How boring is driving on the Circle?

Here I am (and had it not been for a shower of rain knocking NTL out over the weekend, I would have been here sooner!)

Firstly, let me dispell this myth (again). I don't care which line you have driven for, all services within our control area are treated the same. The computer was not designed to favour one or the other, and the staff are not paid a commission from any line (though should that happen, then of course I would make as much money as possible!)

The computer (as I will say further down) cannot think for itself. It has certain parameters to work by. So for example, in the peak, with a few minutes of late-running on all trains, and the machine set to work a certain way, if the junction at Baker Street is set to accept a train from the city to the northbound Met, the machine will decide it is worthwhile to send a train in a non-conflicting direction i.e. Southbound Met to the city. It will not waste time by allowing the Circle Line to leave platform 5 before moving two other trains on the Met.

The different parameters are so numerous that I cannot possibly go into them here. Some of the decisions it tries to make can be less than sensible, but then that's why we have operators monitoring the system.

Secondly, yes the computer is worse than the old signal cabin at Aldgate, and that is mainly because it is a computer. Maybe somehwere there are super computers that can learn from their actions and develop an artificial intelligence, but we were blessed with a simple machine that can only just do what it was designed to do. At Aldgate in particular, some of the programming was never finished off, and we were left with a few, let's say "quirks." This is due to be looked at in the very near future under a new role I am undertaking.

In short though, much as you may be the driver of one train, I see the movement of many many trains, and can tell you that (Aldgate/Aldgate East-Tower Hill aside) it really is a 50/50 split on who goes in front of who.

As for the Circle, the actual time given for each trip is 51.5 minutes - this is up from 45.5 minutes in the 1980s and 1990s. The average recovery added to this is 4.5 minutes per trip - this is more or less the same as it always has been.