLR platforms at Stratford, and confusing new signs in
Hackney Central / Downs pointing from one half of the station to the
other. As I arrived at Hackney from Chingford, robobint said "Change
here for trains to Enfield Town" but didn't mention Cheshunt. And the
part of the tube map between Seven Sisters and Mile End looks like an
explosion in a spaghetti factory, utterly defeating the eyes' ability to
plan routes without having to think too hard.

I believe that the Overground brand, and to a lesser extent the DLR
brand, are obfuscating rather than enlightening.

I don't even know what promise the Overground brand is supposed to make.

"Underground" means that wherever I may have ended up, I go in here and
I can get frequent trains through Central London where I can make one
change to another frequent line that will take me home. There are a few
exceptions, like Roding Valley, but the Underground largely lives up to
that promise.

"Overground" - what is that promising? It used to mean orbital travel,
for the most part, but that doesn't hold any more. If someone stumbles
out of a party at 7am on a Sunday morning and finds himself at Turkey
Street station, what does that Overground roundel represent? 2tph to the
edge of Zone 1, and probably two changes before he gets home? That's
hardly anything for a station to brag about - there are very few
stations in Greater London that offer less (Emerson Park is ironically one).

Overground is actually a negative concept. Just as the Volkswagen brand
means "This is made by the same people who make Audi's, but it would
harm the Audi image if we wrote Audi on a car like this", Overground
means "This is run by the same people who run the Underground, but it
would harm the Underground brand if we wrote Underground on stations
that have infrequent service which only touches Zone 1 or avoids it
completely. So the Overground brand exists purely to avoid tarnishing
the reputation of the Underground.

And yet, the Overground management act as if they have an inferiority
complex, writing Overground everywhere and doing their best to
obliterate the historic line identities as if writing Overground on
something is the finest praise imaginable.

We need different colours and line names. We need the trains to
Chingford to have a different colour on the map from the trains that
call at London Fields and Cambridge Heath.

And the DLR needs to get line names too, so that the signs at Stratford
and on the District Line line guides can start making sense.
http://www.metrolondres.es/wp-conten...-mapa-tube.jpg
has four different DLR interchanges, and no clue as to which you're
supposed to use to get to which part of the DLR.


I agree. We need line numbers on the Underground, Overground and DLR, just
as bus routes have numbers. Maybe they could have an alpha prefix, but it
would be much clearer if every route had a unique number.

It's particularly confusing to non-locals on the subsurface Underground
lines where similar looking trains serve many different routes from the
same Circle line stations.

I'd prefer letters: DLRA DLRB etc.

London Overground was always a terrible name. It should have been given a monicker in the same way that the Jubilee Line was - how about the Dickens Line? And that abbrev.: LOROL! Faites-moi une faveur, mec!

LOROL also should have letters to differentiate its several parts.

On 19.11.15 1:09, Basil Jet wrote:

Incidentally, someone was describing a journey to me this morning and
she said "I get the... vertical bit of the Overground and change to
the... horizontal bit of the Overground". She sounded like she felt a
bit foolish describing it in such terms, but TfL have left people with
little choice. On querying it turned out that she has lived in Surrey
Quays for decades and is well aware that the vertical line used to be
called the East London Line, but as a young woman working in fashion she
would be particularly keen to avoid looking out of date, and she has no
up-to-date term to describe the line. The experience gelled with recent
thoughts of mine.

Why doesn't she just call them by their proper names, East London Line
and North London Line, rather than desperately trying to look "cool"?