I can understand at peak times if there are trains every minute or so.
Otherwise it does nothing but infuriate passengers (who may next time
choose to take their cars).But even five minutes is a pretty regular service, it has to be said. I
also doubt that anyone would go back to their car for the sake of being
kept on the platform.

5 minutes seems a long time when a train could have waited 5 seconds
for passengers to cross the platform. There were no Jubilee Line trains
immediately in front so it must have been one turning around at Wembley
Park.

They might not be tempted to take the car all the way in, but might be
tempted to park close to a Metropolitan Line station (if that's allowed
anywhere now) eg might use Preston Road instead of Kingsbury because of
the problems of interchanging.

btw, I drive to a station because the service there is far more
frequent than my own local National Rail stations.

At Finsbury Park, it would be nice if FCC held trains so people could
change from a Kings Cross service to the ones going to Moorgate (and
vice versa). In practice, it would be impossible and could delay other
services (including GNER and Hull Trains) that would in turn mean other
trains lose their paths. Chaos!

I have found that they usually give passengers time to cross where the
trains hit the platform at the same time.

On 24 Jan, 16:07, "www.waspies.net" wrote:
Last time I made that interchange (Jubilee to Met Southbound) the
Jubilee line train sat for a while just before the station, obviously
held there purposely to make us miss the interchange,Or the driver didn't want to have a SPAD, get sacked and cause a walkout!

No it's the signalling idiots, and giving priority to the train in the
siding, that has nobody on it, instead of the one coming from
Kingsbury, which does.

then the Metropolitan Line train closed its doors the moment we started to
cross, and we had to wait about 5 minutes for the next one.If the driver didn't know you were there, or if he's running late whats
he to do, sit for as long as you want him to wait and hold up trains
behind, there's always a line to be drawn the doors have to close and
the train depart it will always annoy someone.

There obviously weren't any trains behind.

).Take the car, pay the congestion charge, the fuel tax, road tax,
maintenance etc etc etc, and have no where to park, it's your/their choice.

On this occasion I had actually taken the car to the garage or just
picked it up from the garage, I can't remember which. On the occasion I
picked it up from the garage I had to find a place to park it for a
station that would be convenient to travel in. Now do I pick the
closest convenient one available (in this case Queensbury) or one where
I won't have to make a change at Wembley Park (probably Preston Road,
but further to drive, thus more time in my car).

In message . com, Neil
Williams writes

Is it really necessary to stick strictly to the timetable if you're
running a service as frequent as every 2 minutes? Surely you'd just
feed the trains "into" the system at roughly the right frequency from
each end, and keep them moving as quickly as possible. I'd agree,
though, that if the service is really that frequent holding connections
is probably counter-productive.

Basically yes it is. As the trains are diagrammed to run at certain
times, so are the drivers scheduled to be in certain places at certain
times to drive these trains. Where branches are involved, you also have
the issue of the trains not arriving at the junctions at the wrong times
- causing that old chestnut, 'blocking back', thus delaying the service
further. It can take over 2 minutes to get a train through a junction
and ready to accept the next train. Once a driver ends up being more
than 5 minutes late off their first half, by the time they've had their
statutory half hour meal break (which they are not paid for and
therefore is their 'own' time), they are then potentially late for the
second half of the duty which then causes more delays... and so it goes
on.
--
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)

Paul Corfield wrote:
As you say the most important thing is to keep pushing trains down the
line at frequent intervals with as few perturbations to the service as
possible. The simple fact is that most lines have very old signalling
and control systems that are a very long away from the best modern
systems. There are additional aids and information sources that have
been "added on" to help with train dispatch and changeovers but it's not
state of the art nor is it fully integrated to allow line controllers /
duty managers to effect the most sensible solutions very quickly.

Once upon a time there were things called 'headway clocks', showing
the driver the time since the train in front departed. These are a
simple, low-tech way to keep the service intervals even, and I can't
understand why they were abolished.

Colin McKenzie


--
No-one has ever proved that cycle helmets make cycling any safer at
the population level, and anyway cycling is about as safe per mile as
walking.
Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.

On 24 Jan 2007 07:25:08 -0800, "Neil Williams"
wrote:

On Jan 23, 10:36 pm, "Richard J." wrote:

... the timetable in ruins! It always amazes me that there seems, on
the manually driven lines at any rate, to be little or no automated
assistance to the driver to keep to the timetable.

Is it really necessary to stick strictly to the timetable if you're
running a service as frequent as every 2 minutes? Surely you'd just
feed the trains "into" the system at roughly the right frequency from
each end, and keep them moving as quickly as possible. I'd agree,
though, that if the service is really that frequent holding connections
is probably counter-productive.

