The Circle after a few months

I haven't had occasion to use the Circle west of Baker Street so far but judging by the reports in the Standard it sounds as if Paddington needs better signage as some of the reports were about having to change to travel between Paddington and the City. On the other hand it could just be the general inability of the Great British Public to pay attention to any sort of notice.

Ooohh!! Harsh! ;D

To be fair, we generally get all the moaning on here about service, and I haven't read too many complaints about the change, so I can only presume it's going as per plan.

The one thing I'd like to see change is the name of the line, it's not a circle anymore, but that's for a different thread.

Oh dear The ES was of course the main UK paper for publishing complaints from customers long before the introduction of the timetable.

From the Customer perspective. The large majority of regular commuters have, by now, formed their new journey habits, and are basically "getting on with it." Some are probably not happy still. Others will be seeing the increased reliability.

Less regular travellers still have problems with the service, but when you think about it, for many of those, the underground as a whole is a challenge regardless of what service we run.

I think some of the details that still need to be addressed will be tackled over coming weeks and months. We are only 4 months into this service, and now some of the bedding down has happened, we can address the things that are still causing problems.

What is known for certain, is that stations on the old Circle route are now seeing hugely increased reliability. Where we used to offer an 8-minute service, and give you a train every 8-16 minutes, we now offer a train every 10 minutes and more often than not we give you that train every 10 minutes.

From the Service Control perspective. I have now experienced everything from dead-quiet service to complete carnage. If you were to draw a curve to simulate these 2 extremes, there is a point around one-third of the way up where the service becomes a beast. The only way to get it back is to cause huge gaping holes in the service for around an hour or 2.

I still say it is much better than it used to be. Now at least after disruption, we can sort the service out and it stays sorted until the next disruption. Previously it would "un-sort" itself long after disruption cleared.

As I use the H&C (and now the Circle) between Baker St and Royal Oak once a week and occasionally down to Westbourne Park and Ladbroke Grove, I find it easier now that I can hop on the first train and know it's going straight to Hammersmith without waiting for the next H&C train.

The longest I've waited without delays to service has been 5 mins.

Drivers, yes many of you. Signallers, yes, a few of them. Service Controllers? The choice:

A service which stays right for more of the time than it is wrong, but can be awkward at times. As for falling over, apart from the odd occasion where we are let down by a couple of members of the team, and apart from the bad spell of failures recently, it rarely "falls over."

Or

The old service where we were constantly reforming, and constantly being harrassed by DMTs and drivers about late running, because drivers were always getting off late. A service where we constantly had gaps around the Circle. A timetable that had unrealistic run times. A timetable where if we allowed a train to run more than 5 minutes late, that driver wouldn't be available to run the next train due to shortened meal relief.

I know which choice most of my colleagues would go for.

I'm not going to open a public debate on this, but we in SC are well aware of some of the "issues" drivers have with the new timetable (or more the staffing of it.)

Just for once, us in control of the service have at least been given something that on the whole works, and something we know we can get back to right time (and keep right time). Now that our blood pressure and stress levels are beginning to normalise to those experienced by other lines, the tweaking can begin and improvements made.

I've never been quite sure about the part of London I control. It seems that no matter what service you run, it's wrong. On all other lines, people take trains to location A, change, and travel on another train to location B. Indeed I would imagine that the large majority of tube trips involve more than one direct train.

Here we have a timetable that does offer better reliability, and does work (provided everyone pulls their weight) but has one problem - the Edgware Road / Paddington corridor.

That should read that you should go through to the signaller. A great many still don't do that, with many more deciding to wait on our call stack for 2 minutes rather than waiting a few seconds longer and giving the signaller chance to answer.

;D Make the tea? No, no, we have people to do that. The Line Information Specialists have little to do when it's right time and they're in-between their 30-minute updates ;D

In actual fact, the lower workload in terms of the way the service runs, means that we now have time to do what we're paid for. Contrary to popular belief, reforming the service does not form the bulk of our job description. On some lines, the controllers don't even do reforms. Us doing reforms is a bit like you running from one end of your train to the other at a terminus. You don't have to do it, but it helps keep things moving if you do ;D

I have noticed that the TfL website is reporting delays to the circle a lot less since it became the T-cup. As to the Paddington / Edgware Road corridor, I'll reserve passing judgment on that until I come back from the west country, having experienced getting to and from Paddington from Fenchurch Street.

