Interesting District/H&C service 6 July

Plenty of planners start their career sure that they can recast their particular transport network with new 'outside the box' thinking (I am sure I did). After all this forum has two sub forums dedicated to posting ideas to do just that. They soon realise that the opportunity to deploy the crayons are rare and that their job is to find the best compromise within the constraints and to help the network adapt to those constraints over time. This isn't to say that new links cannot be added (and new orbital rail routes would certainly be a good thing), but it won't have escaped your notice how much resource has to be used to mitigate the impact on those who lose out when they are. The HS2 route out of London is a case in point, where the new line will be tunneled including in areas it could plausibly be on the surface with little demolition on a currently lightly used corridor.

As the 'Tea Cup' reconfiguration of the Circle line in 2009 itself illustrates where there is a very good case, reconfiguration of services can be contemplated. Many people lost out, because they now need to interchange taking extra time and inconvenience, but a larger group of people gained more from the extra (near doubled) service to Hammersmith and gained from a level of reliability that a 'loop' service, with no terminus layover opportunity lacked. However, options are constrained by capacity of the infrastructure constructed by Victorian engineers and their successors. Any train arriving at Edgware Road must either terminate or have a path through Baker Street towards Kings Cross. If one is added, a train from Hammersmith or a Metropolitan line train must be removed, causing those passengers to lose out by having to wait longer and at peak times travel in a more crowded train. This means that the benefits of the new service must outweigh the downsides to those who lose out.

It is not just a matter of the benefit being greater. Over time, the population of London chose where to live around the transport links they need to connect themselves with their place of work or other routine destinations. For this reason there are establish patterns of travel that match the current service patterns. This builds in 'inertia' that will tend to favour the existing situation as these journeys will be disrupted by change. This will mean that change has to have considerable additional benefit to meet this threshold (which was the case with the 'Tea Cup').

Having identified the necessary extra benefits of their scheme, the planner will need to demonstrate to those to whom they are accountable the benefit is sufficiently worthwhile to offset all of the disadvantages and costs. In this case the planner will be accountable to their directors, who in turn are accountable to the Mayor, who in their turn are accountable to voters. Large groups of people who will lose out from a service change will protest about it and may organise efforts to prevent it by influencing those to whom the planner is accountable. They will want to know that the proposal is good value for the use of public funds. The politician (of whatever party) overseeing the transport authority will want to be sure that the change will not upset large numbers of the voters they depend on to get elected.

I have worked as a Transport Planner for a fair number of years. To date, I am unaware of any single incidence of my colleagues doing anything other than using the public transport network to get to work or travel around Central London (driving to a Central(ish) London office with two rarely used disabled driver parking spaces would be insane). Nor have any of my colleagues had any involvement in what names should be assigned to any given route. I'm sure the organisation employs people with the right skills, knowledge and experience to consider that issue, but they are not in Transport Planning roles. I doubt there are to many who have either marketing experience or qualifications, but supermarket logistics experience might well be helpful, particularly if it were alongside other experience in public transport...