Yes it is necessary to run to timetable. As Steve F has explained there
are train crew rostering issues as well as getting trains through
specific junctions in their correct "slot". If we look at the JNP lines
the Northern is most susceptible to very small delays building up and
then becoming minor delays and then potentially severe delays (to use
the standard terminology). This can happen even where there are no train
or signal failures - just little incidents like dwell times taking
longer than planned, a very short passenger incident or a slightly
delayed crew switchover. The line has several complex areas which need
to run like clockwork to ensure a really good service - Finchley
Central, Golders Green, Camden Town, Kennington and Morden.

The Picc Line is generally fine unless things go wrong at Arnos Grove or
Acton Town and then you have the equivalent of a heart attack to the
service. Acton is the worst place as it's very complex, you have the
impact of the District Line service and too depots close by - Ealing
Common and Northfields. You also have crew changes at Acton as well. It
can take the Picc a long time to recover from incidents as the service
is so intensive and busy and there is not very much flexibility on the
core section from Acton to Arnos Grove to allow trains to be turned,
reversed or parked out of the way.

The Jubilee Line has much more by way of sidings, crossovers and bay
platforms and this allows easier access if technicians have to get on
the track to fix things and recovery is generally faster than on the
other JNP lines.

Your "feeding in" comment is perfectly applicable to completely
automatic systems like VAL, Meteor and the Singapore North East line as
there are no staff that have to be rostered to each train. The computer
controlling the line will balance out the service to pre-programmed
parameters or else the controller can intervene and run trains where he
wants them in response to demand. This does require a good initial
system design with turning points and sidings to allow trains to be
shuttled to the busiest points and then placed into service.

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

On Jan 23, 4:55 pm, "Mizter T" wrote:
MIG wrote:
MIG wrote:

(snip)
I never understood it that way for all the decades when the distinction
applied, although the rule was kind of handed now rather than found in
writing. However, now I can't find anything about request and
compulsory stops on the TfL site at all, so I've sent a question. I'll
continue scratching around in my stuff though.

And almost immediately I find a bus map from 1981 with pictures of the
two types of stop and explanations as follows.

(White backgroud, red ring, black bar) "This is a 'compulsory' bus stop
where every bus on the route concerned will stop without being hailed.
At busy times it is quicker (and fairer) to form a queue."

(Red background, white ring and bar) "This is a 'request' bus stop
where the bus will only stop if you signal it to do so by waving your
arm or by ringing the bell once if you are already a passenger."

I always thought it was odd when my mother said "wave" but actually
she, and everyone else, simply stuck their arm out. That's not waving
really, is it?I remember such information being commonplace. However the only
contemporary mention I can find is in the notes accompanying the five
area bus maps (Central, NE, NW, SE & SW) and it only relates to night
buses. There is a picture of a red-backgrounded request stop
accompanying this text:

"All bus stops are treated as request stops between 0100 and 0430.
Additionally N-prefix night bus routes stop by request only at all
times. Please clearly signal to the driver when you wish to get on or
off the bus."

You can also find mention of when the system was introduced in 1935 in
this Designed for London education pack from the Transport Museum (page
30 [1]):

~~~~~
1935
'Fixed stop' system for buses introduced
First LT programme of compulsory and request bus stops started"
~~~~~

I'm not an expert on bus stops but I do know they're a surprisingly
late innovation - the above suggests as late as 1935, in London at
least. I don't know if someone else can flesh out the history of this a
bit.

Back to the present, I guess there is some argument for rolling out the
night bus rules to all buses - i.e. all stops are request stops. Given
that current TfL literature doesn't mention the two types of stops
(apart from with regards to night buses) perhaps things are just slowly
evolving that way anyway. Though I, like the others here, would of
course be interested to know what London Buses' policy or thinking
about this issue is, if any.


I got this reply from TfL

"Thank you for your recent email about bus stopping arrangements. I can
confirm that the rules of compulsory and request stops still apply.

Our drivers are trained to stop at all white compulsory stops. They
should also stop at red request stops when a passenger presses the bell
or hails the bus from the bus stop. If another bus is blocking the
stop, the driver should wait until it has moved away to ensure he
doesn't miss any waiting passengers. It is disappointing to hear that
these basic procedures weren't followed on the day concerned.

London Buses monitors driver behaviour through its regular, network
wide monitoring, such as Customer Satisfaction and Mystery Traveller
surveys. In addition, the Driver Quality Monitoring (DQM) programme,
carried out for TfL by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA), checks for
safety and also assesses the overall quality of driving standards"


I didn't mention a "day concerned", and whatever the rule is, we seem
to be agreed that buses don't generally stop unless firmly requested to.

This is getting close to a subject that I am interested in.... how come
it's not possible to balance the number of trains going to
ealing/richmond/wimbledon?