A couple of questions that I would like to know:

1) When I have been waiting at King's Cross eastbound, at about 3pm, there seem to be more Metropolitan line trains than T-cups or Hammersmith & City line trains. Is this actually the case, or am I just imagining this?

2)

What are the "problems" that still need to be ironed out?

Could they be Mets running from Neasden to Aldgate to get ready for the enhanced peak service?

There have been various claims that Paddington Suburban is unsafe due to the volume of passengers on its narrow platforms.

Has it ever been closed on safety grounds since the introduction of the T-cup?

Thanks to all the above. It seems to be a balance between the apparent fury of the public over having to change trains at Edgware Road, where they didn't have to before, versus the improvement to the regularity of the train service. This increased regularity is probably less noticed by the public when trains are running regularly, since all they're interested in is when the next train arrives, as opposed to the train after that and the one after that. But you know, talking of fury, I remember the outcry when the Bakerloo lost its Stanmore extension, which went on for months afterwards. Now, whole generations of public think cganging trains at Baker Street quite normal.
Is there any way to mitigate this problem? Well, forgive me if this has all been discussed before, but taking up Met Control's point of the pattern east of Baker Street, the Met trains do seem to have a high level of service Baker Street to Aldgate. Going back a few years, outside rush hours, all Met trains used to turn round at Baker Street.
Now, if 6 Met trains per hour were now turned at Baker Street, could those paths be used to extend the Wimbledon-Edgware Road service to, say, Moorgate which now has a surfeit of platforms. The advantages? Most importantly, it would provide a through service from High Street Kensington to Moorgate, and freeing up one platform at Edgware Road. Disadvantages? Having to cross the busy Inner Circle line in order to access the terminal platforms at Moorgate. Oh and more District stock being required.

Mod Comment:

If anyone wants to discuss Geofframs suggestion in detail, please start another thread in the Railway Ideas, Proposals and Suggestions Board. I think there are ..er.. interlocking issues (track circuit occupancy) at Moorgate, with the route across the Inner Rail holding the IR signals quite a way back from the junction.

In response to the OP, I've been using the bottom half of the Circle a bit more than usual over the past few months, and there is a marked difference in trains arriving much closer to their booked times. When the stand time in the outlying areas is sorted, and the on-book running continues, I shall be mildly impressed.

The new District WTT is even worse for the passenger. Endless "this train is being held at red signal" delays at every regulating point. During the cold winter every trip through Whitechapel seemed to involve a long wait with all the doors open (and still does) and all the heat going out ("world class customer service"?) with E/B trains often overtaken by an H&C through platform 1! At least holding at Aldgate East would have been warmer!

Quoting Met Control's earlier answer:



What I think might be worthwhile would be for data to be published by LU to back up the above assertion which might go some way to assuage the doubters (of which I am not one). Perhaps an analysis of Trackernet data from both before and after the change?

Without exploring your idea further in this thread, would this idea not immediately throw up the same arguments as this thread is dominated by - that is, the "Through Journey" contingent.



I hadn't realised that as part of the new timetable your were expected to work more than 8 hours.



This is the bit I cannot get my head around. We now advertise a service we can deliver. We also advertise how long it will take. We now have trains arriving on time, more of the time. We now have drivers getting off trains on time, more of the time. Yet it seems it is a crime to have a timetable with proper recovery time included. A recovery that, it should be noted, will be reduced in forthcoming timetables.

As has been mentioned numerous times on here, the padding was to assist the bedding in of the new timetable. Yes, we are 4 months in and the padding is less needed, but you cannot simply remove it. A new timetable is needed before that can be done.



I for one hope they don't change it back. I take it the "we" you refer to would be H&C drivers? So you would rather return to 3 Circles and copious amounts of late-running. How about they return the old timetable, but without the ability to get you out of that 3rd Circle, or enough duty time to allow you to complete the Circles even running 30 late. I daresay the same arguments would arise.



Trackernet data mostly only goes back 28 days. Other data, concerning headway figures is kept for longer - it's how we know we're running better than before. I would say that I do not have the permission to make certain examples public here.

I am sure if anyone made a FOI request, then the data would be made available to substantiate the claims.