TBTC Testing

[Mod Hat=on] Diana, I am fully with you on your frustrations at what seems like a crazy system; but please don't point direct fingers at anyone without concrete proof and please, please, don't assume that a problem has been generated simply because of a person's gender! We've come so very far in terms of gender equality and TfL are one of the best employers in those terms - and that's from personal experience. [Mod Hat=off]

Thanks!

What things? Oh, you mean your buses - wouldn't that be fab if they could fly! ;D Let's keep the choob trains on the rails though, there's little enough headroom as it is

Aaaanyway, to get this thread back onto the rails is this system communications as well or just signalling? (Forgive me if this is a numpty question which has been covered elsewhere, but my interest in such things is only growing slowly - must be all of MRFS42's influence, heh!)

It sounds like things are working about as poorly as they did with the same system in San Francisco when it was first implemented. It failed quite often, which caused the train apply emergency brakes so all the rolling stock was retrofitted with an "Emergency Brake Application Limiting Device" which, I believe, makes the emergency brake application less sharp. The signal system failed so frequently that it became standard practice to just disable the TBTC equipment and run on sight, which eventually led to a train running into the back of another one at 30 mph. At least the Jubilee Line is a more appropriate use case for Seltrac compared to SF's streetcar subway.

Hello all. Haven't had one of my descriptions of the weekend wonders on the Jubilee Line for a couple of weeks, because we haven't been around. But we did go that way yesterday, and yes, from Canning Town to the West End was indeed operating. Except that it wasn't.

By the way, some people are apparently fed up with me writing about reality on the system, so to avoid their blood vessels bursting again, those of this disposition should read no further.

Early afternoon, get to Canning Town, down to the Jubilee Line platform, complete disorganisation, no next train shown. So straight back up to the DLR, Tower, District Line, and we were only half an hour late for our appointment. Did later hear something about a signal failure. At least we said it will be sorted out when we return.

So, late evening, get on the Piccadilly Line at Knightsbridge, change at Green Park - and the gates are closed across the Jubilee Line passages from the platform there. No notices at the gate, no staff in attendance, just shut. Many people milling around, then we hear the PA that the Jubilee is "suspended due to a signal failure at West Hampstead". So, after having spent time advising those from overseas what to do (including a Spanish family who could just about say "Westminster", but none of "closed", "shut", and certainly not "signal failure at West Hampstead"), and done much pointing at maps, we made our own way by another Piccadilly Line, Central Line, and DLR from Bank.

There was, by the way, no District Line out to East London, and now no Jubilee Line from the West End, so the DLR was shouldering all the load heading this way, and even at 11.30pm Bank was heaving on the platform. Finally in comes the next train, stops way back in the platform at the far end from the entrance (I know it does this but most others don't), everyone starts back only once they realise this, big press at the first doors, after a few seconds it's the peeps at the doors, slammed closed, and many people left standing shocked on the platform, even though there's still space in the train. By the time we were home it had taken us 2 hours.

So, TfL, that's life on your system at weekends. On the DLR, we know that departure to the second is the only consideration, and it's "stuff you" to any paying passengers waiting to board the train (though quite why they can't schedule more than 20 seconds platform time at Bank when they get so overwhelmed, or even just stop at the entrance end instead, is still a mystery).

But as for the Jubilee Line, we haven't had a single un-disorganised weekend journey since the new signals were turned on at weekends a month or two ago. Not one. When are the TfL management finally going to realise, that as sometimes happens with large projects, the project team are just not going to make it. You see, you can't go on with such gross disorganisation for ever. One day someone is going to have to realise that the way the new signals have been cobbled together just does not work, and never can work, reliably enough, the money has all been wasted, and we will just revert back to the old signals (not that old actually, they only date from 1999), and forget all this automatic-driving mullarkey.

We are told down at Canary Wharf that it's all necessary to provide extra capacity on the Jubilee Line at rush hours. Well come, I believe, 2017, then Crossrail will be open, and much of the demand will move away to the new faster line. And who believes that the new Jubilee Line signals can be got working properly by then?

Only in those positions - the 'old' signals are much older than that, being s/hand off the Central Line.

Yesterday going into town around 1pm and coming back around 6pm it was like rush hour, with a full crush to get on the tube - the reason everybody was reluctant to wait for the next one was that the next tube was advertised as being 8 mins and 10 mins repsectively, and in that time the crowds would build up, and there would be an equivalent crush on the next tube.

But like we're told, we should be grateful for having any service at all at the weekend.

Severe delays are occurring due to a faulty train earlier at Bermondsey.

Service update: 19:26, yet another proverbial signal failiure at Stratford means severe delays to the operational bit of the line!

This is insane!

Can I ask have you put your complaints direct to TfL or perhaps your GLA member or MP? And have you any sort of meaningful reply?

Not only are the buses erratic in frequency, but each EB arrival at Mile End then seems to prompt a lengthy debate/argument/complaint between passengers and the driver about the RRBS' route,. stopping pattern, reasons for the engineering work etc. It would also be "joined-up" if they served Bow Church DLR to allow further alternate options, but they don't (though have done in the past).

This is a very salient point. TfL for people outside the organisation seems at times to be a totally different beast to the one its staff work for. It seems beurocratic, wasteful and sometimes diliberately misleading. Those inside of course know the reasons why; the foibles, the complexities, the practicalities of how things work vs. how in theory they should. But most of the time the punter doesnt. This needs to be remembered a lot lot more.

