Mark Brader wrote:
"Patrick" writes:
I think this is a classic case of even though the numbers make sense,
they don't take account of people's mental processes. A through
journey is ALWAYS going to be more attractive than a journey where you
have to change, and if the idea is to get people out of their cars, you
have to make the system as attractive as possible.

Indeed. Here in Toronto, the TTC now explicitly takes this factor into
account when planning route changes. In this annual planning document
(archived on a fan site)

http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/2005.pdf

you will find this weighting table on page 9:

each minute of in-vehicle travelling time 1.0
each minute of waiting time 1.5
each minute of walking time 2.0
each transfer 10.0

And I think the TTC has it right. (I just wish they'd followed the same
principles in 1966, but that's another story and off-topic for this group.)

I don't live in London, and I've been on the Mill Hill East branch exactly
once, so I don't presume to say what the Underground should do with it --
but I do say that total trip time and operational convenience are not the
only things they should have been thinking about.

I agree that transfers are inherently unattractive - although the actual
number is subject to some debate (10 (generalised) minutes seems a bit
arbitrary, if easy to use - research suggests that it depends on
different weightings for transfer walk time and transfer wait time (as
distinct from access walk time and wait time)).

In planning terms, it all comes down to the question: is the net
additional inconvenience to MHE passengers (including a transfer
penalty) less than the net benefit (in terms of reliability) to all
other Northern line passengers? If the answer is yes, the decision is a
sensible one.

Given the relative contribution of MHE to total Northern line ridership,
I suspect the decision *is* sensible. Of course, it depends how much it
actually improves reliability on the rest of the line!

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Dave Arquati:
The branch seems to be at its most useful now - as a film set. It
probably gains far more revenue for LU in its current job than it ever
did as a passenger branch.

Nigel Pendse:
What an excellent point, which had never occurred to me!

Well, but is it actually true?

Aldwych was already in use as a film set when it was a working station --
after all, it was the only genuine deep-level tube station with no trains
passing through it throughout every weekend. Is the demand for filming
really so great that 7-day availability makes a difference to revenue?
--
Mark Brader "It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing
Toronto slightly, when you're only a Very Small Animal".
-- A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

My text in this article is in the public domain.

In ,
Peter Smyth typed:
According to the Hendon Times, Mill Hill East services will be
reduced to a shuttle to Finchley Central off-peak and weekends from
October 2006.

http://www.hendontimes.co.uk/news/lo... ondon_cut.php

Peter Smyth

If you read it carefully, it says weekdays offpeak. Weekends will remain as
they are now.

--
Lawrence Myers
Fax No 08719892164

Paul Terry wrote:

That explains why it was built but not why the connection at Holborn is so
useless.

I suspect that by the time it was built, it was already obvious that
Aldwych would never be more than a rather useless stub.

In which case, a great lack of foresight. Had an extension later become
available then a Waterloo to King's Cross St. Pancras direct route could
have been constructed. (Isn't something similar floating about in current
official long term pipe dreams?) Even just as a reversing bay the line would
have been of some use - what are the current cut-off points for truncated
services on the Picadilly?

Mike Bristow wrote:

Aidan Stanger wrote:
ISTR passenger timetables are not printed for the Northern Line!

I think that the MHE branch has a timetable publically available.

Can anyone confirm this? What does it look like?

A timetable exists - and is printed - for the whole line, but that's
a pedantic point.

And it's precisely because of that pedantic point that I included the
word "passenger".

--
Aidan Stanger
http://www.bettercrossrail.co.uk

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 4 Apr 2006, Aidan Stanger wrote:
John B wrote:
MIG wrote:
Peter Smyth wrote:

According to the Hendon Times, Mill Hill East services will be
reduced to a shuttle to Finchley Central off-peak and weekends from
October 2006.

And closure following closely no doubt. Yet another service reduction
disguised as "reliability", even though for the time being there will
still be through services at the busiest and potentially most
problematic times.

If the result is to make a substantial reduction in total Misery Line
misery, which it should be, then it seems like a good plan...

