O-V R:nen wrote:

"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."

How are you supposed to start a journey at Shoreditch then? They give
the addresses of three local shops, two in Brick Lane itself, and one
in Bethnal Green Road, which sell Travelcards, but that's not much use
if you only want to make one journey. As far as I can see, there will
be no way to do that.

They advise that journey times will be extended by up to twenty five
minutes; it's walkable in ten! The bus stops are further from where
most passengers probably want to go than Shoreditch station is.

I predict that the usage of the replacement buses will be almost nil.
It would be probably be cheaper to provide a free taxi on request for
anybody who is not able to walk it.

Until fairly recent times Brick Lane was not somewhere that most people
wanted to go. In recent years that has changed; if it wasn't for the
extension it might hae been worth extending the opening hours of the
station.

Is it really necessary to close it quite so soon; four years seems a
long time for the construction work.

Stephen Furley wrote:

Until fairly recent times Brick Lane was not somewhere that most people
wanted to go. In recent years that has changed; if it wasn't for the
extension it might hae been worth extending the opening hours of the
station.

I still think Aldgate East is a better stop for Brick Lane (and for most
traffic it is quicker). It's good to walk the full length, not pop up two
thirds of the way down. Maybe extending the opening hours would have done
something, but I've rarely seen massive traffic at the station line even
when it was open.

Is it really necessary to close it quite so soon; four years seems a
long time for the construction work.

If they're going to get that link built, which is a key part of the
extension, they need the track free for a good while.