I use the richmond branch, and it is quite common to have 3-4 ealing
broadway trains go past before we get a richmond train.

Would it not be possible to even out the service at earls court? You
could have two trains at the platform, say one is to ealing, one to
richmond, let everyone swap over, and then release the trains. That way
nobody gets to miss a train to their destination and a better service
frequency is maintained.

-- Harry

On Jan 25, 9:38 pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
On 24 Jan 2007 07:25:08 -0800, "Neil Williams"
wrote:

On Jan 23, 10:36 pm, "Richard J." wrote:

... the timetable in ruins! It always amazes me that there seems, on
the manually driven lines at any rate, to be little or no automated
assistance to the driver to keep to the timetable.

Is it really necessary to stick strictly to the timetable if you're
running a service as frequent as every 2 minutes? Surely you'd just
feed the trains "into" the system at roughly the right frequency from
each end, and keep them moving as quickly as possible. I'd agree,
though, that if the service is really that frequent holding connections
is probably counter-productive.Yes it is necessary to run to timetable. As Steve F has explained there
are train crew rostering issues as well as getting trains through
specific junctions in their correct "slot". If we look at the JNP lines
the Northern is most susceptible to very small delays building up and
then becoming minor delays and then potentially severe delays (to use
the standard terminology). This can happen even where there are no train
or signal failures - just little incidents like dwell times taking
longer than planned, a very short passenger incident or a slightly
delayed crew switchover. The line has several complex areas which need
to run like clockwork to ensure a really good service - Finchley
Central, Golders Green, Camden Town, Kennington and Morden.

The Picc Line is generally fine unless things go wrong at Arnos Grove or
Acton Town and then you have the equivalent of a heart attack to the
service. Acton is the worst place as it's very complex, you have the
impact of the District Line service and too depots close by - Ealing
Common and Northfields. You also have crew changes at Acton as well. It
can take the Picc a long time to recover from incidents as the service
is so intensive and busy and there is not very much flexibility on the
core section from Acton to Arnos Grove to allow trains to be turned,
reversed or parked out of the way.

The Jubilee Line has much more by way of sidings, crossovers and bay
platforms and this allows easier access if technicians have to get on
the track to fix things and recovery is generally faster than on the
other JNP lines.

Your "feeding in" comment is perfectly applicable to completely
automatic systems like VAL, Meteor and the Singapore North East line as
there are no staff that have to be rostered to each train. The computer
controlling the line will balance out the service to pre-programmed
parameters or else the controller can intervene and run trains where he
wants them in response to demand. This does require a good initial
system design with turning points and sidings to allow trains to be
shuttled to the busiest points and then placed into service.

--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!

In message . com,
NewsPosting writes
This is getting close to a subject that I am interested in.... how come
it's not possible to balance the number of trains going to
ealing/richmond/wimbledon?

I use the richmond branch, and it is quite common to have 3-4 ealing
broadway trains go past before we get a richmond train.

Would it not be possible to even out the service at earls court? You
could have two trains at the platform, say one is to ealing, one to
richmond, let everyone swap over, and then release the trains. That way
nobody gets to miss a train to their destination and a better service
frequency is maintained.

The timetable sets the number of trains to each branch and the train
crews are then diagrammed accordingly. When the job is 'up the wall'
(an LU technical term) you don't suddenly magic up an extra two dozen
drivers to ensure balance, so the controller (who deals with the
service) and the train crew Duty Managers (DMTs, who deal with the train
crew provision) have to do the best they can with the resources
available. Much of this is working on the hoof to get the best benefit
out of the available recourse - if you don't have a driver, you don't
have a train!

Travelling times down each branch are different, so a driver who could
do a Wimbledon probably wouldn't have time to do an Ealing. Then there
are things like finishing times, meal breaks, legal parameters to
contend with, so all in all it's all a bit of a black art.
--
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 . com,
NewsPosting writes

Would it not be possible to even out the service at earls court? You
could have two trains at the platform, say one is to ealing, one to
richmond, let everyone swap over, and then release the trains.

What about the Wimbledon service ... and the Olympia service? There are
only two west-bound platforms at Earls Court, so you would risk
disrupting the other branches.

Also, the Richmond and Ealing services use the same track for several
miles beyond Earls Court ... so they couldn't be released together.
--
Paul Terry

"NewsPosting" wrote in message
ups.com...

Would it not be possible to even out the service at earls court? You
could have two trains at the platform, say one is to ealing, one to
richmond, let everyone swap over, and then release the trains. That way
nobody gets to miss a train to their destination and a better service
frequency is maintained.

Don't be daft - that would be *far* too convenient for passengers! ;-)

Ian