TBTC Testing

I see that by 1.50 pm on Sunday things have recovered officially to "minor delays".

A quick look at one of the Live Departure boards which is working (most are not) for Bond Street, southbound, shows the next train in 25 minutes, currently at Wembley Park. That's some "minor delay".

I wonder when the decision will be taken to scrap the lot, sue Thales the signalling supplier for billions, and go out to tender again for a different signalling system starting from scratch. The thing patently does not work and is not going to work. It's a real "The Emperor Has No Clothes".

I do wonder when somebody will start to take some responsibility for the ongoing mess.

I noticed in Scotland the transport minister resigned over the way the recent winter weather was handled north of the border.

Meanwhile in London, the leaders within TfL continue to critise the front line staff, refuse to negotiate the cost savings and instead are printing a few posters to apologise yet again of the mess that people pay thousands of pounds per year for.

Is there anybody left who honestly believe that TfL have the right management in place to carry forward the next set of big projects? or have the skills to run a transport system during the Olympics?

I've been mooching around Zone 1 today, and have constantly heard "minor delays on the Jubilee line due to a failed train at Dollis Hill", but then finally a breakthough came: "minor delays due to a signal failure at Willesden Green".

I suspect that the former failures being described as faulty trains is more a political thing than anything; the delays today and yesterday were caused by faulty trains not the signalling system.

It appears there have been a few issues with the train on-board signalling computers, the first one being the Dollis Hill reported train failure, and a point problem at Willesden was the signalling problem. The biggest reason for gaps in the service was lack of drivers from what I hear, both yesterday and today, not lack of trains for technical reasons. Was told the aim was for 47 trains out yesterday, but only enough drivers for 36, and similar percentage of 'no drivers' today, so combine that with the odd train or signalling problem would leave the impression its not been very good, when in fact I hear its gone pretty well compared to other weekends.

Not a lack of drivers per se, but a lack of drivers who have completed the requisite "two trips" experience with an instructor. What constitutes a 'trip' is unclear. Why it has been agreed that two is sufficient is also mystifying. And how have such a large minority of drivers not already been given the opportunity to complete this extremely modest target on account of non-availability of instructors over the past six months?

Understandably most of the focus has been on the incompetence, cost and tardiness of the 'upgrade' work. But the quite abysmal level of training and practical experience given to operational staff also needs to be addressed.

Driving in TBTC is proving to be:

slow - you are rarely able to reach the speed you would normally drive at;
cumbersome - regularly having to apply brakes when coming up against a seemingly arbitrary speed restriction or if you are close to the train in front; being forced to crawl towards the stopping mark in platforms;
distracting - as someone here said, you are using most of your concentration looking at the computer screen and also listening to sounds rather than the track or platform ahead;
disorientating - most of us are aware of our location by the sequence of signals and without them it's sometimes hard to keep track of where you are in relation to the next station.

You might gather I'm not a fan. Even so, it must be remembered that TBTC is the interim stage of the line going automatic. Automatic Train Operation will be quite different.

An interesting observation. It is not unknown in project management that if you get badly delayed in one aspect, like performing the upgrade work here, subsequent stages, such as training, get disorganised, because they should have happened long ago and the budget has gone. But it's just bad project management that allows this to happen.
I would hope there is some formal assessment by a separate instructor at the end of trip two that everything has been communicated (and thus two trips is a minimum), and there would be some practical basis to this figure, eg after two trips at least 95% pass the assessment. But I wonder.
But it seems everything has not been communicated! Surely the training should be sufficiently comprehensive to explain all these aspects. Otherwise you start to get Urban Legends among the team, which is no way to go.

"Has anyone experienced a JL train in ATO from the cab and if so, does the target speed still show up on the display the same as when in PM?"

Yes it does - the Train Operator's Display (TOD) shows the same speed information in ATO as it does in PM.

has there been any TBTC testing over the Christmas period?

Yes its been running in TBTC mode since Monday [Today was in passenger service] Some trains were running in ATO, made a bit of a difference when entering a PED station, as it was much faster then usual. I had two trains overshoot my platform earlier. Also a faulty train at West Ham, which wrecked the service. There were big gaps in the service prior to this though According to someone in service control, one driver refused to take a unit from NOG, which caused delays.

I did hear prior to today that if today was a success, the new system would be left on for good.

Loads of questions that I've just thought of about this:

Just from Dollis Hill to Stratford or all the way from Stanmore?

If that's the case has the third platform at Stanmore been commissioned yet?

Won't stepping back need to take place at Stratford as well?

When will ATO start rather than just ATP - it'll be much easier than when the Central went that way won't it?

I used it this evening and was very impressed – service seemed pretty regular and to the uninitiated, nothing out of the ordinary, which is as it should be; other than two announcements preceding every stop. To the initiated – faster than usual. Well done to all concerned. Let's all hope there are no major setbacks.

I've also just noticed that the TfL website departure boards are now showing the whole Jubilee Line correctly; earlier today there was nothing at all showing for the Jubilee, or indeed for the Met, Circle, H&C, District, Victoria or Bakerloo.

Indeedy, problems with the Axle counters. Trains were put it into RM [Restricted Manual] which means speed is limited to 10mph. Service was thus suspended East of NOG. Later in the day, we had a train failure at West Hampstead. Trains backed up behind it all the way to Kingsbury. The failed train then went to Stratford depot. To make matters worse, the first service train behind it had a handle pulled down at Westminster which compounded the delay. In general, this TBTC is working ok.

i've just been to Bond Street from Canary Wharf and back

I'm pretty impressed (on the whole). Apart from a few hold-ups, the trains were running nice and fast, stopping accurately and following each other pretty closely at times.

The highlight was when my train was suddenly terminated (i.e. an announcement at the previous station) at London Bridge going eastbound. The train went over the crossover west of London Bridge fairly fast (almost certainly faster than 10mph, more like 25mph perhaps?) and then accelerated into the wrong platform before coming to a halt. The train behind reached the correct platform (i.e. eastbound) before many of the passengers had changed from the terminated train and walked to the eastbound platform.

Clearly, this system has a few things that need to be ironed out, but I'm very impressed with what it can do, and look forward to when it's reliability is increased.

Maybe, but it's a rare occurrence in traffic. A few years ago, during severe disruption in a previous signalling experiment, I was waiting to go west at Waterloo. The next train was 15 mins or so. A train was terminated on the eastbound, and the indicator changed to Stanmore. I got on. I was then told to get off as passengers couldn't be carried across the crossover. The train left empty.

Back to the present. I get the feeling the powers that be are trying all possible combinations to test the system. I had a very quick journey from Finchley Road to West Ham this afternoon in a train obviously using ATC (all decelerations quick, smooth and precise), and was then turfed out when the destination was switched from Stratford to West Ham. I checked the westbound – the first two trains were both Willesden Green in 1 and 2 mins!

The following Stratford was then also changed to "Terminates Here". After about 6 minutes the doors of the original train, still there, opened and it was announced as going to Stratford after all! Everyone back on.

The indicators at Stratford were completely out of kilter with departing trains. As were the booking hall next train indicators at Kilburn, showing the next three southbound trains as 16, 16 and 18 mins respectively whereas on the platform they were something like 4, 8, 11.

So, fun and games. But overall, a respectable service seems to have run, and the latent performance is stunning. Hopefully the software has good diagnostics.