It would be a good plan if they did it right! There's no excuse for
sticking with a pathetic 15 minute frequency. What's the advantage to
having the train waits at the terminus for most of the time???

The MHE branch doesn't go far enough to be of much use to many people,
and having some trains go to Mill Hill East does make the service less
reliable. Converting the branch into a shuttle service makes sense, but
they should double the frequency (or better still, if as you say the
main service is every 4 minutes, run the MHE train every 8 minutes).

If they could do this reliably, so that every other mainline train made a
really good connection with a shuttle, this would be excellent.

There's presumably room to throw in a passing loop halfway along the
branch; that would cost money, but be cheaper than doubling, but would
allow the frequency to be doubled, so that every mainline train could link
up with a shuttle. Making this work reliably would be a challenge, but on
such a short and lightly-loaded line, one that could be met, i imagine.

It could if the passing loop were long, though it would be harder to
coordinate the service to connect with southbound trains as well. But
the biggest problem would be getting it to connect properly in the peaks
when trains run more frequently than every 4 minutes.

If they shortened the train length proportionally, it wouldn't even cost
any more to run.

What's the train length got to do with it? Going from 15 to 8 minutes
would be done by cutting down waiting time, not running more trains, AIUI.

Shorter trains use less electricity.

The interesting thing to consider is how the MHE branch can be made more
useful in the long term. One idea I put on my website is to have it as a
branch of Crossrail Line 2, and extend it to Watford Junction via MHB,
Edgware and Stanmore.

Is that on the old Northern Heights Alignment?

Partly.

This would mean that nobody in North London would have to detour to
Euston to catch a train to The North,

Er, provided they can get to the High Barnet branch of the Northern line,

No, it would interchange with the other lines as well.

and they don't want the ECML or MML!

If they did, they'd be detouring to Kings Cross or St.Pancras, not
Euston. However there would be a stop at Mill Hill Broadway to connect
with the Thameslink service, so some MML passengers would also benefit
albeit not to the same extent as the WCML passengers.

There's no GNER equivalent of Watford Junction. Stevenage is too far
out, and they couldn't get planning permission for their Hadley Wood
proposals. Potters Bar might be a better location, but their trains
don't stop there yet. If they, or their successors, ever do start
stopping their trains there, it might be worth considering extending the
Jubilee Line there. But it's not going to become as important a station
as Watford Junction any time in the forseeable future.

and more passengers would be attracted to the outer ends of lines, where
there's plenty of spare capacity.

Not sure i get that bit - anyone at Watford is going to catch a fast train
to Euston, not sit on a tube train that stops at a dozen places on the
way.

Wrong! Not everyone at Watford is going to Central London. Millions of
people live in North London, and detouring to Euston would be more
expensive and in many cases slower and less convenient. By interchanging
with the ELL, GN, Victoria and Piccadilly Lines, two branches of the
Northern Line, Thameslink and the Jubilee Line, it would serve most of N
London.

Does anyone else have any other ideas for it?

Extend the parkland walk .

The trouble with resurrecting the Northern Heights plan is the green belt;
the intention was always to drive development of new suburbs in the north,
as the Met did for Metroland, but post-WW2 planning policy has put the
kybosh on that. If the illustrious Mr Prescott or his successor waves a
wand and lets the golf courses and subsidy sinks of Bushey be buried under
an avalanche of Barratt boxes, this plan might regain wings.

It wouldn't require that. There's enough of Bushey not already served by
rail to justify a station. The main destination's Watford.

However, linking it to the ELL would be folly, IMHO; better would be to
link it to the GN electrics from Finsbury Park to Moorgate. A graded
junction at Moorgate would allow this to be done without conflicting with
mainline traffic to KX; the branch to Moorgate itself might need some
upgrading to cope, but the frequency would be well within the capability
of modern (ie early 20th century signalling systems). Of course, this all
comes to pass anyway under my glorious plan to drive the tunnel further
south from Moorgate, under the Bank and the Thames, to link up with the
lines at London Bridge ...