"Dear Diana,

We have checked the service status messages for the journies you have mentioned. They were all operating a good service."

May well be the response

They've finally given up. Service now suspended for the rest of the day.

After having put up with three consecutive weekends of 'trial operations', I've had enough. I tried to deal with it – I tried not to be as obtuse as some of the drivers have been, but really, tonight was the straw to break the camels' back.

Working dead lates this weekend, I've never worked under such conditions where I've felt under such threat from the passengers as a result from the appalling service provided. We were just lucky that tonight The O2 did not have a major event. At about 1830, the gateline was swarming with people who had been told by the Train Op. that the train on the east was detraining and not going to Stratford. Only we'd not been told this on the stations. And rather than actually tell me what the problem was, whilst I was in the middle of telling somebody how to get to Maritime Greenwich, out of nowhere a passenger had decided to forcefully shove me out of the way into a gate in an attempt to exit the station. He then put his ticket right in my face and kept ramming himself against the gate to get out, shouting that he just needed to get out. So I let him out. At this point, we still had not been told officially that we were suspended North Greenwich to Stratford. The man's son also pushed past me and swore at me on the way out, followed by some woman accompanying them, waving her ticket and saying, "I've f***ing got it then so let me out." Still completely unaware as to what was happening and why everybody was now mobbing the gateline, I let this woman out and she crossed to the unpaid side, only to start shrieking at me some gibberish at me in an Irish accent and pointing at another woman who was now in my face shouting "You f***ing four-eyes. You can see? You can see it can't you?" When I tried to shout back at her asking why everybody was going mad, some completely un-related man who was passing through was telling me to "Watch your f***ing mouth" and making hand gestures, whilst another man was trying to hold this shrieking banshee back from hitting me.

After some panicked radio messages back from a colleague asking for confirmation that we were officially suspended, the confirmation came too little too late. Only it then turned out that we weren't allowed to say we were suspended – 'because there is a limited Eastbound service'. With a train stuck on Eastbound Platform 3, trains were coming into the middle platform with drivers under the impression they were reversing to go West, only for the TOD to say it was being routed East. Train Ops in the middle who were having this problem could not get in touch with Service Control, only for another train to occupy yet another platform, leaving us now with two trains on our Westbound platforms but with nobody knowing where exactly they were going, or which trains were departing first (as Ready to Depart Indicators on both platforms would illuminate at the same time – an issue I have raised with Kevin Bootle personally months ago). I would have sooner have closed the station when it came to the point with no trains actually departing the station at all, only by this point in the evening, we couldn't even send people to Stratford by bus because of the Blackwall Tunnel closure commencing at 20:00. But we weren't allowed because we were still officially running a service.

I gave out Customer Service cards and Customer Charter forms to everybody I could see, even people who didn't want or need them, but my argument was, "You never know – you might get more than £4 back." Even with faulty axle-counter blocks at Stratford and West Hampstead, with no trains moving anywhere, the powers that be still refused to admit defeat and say that we were now suspended. Instead, they piled us with useless messages about TOs now being attendance on the track at Stratford. Is that of any consolation to the passengers? Is that of any consolation to the drivers now without relief? Is that going to make things easier for the frontline staff taking the flack? We didn't even have anybody in the ticket office, so nobody could get refunds, yet hey – out station is scheduled to lose a couple of members of staff from the ticket office, so to all of you who want to have a whinge but still get your compensation, good luck getting your refunds.

No weekend of TBTC in passenger service has been without problems so why were there no back-up replacement bus services throughout the day?

Why was this replacement bus service only available for start of traffic until the mid-morning and why was it not allowed to be for the whole of traffic hours?

Why were we not allowed to say that we were suspended, even though trains had not moved from platforms for over 15 minutes?

Why was service status information from NOC almost contradictory to the information being given from Neasden?

With our hallowed 'real-time information' now being reduced to pointless messages about Technical Officers, axle-counter blocks and how we were still running a limited service, and no 'real-time information' about whether trains were going to move, where they were actually going, or whether any of the Service Directors or the Service Manager actually had a bean of usefulness between them, the abuse continued to get worse, to the point that we actually had to withdraw all staff from the gateline and have the BTP take over because of the mob mentality. With the staff retreating to the Control Room, passengers decided they would waste time by banging against the 2-inches of bulletproof glass, rather than just leave the forsaken depths of the Underground and use London Buses.

Then, at 21:56, and having repeatedly called North Greenwich to apologise profusely for the abuse that we had received all evening, Service Control called us to say that the Jubilee line was officially suspended. The station was then to be closed from that point onwards, though one Train Operator on the platform was adamant that they would not detrain until the Line Controller had called them up to make it official. Everybody was in limbo, though tomorrow we will probably all get an email in our inboxes saying that 'We have reached another milestone on the Jubilee line'.

I seriously hope that somebody up in the Ivory Towers goes down for what has happened this evening. That's what I'm wishing. It probably wont come to that though – it'll just come to another weekend of this for the rest of us on terra firma. Perhaps next time it will be worse, with events at Wembley, The O2 and elsewhere co-inciding with one another. Maybe somebody will give me a black eye next time around in the next tirade of abuse to ensue during the next weekend of trial ops.

But for tonight, the powers that be had finally given up and admitted defeat. All too little, all too late.