White Hart Lane - can West Anglia actually cope?

Turn Up And Go...

(Waits for fellow mods to lambast me)

I agree I think that the provisions made for weekday match days haven’t kept pace with the general growth that the transport network has had to deal with.

Going to weekday matches during the peaks in the early 00’s and it was of course busy, but since it joined London Overground, I’ve heard more and more instances of your experience. Clearly that same infrastructure and rolling stock that took me to my first matches is no longer fit for purpose for a turn up and go service.

I do think that post 710 rollout, they need to work out a match day timetable that also pushes out Greater Anglia services that should instead call at Northumberland Park. Running a smattering of limited stop workings on a majority calling all stations pattern stifles the routes capacity within existing signalling parameters.

The best strategy at the moment is to keep tabs on all the home games / 'events' and either leave work early on those days or take the Enfield Chase route.

It seems to have escaped the attention of TfL that the newly rebuilt stadium has almost doubled in capacity and so the associated ridership is also likely to have doubled. What additional trains there used to be - and I'm pretty sure there used to be additional trains on weekdays - have vanished, although you seem to have encountered one that was not prevalent at the previous matches.

I'm not so convinced that the Class 710s are going to provide much relief although it will be just slightly harder for the more inconsiderate passengers to deny boarding to others by stopping in doorways or at the start of aisles.

The stadium may have a significantly bigger capacity than the old one in its final days, but I used to go to the Lane when we got 45,000 plus and things didn't seem as bad.

I used the free shuttle bus from/to Wood Green, which was excellent.

in retrospect,the 305/1s were really good at loading unloading and shifting crowds quickly. I generally used to ride og the footboard as t he train approached the buffers at LV- and preMoorgate,they positively whooshed into the station,none of your 3mph stuff!

Home supporters may have walked home, but most away supporters would have used the train.

Greater Anglia dealt with the Football exactly same as LO, infact LO still use the inherited plans from GA, quite simply because they have no choice because how West Anglia works as a whole.

Tottenhams emergence into the champions league is the main reason
for the issues (Tuesday/Wednesdays and also the stadium capacity has doubled) meaning fans will start as you say mixing with the peak 6pm onwards for an 8pm kickoff. GA didnt have this issue as under GA Tottenham werent in the Champions League, nor did they have a 65,000 capacity stadium. We would have the odd FA Cup, Europa League match at the old stadium but that attracted ALOT less people to now. When these matches are held are governed by UEFA so its not something that will change. As long as they qualify you will have an 8pm kickoff on a Tuesday/Wednesday if their is a match to be played.

West Anglia LO cannot really be considered separate from GA really. The whole west anglia timetable (Enfield/Cheshunt/Chingford/Hertford East/Airport/Cambridge/Bishops Stortfords) all still run closely intertwined as it did prior to the split. Infact nothing has really changed from a timetable standpoint, because it cant. The only difference to diagrams are single minutes or station skips. The way it runs now is at maximum utilization for all services, both for LO and GA, they are tied to one another. LO cant change anything without affecting GA and GA cant change anything either. So it remains the same, the recovery time, number of services, stopping patterns (although some can be tweaked if it can to proven not impact elsewhere) etc, the only difference is now it cant hide in a bigger picture. So as you say the only solution is fast running, and unfortunately for now until the whole WA is re-written that will remain the only way. The only real changes have been what a limited number of services form on their next trips. 

Agreed recovery time on WA is terrible.

710s will help slightly but only ever so slightly, since LO took over WA inner passenger usage has almost doubled outside of the peaks, so that capacity increase will get eaten up in no time. 

But you raise a good point. Having served the line for a decade tipping point isnt as far off as alot of people think.       

Given both GA and LO share the same physical infrastructure then yes they ARE effectively under the same management - in the form of Network Rail signallers and timetable planners

The bottom line is that the infrastructure simply cannot handle ANY more trains - regardless of who operates them. If you want more LO services then GA trains must be removed to create room - which isn’t going to happen.

There seems to be some sort of misapprehension that having TfL takeover rail services will magically enable extra trains to be run - when the cold hard truth is that the NATIONAL RAIL NETWORK in London has finite capacity which HAS to consider ALL user groups and not just pander to the needs of Londoners.

Thus the only way to improve the LO services in the way many are calling for on the WA route is therefore massive spending on more tracks - be it a variant of Crossrail 2 or widening the Liverpool Street approaches plus more platforms there.

This is true for the route via Seven Sisters, but more track capacity is now available at Northumberland Park after the addition of the third platform / track over the summer for the Meridian Water - Stratford service. Of course, in the peak there is probably no capacity to run trains beyond Stratford to/from Liverpool Street, but there would appear to be the option to stop all trains (or at least the Cambridge / Hertford services) on that route when needed.

It's a shame that the new platforms were only built to 8 car length, I'm sure money could have been found, when the new stadium was built, to allow for 12 car platforms at Northumberland Park along with extra access. In the future, now funding for the fourth track and associated platforms is available, it would seem that people could be directed to this route instead.

How many trains per hour in total, though?

Also to expand on Phil’s point about tph..
Number of platforms are irrelevant if they are fed from 2 tracks.. One way in one way out..TPH is only the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure 9tph would fantastic..lesser so when trains reach Bethnal green a the queue of trains waiting to traverse Bethnal green North Junction in the opposite direction stacks up causing delays that knock on throughout the day even with no disruption..The current 710 training trains are turned at London fields for this exact reason. And current services have been re-timed slightly to allow them to slip between passenger trains. They aren’t allowed to go to Liverpool Street (only one slips through at about 1150)

The current West Anglia timetable runs at optimal efficiency for the given infrastructure, and that’s the key point..for what is there now. What does that mean in practice? It means that every single service to operate across the WA region can run from point A to point B at a given timetabled speed without any major interaction with another service. Forget just Enfields i’m talking about everything....trains crossing tracks in places like, bethnal green North Junction, The mouth of Liverpool Street, coopermill, Clapton junction, trains being held in loops in places like broxbourne/harlow to allow faster services to get past, departure times of services heading to London from all of the destinations, consideration taken on stopping patterns to ensure services don’t reach certain areas too early or too late so they dont bunch up on the way into Liverpool Street (which they often do anyway when one or two trains go more than five minutes late)..10 min in peak can easily reach 40-45 min overall delays In a short space of time...to add even a single train to any of this would cause delays. Every single path has been utilised. Was never a huge fan of NX or GA but their train planners of the past decades outdid themselves. LO are merly a TOC looking after part of a puzzle that was done for them, nothing more.

There is a hope that when TFL rail leave Liverpool Street.. everybody can shift over. If you can get WA greater Anglia services going around the back of Bethnal green, instead of through it opens up a world of possibilities for service increase. Until then its no go. It’s been done to death internally with Tfl Arriva with allsorts of ideas flying around.. turning trains at London fields/Seven Sisters, the end decision was to leave it as is for now and focus on the capacity of the individual trains instead of how many services. Incidentally which is why mixed seating was thrown in the bin and we ended up with full longitudinal seating on WA. If you can’t increase capacity by getting more services you simply increase the amount of people your current services can hold. Which is what they did. And quite rightly given the circumstances.

M-F off peak in 1963 2thp Liverpool Street to Bishops Stortford plus 1tp2h to Cambridge.

I'll be using the old trusted method next Sunday-walk to/from Seven Sisters Underground.

And it's the Tube!