Where would you link them up?

I also wondered whether that line could be extended. There's nowhere
around London Bridge to surface, but some passengers would get a much
more direct journey if it ran straight to Denmark Hill and surfaced
somewhere around Dulwich or Tulse Hill.

I also wonder whether rather than being extended from Moorgate it could
be extended from Old Street to Liverpool Street to give better
interchange, then run under Gracechurch Street to London Bridge.

--
Aidan Stanger
http://www.bettercrossrail.co.uk

In message , Tim Roll-Pickering
writes

I suspect that by the time it was built, it was already obvious that
Aldwych would never be more than a rather useless stub.

In which case, a great lack of foresight. Had an extension later become
available then a Waterloo to King's Cross St. Pancras direct route could
have been constructed. (Isn't something similar floating about in current
official long term pipe dreams?) Even just as a reversing bay the line would
have been of some use - what are the current cut-off points for truncated
services on the Picadilly?

If you're referring to reversing points then we have (from east to west)

Oakwood (east to west move only)
Arnos Grove
Wood Green (east to west only)
Kings Cross
Green Park (west to east via Down Street sidings only)
Hyde Park Corner
Barons Court (west to east only)
Hammersmith
Acton Town
Northfields (west to east only)
Boston Manor (west to east only)
Hounslow Central (west to east only)
Hatton Cross (west to east only)
South Harrow
Rayners Lane
Ruislip
Hillingdon (via Uxbridge sidings)

There are also available to us:
Ealing Broadway (west to east)
West kensington (east to west)
in emergencies.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)

In message , Aidan Stanger
writes

. Potters Bar might be a better location, but their trains don't stop
there yet. If they, or their successors, ever do start stopping their
trains there, it might be worth considering extending the Jubilee Line
there. But it's not going to become as important a station as Watford
Junction any time in the forseeable future.

Wouldn't it be easier to extend the Piccadilly there in that eventuality
as it's just up the road from Cockfosters?
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)

wrote in message
oups.com...

MIG wrote:
John B wrote:
Kev wrote:

This does sound like the thin end of the wedge. Ask people who used
to
use the Watford Junc to Broad St (Liverpool St) and Watford to
Croxley
service what they think of this.


OK, so in the first case a poor frequency service has been replaced
partly with the current NLL clockface 4tph timetable (set for further
improvements under TfL Rail) and will be replaced further with the ELLX
between Dalston and Shoreditch. In the second case, the link is set to
be rebuilt with more useful connections.

During London's decades of stagnation and decline, many useful rail
links were short-sightedly destroyed. The ideological antipathy of a
progression of governments and transport ministers towards public
transport didn't help matters.

However, it's now clear that the default mode for public transport in
London is one of expansion not contraction. Since Mill Hill East isn't
an Aldwych or an Ongar but somewhere with decent loadings, it would
therefore be hard to see why anyone would choose to close it...

But once it loses the through service it will have poor loadings.
Aldwych is right in the centre of London, but that didn't save it. I
don't suppose for a moment it would have closed if it had a through
service (or why not close Temple, St Pauls or Chancery Lane?).

Aldwych was closed because the cost of renewing the lifts was completly
out of proportion to the number of passengers using the station. If it
had been a through station, chances are that those passenger numbers
would have been much higher, so the upgrade would have been viable.
Chancery Lane is, of course, closed on Sundays.

Chancery Lane wasn't closed last Sunday.......

Steve Fitzgerald ] wrote:

writes

. Potters Bar might be a better location, but their trains don't stop
there yet. If they, or their successors, ever do start stopping their
trains there, it might be worth considering extending the Jubilee Line
there. But it's not going to become as important a station as Watford
Junction any time in the forseeable future.

Wouldn't it be easier to extend the Piccadilly there in that eventuality
as it's just up the road from Cockfosters?

Yes it would. However the Piccadilly does not venture very far from the
GN, so the benefits would be much lower.

--
Aidan Stanger
http://www.bettercrossrail.co.uk