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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 18, 2012 18:30:53 GMT
- at the risk of thread drift and moderator wrath, I am guessing that that N83 timetable at The Major's link is early 'seventies (it looks as if it is from the late and very much lamented Central Bus Timetable book, which seems to have ceased publication around 1973). The N83 was by no means the least frequent either - some were one/one-and a half round trips M-F only...
More generally, the story about the steady reduction of a local bus route(and the point applies equally to tube and rail services also) is that the frequency effect is much underestimated. The standard mainline measures (set out in the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook) show a very weak relationship between frequency and volume; actual experience shows that up to quite high frequencies, the actual relationship is high - double the frequency of a 15 minute service interval and pax will increase by 20-40%. I dare say the actual relationship is some sort of function so that at very low frequencies (1-2 daily), the effect is quite limited and at very high frequency (every two minutes, say) the effect is equally low; in between, the curve is quite steep.
Graham H
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 18, 2012 8:37:46 GMT
To answer trt's point about educe coverage leading to reduced demand, there is some quite good research evidence that reduced train capacity eventually leads to reduced demand for travel (not something one cares to tell the Treasury...) but there is no evidence that reducing station coverage leads to a matching (I'd underline that word if I knew how) demand for travel. At a guess, the reason for that is - presumably - that people will to some extent compromise on their choice of station of one isn't completely suitable, rather than not travel at all.
The Major's point about travel patterns being different now compared to, say, a generation ago is very strong - the advent of Sunday trading,the enormous increase in clubbing and so on have created wholly new travel demands - who would have expected Wood Green to justify a night bus service every 6 minutes at 0300? And to see inbound SWT trains full and standing at 17.30 is quite astonishing.
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 17, 2012 9:48:37 GMT
charleyfarley - setting aside the debate over the thread title, I very much hope that the actual content of the thread has illustrated the parameters of the answer to the question. The fact remains, however, that at a time when the system is conveying more passengers than ever before, it does seem odd to seek to reduce its coverage.
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 17, 2012 9:09:00 GMT
castlebar - thanks for the vote of confidence! trt - - the problem is not, these days, so much getting the maximum number of trains through the pipe (although that's obviously vital) but the capacity of the stations to handle the punters. The safe capacity of a station is limited by the ability of the escalators to carry the punters to the surface. The basic rule of thumb is 1800 people per hour per escalator (that assumes that people stand two abreast on alternate steps, so a typical double ended station with 4 escalators running in the peak direction can take about 7000 punters an hour before it collapses). I can think of several zone 1 stations that are at or close to that figure already, hence my comments in other threads that what we really need is more zone 1 stations - and perhaps the lines to put them on! It was the need to get the punters away from zone 1 that prompted TfL London Rail to pursue the Overground Circle on the basis that that was cheaper than a whole new tube line. For amusement, in Brussels airport, the assumption was that the punters would stand neatly two abreast on every tread during an emergency evacuation so doubling the capacity of the escalators - but then the Belgians are obviously so cool in the face of emergencies, so eager to form neat queues, so willing to abandon their luggage etc etc... Don't fly from Brussels... GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 17, 2012 8:35:38 GMT
This whole thread is very odd - why are we looking for reasons to close stations? The strategic problem in zone 1 is that there are too few stations, with the volumes of punters now being moved; several are already at tipping point and anything that can spread the load is to be encouraged.The financial issue is something of a red herring because with a zonal fare structure and the widespread use of Travelcards, the attribution of revenue to individual stations or sections of route is formulaic - punters are buyng the "system" not an individual station. What triggers closure under these circumstances is the prospect of major investment/operational matters as at Aldwych. [The converse of this is the difficulty of justifying individual new stations - a problem that sunk the developer's contribution to Cricklewood New on MML].
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 12, 2012 16:23:56 GMT
The savings from closure off peak must be trivial - perhaps the equivalent of a couple of f/t staff if that - say £50-60k pa. There are unlikely to be any other serious costs involved. Maybe a bit on lighting the corridors and powering the lifts. Say £100k in total. In any case, the station, although mot that close to Oxford Circus is close enough to mean that some of the o/p punters would have to use the latter instead, so adding to the overcrowding there.
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 10, 2012 7:00:55 GMT
- and it nearly happened - one of the original bidders for the line was a consortium of the IOW Steam railway and the Southern Vectis bus operator but, unfortunately, the didn't qualify.
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 9, 2012 8:27:18 GMT
I have often wodered why the 483s weren't replaced with, say, the 67ts when it became available, although I suspect that the problem with newer kit is the trip down Ryde Pier and the position of some underfloor equipment on newer vehicles. Does any know?
