Reduced service - Commissioning of SMA 2

Shouldn't the situation be gradually improving day by day as more drivers get signed off?

It doesn't seem to be.

So by Midnight tomorrow night are they confident all Met line drivers will actually know how to drive trains (and be suitably signed off) to operate under the new signalling system?


If this mess continues into next week then someone at TFL towers should be asking some serious questions.


We have heard comments that it is not the signalling system fault and indeed it is working wonderfully!!!

Despite that its "new signalling introduction" which seems to be blamed on their Status Updates rather than incompetence organising and completing training before they turned on the new system!

It seems weird in the extreme that the Met line controllers cannot even manage to organise rosters to run the reduced schedule services - and have to resort to cancelling services with little or no notice!

I have an ominous feeling of deja vu and that behind the scenes there is now more focus on "not my fault" and a lot less on getting the new system hiccups resolved.

The worry is that TFL think it acceptable to impose such chaos on their paying customers. Should customers now expect similar chaos when they decide to shift the District services to the new signalling?

OK I understand the desire to extract benefits from the new signalling as soon as possible hence the desire to turn on the central sections asap sort of makes sense - but only when all the ducks are in a row!

If lack of training opportunities is indeed the issue, then it surely would have made sense to install early a short stretch of new signalling at an isolated/ remote end of the line (Chalfont - Chesham?). This would have allowed all Met line drivers and ample instructors to have been rostered to do sufficient turns over that route (over the last several months when nothing else was happening) and if an untrained driver slips through the net and arrives at Chalfont when a trainer was not available they could be simply diverted to Amersham - much as they did at Edgware Road when SMA 0.5 was brought in to service.

For the Met - the damage is done now - but lessons need to be learned and a better approach taken with the District and other SMA roll-outs.

Special service means a service that is different to normal, usually in practice trains run at a reduced frequency and/or to different destinations/to a different pattern, but that service is running to plan (unless it's "special service, minor delays", etc). Of course it could also be being used euphemistically - it wouldn't be the first example of service statuses being used in this manner this week.

...which combined with the oyster website not working means there's no need for your cynicism :-)

The reason they changed their minds was because with all the cancelled contracts they were aware the circle line and district weren’t getting the capacity increase required so they began this time by introducing the system in central London first to give a capacity increase on the circle and district first and the metropolitan last. The northern Met Amersham and Chesham is now the last area planned to be completed rather than the first for this reason.

Correct

I accept that its too late now but maybe the first section of the Met to have been converted should have been the local lines North Harrow - Moor Park. A self contained route - no junctions - that would have allowed staff to get their much-needed hands-on experience with much less likelihood of causing the sort of problems now being experienced this week at the London end of the line. Plus, if need, be some of the trains could be diverted via the main line.

From what I am seeing here it could be said that the desire to get things up and running where the most benefit will be felt first has back-fired with (unwitting 'guinea-pig') passengers experiencing severe delays even with the service reduction.

Their Twitter feed is suggesting there will be no Amersham/Chesham departure cancellations, only from Uxbridge and Watford

Well, well, well. Either my rant has been seen by the overlords or someone’s been given a kick up the backside because a list of cancelled services on the Watford and Uxbridge branches went up on Twitter today early this morning. Good on em’ who ever made it happen.

Whilst there were still dense crowds, I’d like to think that at least those who took the liberty of checking before they travelled were rewarded this time round with a little more certainty/clarity.

The way the human mind works, it always feels that you are the one hardest hit, this is because you remember bad things happening much more clearly than good.  Try and find a poker player who does not consider themselves unlucky, and when a service to other destinations is cancelled it is probably not even noticed by Uxbridge passengers.

If you look at it from a revenue point of view, probably the biggest earners are the commuter trains from Chesham as the fares are much higher from outside the zones.

Cancelling an Uxbridge inconveniences people by 7 minutes, and there is generally spare capacity on the Uxbridge branch as far as Harrow. cancelling a Chesham delays passengers by 30 

So.... We are almost at the end of the advertised period of disruption.... What is the service looking like tomorrow?

I can appreciate that not all Trein Ops will have been trained, but are we reaching the point now, where the training can be accomplished without any cancellations?

They have been advertising minor delays for parts of the daytime service all week, probably not even most of the day, but at times it has only been minor

Just came across some head-count figures. The Met had 242 train operators to sign off on CBTC experience in SMA2. The District will have 435 to sign off in SMA3, the next commissioning!

There were also some qualified drivers who were able to relieve unqualified staff arriving at Finchley road and take charge of the train, but not provide training.