wrote:

Last train ex-Shoreditch is 20:33. I believe the following "staff"
train will carry invited big-wigs so the "genuine" passenger will be
unable to travel on the actual "last" departure. Or does the last
"public" working count as the official "last" anyway?

Well, most books that list this sort of thing tend to list two closures
- to passengers and to freight. Thinking this through, one might be
tempted to conclude that "bigwigs" are to be classified as freight.
--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p14486537.html
(60 050 at Winwick, 21 Apr 2005)

Kevin wrote:
dwb wrote:
Bearing in mind that that I got on a train at Canada Water at 9am the
train was probabley no more than 10-15% full at any point, I hope that
the billions of taxpayer money being spent on this line is being well
spent.
Considering that the ELL will go from nowhere to nowhere it seems alot
of money to spend.
It's not just about the present, it's about the future too.

Take a look at the figures for the Jubilee line, and what they are now,
along with the areas in which it runs to see what could happen.
How can you compare the ELL and the Jubilee? Given the number of jobs
being created in Docklands the Jubilee was essential to make Docklands
viable. The passenger numbers would always have increased.
On the ELL line there are no areas ripe for mass development. Just
makes me wonder if the money being invested in the ELL wouldn't have
been better spent going towards Crossrail, given that the latter can't
get the funding.

That suffers the misconception that cancelling project X means the money
being spent on it could go to project Y instead. A lot of funding is
very project-specific - for example, if that were not true, the DfT
would have a list of schemes ranked by benefit-cost ratios, and would
fund them down the list from the top BCR until they ran out of money.

Although the list(s) exist, money is definitely not spent in that way -
sometimes for logical reasons, sometimes not.

The money being spent on the ELLX is from TfL's pot whilst the money for
Crossrail will largely need to come from the Treasury pot. "Saving"
£1.5bn or so on the ELLX wouldn't mean that Crossrail would go ahead -
there would still be a big funding gap to overcome. Then you might end
up with no Crossrail and no ELLX.

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

Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
If a Liverpool Street to New Crosses root is needed, restoring through
services on the connection at St. Mary's would do the trick better, if the
District and H&C could handle it.

They can't. There is literally no capacity for additional movements
across the Aldgate triangle, which means that any new services via the
St. Mary's Curve would have to be diverted away from the District main
line, increasing overcrowding. Likewise, Aldgate East would be strained
with all of the new interchanging traffic (St. Mary's station is long
gone and will not come back, no matter what).

A far better option is to rebuild Whitechapel DR to increase and
rationalize track capacity, and to additionally reconstruct the station
to provide more and step-free access between the two routes.

On Wed, 7 Jun 2006, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Nick Pedley wrote:

Just a quick reminder that Shoreditch station (East London Line) will
close permanently this Friday. Last train appears to depart at 20:34

Out of interest, did they ever consider running the ELL services into
Liverpool Street for all the mainline connections and the direct link
to the City for all the workers? Or was there too much mainline traffic
to allow this?

Well that's what the line originally did but I guess it proved too messy
to justify given the traffic involved. Putting it back now would take at
least one much needed platform at Liverpool Street and create more
pressure on one of the most congested sections of track in London.

I believe it's not a matter of platform so much as track capacity -
remember you've got the whole of the Great Eastern and West Anglia lines,
with long-distance and rather busy suburban services on both, on four
tracks.

tom

--
It's amazing how often conversations with you have the imaginary sound
of human bones being crushed to rubble in the background. -- itchyfidget,
to snowking

On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 16:08:05 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message .com, at
07:01:53 on Wed, 7 Jun 2006, Kevin remarked:
Given the overcrowding that has come to light in the last couple of
days on Thameslink and lines out of Kings Cross mayber some of the
money should have gone there.

Do you mean FCC's excuses for putting up the effective ticket prices?

It's been clear for years that those services need upgrading, and the
plan to fix it is well developed: Thameslink 2K. But it's got stuck
because of planning issues.

And isn't it an interesting step by FCC as the potential franchisee for
the new Thameslink 3,000,000 (sic) routes to put those restrictions in
place. I wonder what that does to the revenue and usage numbers in the
business case? Will the DfT demand yet another reappraisal of the
scheme?
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 16:49:52 +0100, Ian Jelf
wrote:

In message .com, Neil
Williams writes
John B wrote:

It's clear that a (half) decent service creating significant through
journey opportunities creates its own demand - there is no reason to
assume the ELL will be any different from the NLL or the (also rammed)
WLL in this respect.

Exactly. If the routes are well run and frequent then people will use
them - even the Barking - Gospel Oak line carries decent loads at times
you would not expect and it doesn't have the most attractive of service
specifications.

It's also good to see the development and use of effective orbital
journey opportunities rather than everything being geared up towards
the city centre. That can't be a bad thing, and other smaller cities
could also do with similar provision (albeit probably using buses).

Indeed as Birmingham's legendary Outer Circle 11 and Inner Circle 8
routes have proved for 75-80 years. There aren't low-frequency
occasional routes a la those in - say - Norwich but high-frequency
high-capacity routes with frequencies in excess of radial routes in may
places and which have over the decades created travel patterns all their
own.

I entirely agree - the 253 / 254 in London make no apparent sense in
terms of end to end destinations but they carry huge volumes of people.

The ELLX looks distinctly odd on paper. It will probably surprise us
all for the better, though.

The ELLX may look odd on its own. The real issue is the service pattern
to be provided over the whole set of TfL inherited routes. Thankfully
there is already some innovative thinking going on which provides a
range of through journeys not available at present.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

Looming in the distance at Shoreditch on the ex-BR side is a sort of
signal box type cabin high up with a concrete structure beside it. I
was told this is the remains of a wagon hoist? Anyone know more about
it?

Chris Read wrote:
The closure also brings to an end the most unusual service pattern on the
Underground: M-F peaks and Sunday until mid-afternoon only.

Will the replacement buses follow a similar pattern of operation?
--
gordon

On 7 Jun 2006 11:14:26 -0700, wrote:

The closure also brings to an end the most unusual service pattern on the
Underground: M-F peaks and Sunday until mid-afternoon only.

Will the replacement buses follow a similar pattern of operation?

Yes. Shuttle buses will run every 10 minutes between Shoreditch and
Whitechapel, during the same hours as the current Shoreditch ELL
service.

I wonder how popular they'll be, and what the ticketing arrangements
will be.

asdf writes:

I wonder how popular they'll be, and what the ticketing arrangements
will be.

"Please ensure that you have a valid London Underground ticket or
Oyster pay as you go before you board. Tickets are not sold on the bus."