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 8, 2012 7:07:45 GMT
East Finch-ley Bearnet Southgoat Wimbledog
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 7, 2012 17:17:49 GMT
Besides the Barker and Robbins book, for the bus side of things, there are some useful Capital Transport publications - The battles of the General, The last Years of the General, and London buses before the War all by Ken Glazier. and AA Jackson's "London's Metropolitan Railway" is also useful, although none of these focusses directly on the creation of LPTB as such.
Essentially, the process was a slow one beginning with the creation of the "Combine" in Edwardian times, which brought together the underground lines (but not the Met), the company-owned tramways (but not the municipal ones) and the LGOC. The Combine dominated transport in London . The next key step was in 1916, when the separate component companies were legally released from the obligation to publish separate accounts so effectively ceasing to exist commercially. Other important milestones were the amalgamation of the mainline railways, leaving the Met as a standalone company (and incidentally preventing the mainline companies from running bus services, which had a knockon effect on the bus operators surrounding London), the 1924 legislation which regulated bus services in London for the first time, so reinforcing the LGOC's dominant position and - by giving some value to established independent operators - allowed the LGOC to buy out the independents. The other important event was the formation of the BBC (!) in 1924 as a not-for-profit public corporation which showed the scope for creating a body which valued public service over profit maximisation. Against this background, the Labour Government of 1929-1931 sought to nationalise the Combine, the Met and the municipal tramways, not least to allow crosssubsidy within the new Board to pay for extension of the Underground and for the replacement of the ex-municipal tramways fleets which had long passed their renewal date. Although that Labour government fell, the need to expand the system and replace wornout asets remained and the 1931 Coalition government took up the legislation albeit in a modified form.
To answer your query about why the LT operating area was the size it was, the origins of that lay in the LGOC's policy of expanding well beyond London by doing deals with, especially, the East Surrey and National bus companies (the LGOC had had a shortlived prewar direct operation in the Bedford area but later preferred to protect and control its "fringe" territory by collaboration. It didn't manage to strike deals with the dominant operators in the Thames Valley, however, which led to the rather lopsided area inherited by LT.
Sorry if this is too much info!
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Oct 7, 2012 13:09:38 GMT
Just how much capacity would you lose during the reversal? Two paths in each direction? Three? Maybe 4 even, given the time taken to detrain the punters, wait for a path in the opposite direction, re-man the cab at the other end etc etc
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 25, 2012 17:04:23 GMT
Perhaps you were out riding?
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 25, 2012 6:56:43 GMT
Marylebone was only part of a much larger "plan", The specific Marylebone project collapsed after a Monty Python moment when the National Bus Company, who were being pressed by Mrs T's nark, Alf Sherman, to lobby for the conversion programme, actually attempted to demonstrate that two buses could safely pass in the St Johns Wood tunnel. NBC got two thei best drivers and planted two hurdles in a field the right distance apart but only for a total length of a single hurdle. They then asked the drivers to drive at each other between the two hurdles. They didn't hit each other, of course, but as those who witnessed this nonsense pointed out, it is one thing to do that at a single point in broad day light over a distance of 10 feet, but something else to do it in a twisting tunnel repeatedly over a long distance in poor light. NBC, as they say, made their excuses and left but the "plan" continued on for some months culminating in a bizarre meeting with the then Secretary of State (Howell) in which he attempted to persuade senior civil servants that conversion of the West London Line was a good idea....
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 24, 2012 19:55:07 GMT
Houndslow Canada (Geese in the) Water Rhinos Lane
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 24, 2012 16:26:55 GMT
oval, goldhawk road
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 24, 2012 16:26:25 GMT
oval
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 20, 2012 19:32:32 GMT
@chris W - not only enjoyable but pretty accurate. What perhaps didn't come out was the fact that the collapse of the APT project was a "Hatfield" moment for BR - except that BR recovered and learned some lessons. (What wasn't mentioned either was Ian Campbell's public admission that the kinetic envelopes of two passing APT's might "brush" - ie they might collide with the then usual spacing between adjacent tracks - that was the real reason for abandoning the project...)
