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Post by theblackferret on May 2, 2014 21:44:33 GMT
I wonder what you good people think is the point, or not, of maintaining the Circle Line service?
Is it reasonable to say that District, Met and H & C services could all be increased in number if the service was scrapped?
Or are there a requisite number of people travelling, say, from Barbican to Westminster with no direct line between the two, just the Circle Line Service clockwise?
If there is still the need for such a Service, has the Circle in question moved through some sort of geometric transition?
Apologies for all the questions, but it really does intrigue me to see people's opinions on this.
Especially if there should exist a sort of travelling preservation movement who take it in turns to journey round it-because they could be actively preserving a part of our heritage.
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Post by Deleted on May 2, 2014 21:58:53 GMT
There will be people on here who can tell me whether or not this is fair, but I don't think it's a gross over-simplification to think of the Circle as, in many ways, a branch of the H&C.
Without it you'd (a) have to find a way of maintaining the same number of trains between High Street and Edgware Road. Well there's only one place they're gonna come from without the Circle line and that's Wimbledon, which'd mean either drastically increasing capacity on that branch (seems unlikely) or getting rid of all the Wimbledon trains from the city (which seems undesirable). I suppose they could come from Ealing or Richmond but I can't see why you'd want them to.
(b) have to propose a decent alternative. The Circle, linking Liverpool Street and Tower Hill is very handy. The Circle obviates any need to go up to Aldgate East and back (tiresome). Obviously there are certain alternatives depending in exactly where you're going from and where you're going to which can potentially provide a route through the city but it'd probably be an annoyance. I mean, obviously if you wanna get from King's Cross to Victoria, say, you can take the Vic, but people would take the Vic anyway. Obviously if you wanna get, say, from Moorgate to Temple, you can take the Northern, but you'd have to change at Bank. It would generally leave more people able to get where they're going, but having to change.
Also, orbitals seem, to me, to be very much in line with TfL's thinking these days - e.g. the London Overground's orbital links. I'm not sure it would be desirable to shift passengers from the Circle onto either branch of the Northern line, the Picc (never not busy through the centre) or the Vic.
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Post by norbitonflyer on May 3, 2014 9:56:10 GMT
It is an old chestnut, but happy to explain.
If you want to run as many trains along the north and south sides of the Circle as possible, they all have to go somewhere when they get to the east end - at the moment from the north side half terminate at Aldgate and a quarter go to Barking, and from the south side a quarter terminate at Tower Hill and half go to Barking and beyond. That leaves a quarter of the service from each side left over - there is nowhere else for them to terminate and there isn't room for them all to continue east, so the only remaining solution is to join them together.
Similarly, you cannot get everything approaching the Gloucester Road triangle from the north and east through Earls Court - by connecting a quarter of the traffic from South Kensington and half the traffic from Paddington together everything works (it adds up because the west side of the Circle has only half the frequency the south side does).
In short, you can't abolish the Circle without either taking a 25% cut in frequency through Kings Cross and Victoria, or massively increasing capacity through Earls Court and Aldgate East.
Similarly, as you can't get any more trains through the flat junction at Baker Street, some services have to terminate short of there: either in the terminal platforms at Baker Street, or at Edgware Road. If you want direct Wimbledon and/or Circle trains from Bayswater to Kings \Cross, you either have to terminate some Hammersmith trains at Edgware Road , or have all Met services terminate at Baker Street.
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Post by theblackferret on May 3, 2014 15:10:53 GMT
Thanks tut & norbiton flyer.
Just to put you in the picture, I'm South London born and bred and spent a considerable amount of time using tubes to watch my team when in London or to get to Euston for their home games, and then commuting in from Maidstone to work-all this between 1965-1987. I took early retirement in 2008, after finishing work down here in Plymouth.
I had a week's holiday based in Uxbridge last October & we covered passing through over 220 stations, including all the abandoned stations, so that's my latest working impressions.
tut
Back in 1987, the Northern Line was one to avoid. We only touched on it in parts last October, because it still had the feel of a line ready to fall apart at any moment, though it never does. But certainly one where any increase in passengers might affect that balance.
The Piccadilly central part, I always preferred using the Central Line to get anywhere at lunchtime and could never understand why the Piccadilly was always so crammed. Nothing changed there, either, in fact, it's even more sardine-can these days.
The Victoria Line was rarely a problem in 1987 outside of peak rush-hour. But I must say every time we used it in October, I noticed a big difference in the train-loads these days. So that's another one clearly creaking at the seams now.
norbitonflyer
Yes, I think the Kings Cross/Victoria reductions might be feasible, but that could only be soaked up by the Victoria Line, which doesn't have much room to manoeuvre and was probably shoe-horned in at the start anyway.
I have to admit, increasing capacity through either Aldgate East or Earls Court, let alone both is totally impossible. Short of building a new crossline linking the two, to which the words 'reinventing the wheel' might just come to mind.
And thanks to both of you again for so much information.
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