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 20, 2012 13:21:39 GMT
slugabed - indeed! There are times and seasons, good and bad. One of the paradoxes (still with us today) is that historically, the railways have always had better capex settlements under the Tories compared with Labour - as we see with XR, HS2 and what promises to be a rolling programme of electrification. The Thatcher years became increasingly difficult (we nearly had a diesel East Coast instead of electrification and a road-based Channel Tunnel, for example, and renewing the Regional railways fleet was a political nightmare) until Bob Reid 1 was appointed, who not only promised a better system for less money but actually delivered it. This gained him a lot of Ministerial credibility; Parker was regarded by Ministers as a whinger. The trick was to avoid the big gesture in investment projects. The Board made steady progress - salami tactics - with rolling stock, re-openings and track maintenance which was - alas- one of the reasons why privatisation sort of worked - there was some fat to live off for a bit (especially in the matter of engineering assets). I do agree that once the gun had been fired for privatisation, the locusts descended and we had no investment for the best part of a decade and a half. Yes, it is privatisation that has caused all this but then I would say that, wouldn't I?
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 20, 2012 9:14:14 GMT
class411 -a propos Mrs T's hatred of railways, don't believe everything you see on the Beeb. Those of us who had to work with her on the subject were reminded almost daily as to her real attitude. So deep was her dislike, that getting any form of system renewal was a labour of many months - Tonbridge-Hastings electrification nearly didn't happen at all, and her proposed (but never publicised) programme of turning railways into roads was fought over in Whitehall for over a year. There were plenty of other but more trivial cases, as you may imagine... GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 19, 2012 19:24:23 GMT
It's amazing how fossilised the Drain timetable has been until recently, with Saturday morning only services long after the City stopped working on Saturday mornings (about 1965, I believe), and very early last trains on other days. A Sunday service is very welcome for those of us struggling to get from Waterloo to Liverpool St.
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 15, 2012 22:07:44 GMT
norbitonflyer - Not sure how the possible Aldwych extension was supposed to render the 500 (Victoria to Oxford Circus via Marble Arch) redundant, but strange things happened then... (501 Waterloo to London Bridge via Holborn, quite possibly!) GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 15, 2012 21:15:59 GMT
slugabed - I think the adult Red Arrow fare was 6d (at least for a bit)- it was one of the reasons that the 6d coin was retained for some time after decimalisation. [Few children travelled on the Red Arrows, which were essentially commuter express buses from Victoria and Waterloo]. 6d was certainly a premium fare because there were no short distance Red Arrow fares - I seem torecall that the short distance adult fare on ordinary buses was either 3d or 4d. (Bus fare stages, like distance related tube fares didn't disappear until the zonal structure was introduced about ten yeras after decimalisation.) The PAYE machines were fairly quickly abandoned because the underfloor engines shook them to bits.
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 11, 2012 21:23:31 GMT
30% of all traffic coming from 5% of the population suggests that HS2 is going to struggle to achieve the volumes needed to justify 3 tph. The single WC hourly service is going to be relatively slow if it has to serve Watford, MK, Coventry, Brum Iinternational and maybe Rugby also.
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 9, 2012 19:16:20 GMT
Astonishing that the anyone thinks the national rail "network" provides any sort of useful Clapham Junction-Vauxhall service - even if we had Japanese-style men with white gloves to push the punters onto the trains at Clapham, they wouldn't succeed... It's worth watching the morning peak there to see just what the problem is. But - reluctant as one is to say this, LU is probably right that a tube connexion to Clapham would probably be overwhelmed by interchanging punters, even if it relieved Waterloo.
Graham h
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 8, 2012 12:47:13 GMT
No, buy by the shipload - Imperial Wharf
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 5, 2012 8:57:53 GMT
I wouldn't rely on GPS, either - here in SWT territory, for some weeks, we were told that the Portsmouth train in which we were sitting was for Goring-on-sea...
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 3, 2012 22:41:02 GMT
@ben - isn't there a housing development in the way of reinstating the curve these days?
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Post by grahamhewett on Sept 3, 2012 17:24:42 GMT
Now, if only Acton Town - S Acton was still available...
GH
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Post by grahamhewett on Aug 29, 2012 21:28:22 GMT
There's no substitute for local knowledge! NRES is particularly bad for "standard" interchange times - Waterloo to KX - an hour allowed compared withthe 20-25 minutes it usually takes via Oxford Circus (I have done platform to platform in 19 but involved a certain degree of ruthlessness vis-a-vis my fellow travellers...)
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Post by grahamhewett on Aug 29, 2012 15:01:44 GMT
Journey Planner probably has a built in time penalty for interchange - if I recall correctly, 10 minutes for Underground to Underground and 20 for Underground to national rail (the fact that at some locations you can do it in under 15 seconds has nothing to do with JP's behaviour!) For maximum fun, try asking theJP and its cousins about really awkward trips such as Catford to Catford Bridge...
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