On Jan 20, 12:31 pm, plcd1 wrote:

On Jan 20, 9:25 am, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

"John Salmon" wrote:

"Paul Scott" wrote
Main reason for posting though is that I noticed a London Reconnections
report today, giving a start date of 4th April for an 'ELL only' service,
ie 4 tph each to NX and NXG.

Easter Sunday. Interesting choice of date.

Hadn't noticed that - will probably be closed for engneering works...

I wouldn't have thought so. I suspect it is quite a sensible choice
as it is a holiday weekend with people being less time pressured and
forgiving if there are any first day "glitches". You also have the
Easter Monday and then schools being off so the build up of demand in
the following week or so should be gentler than in a "normal" week.
They may, of course, get a baptism of fire from kids riding up and
down the whole time when they're on hols but at least they'll get used
to the sort of antics that will probably follow on a regular basis.
It is going to be very interesting to see how things pan out and how
quickly demand picks up once there is a service in place.


I think the service will be a colossal success quite quickly, and that
demand will start to pick up very rapidly from day one. (Well, maybe
day three, or day eight - but you know what I mean!).

Off the top of my head there are a few groups of what one might call
savvy travellers who I think could make up some of the 'early
adopters' here...
(note that in many ways this is a south London perspective on things -
also I've resisted my urge to put each mention of 'hip' or 'trendy' in
inverted commas like so!)

~ ~ ~
(1) Students and staff heading to and from Goldsmith's College in New
Cross (famous for its art courses), plus associated arty / trendy
types. This includes Goldsmith's students (and staff) who live nearby
(in New Cross, Deptford and Brockley) heading up from NX towards hip
'n' trendy places like Shoreditch (a bit night-life location nowadays,
very popular though hardly cutting edge any more) and Dalston (seen as
up and coming), and indeed on to Hackney (been a focus for artistic
types for some time) - both Hackney proper (not far down the road from
Dalston Junction) and the wider Borough. Also, there's a growing, if
somewhat underground, art and music 'scene' in and around New Cross
and Deptford (always has been, courtesy of the student connection, but
it's gaining a bit more prominence - (e.g. see the New York Times'
perhaps mildly surprising recommendation of the area as a destination
for hip tourists, which of course got the Daily Mail treatment
here!).

Anyway, point being that in addition to NX being a destination for
study and work, there's a small degree to which it'll be a destination
for other activities for such folk who might live 'up east' (Dalston/
Hackney etc) coming down to visit, in addition to the predominant flow
of traffic for such activities heading the other way. So, expect a
sizable ultra-skinny jean and silly hairdo contingent, and I'd also
expect some changes to the NX and Deptford areas as a result of the
new line too, which should help pull them up a bit. (Of course there's
a whole host of interesting discussions to be had on these lines -
critics sometimes say things changes are gentrification by stealth by
pioneering middle class young outsiders with an artistic bent who then
pave the way for others, and indeed such criticisms are perhaps a bit
more evident in Dalston - but that's a whole other debate that I'm
just skirting around here, as I'm trying - and failing - to keep this
post concise and to the point!)

~ ~ ~
(2) My second group of savvy travellers are the Canary Wharf
commuters, what with the ultra easy interchange onto the Jubilee at
Canada Water. Obviously the big change will come when there's through
running from the ELL onto the LB&SCR main line down to Croydon and
Crystal Palace, but for the meantime the situation will broadly return
to what it was pre-ELL closure in December '07 (albeit with the extra
northern destinations up to Dalston). Likewise for these commuters,
things will go back to how they were at New Cross. So the contingent
of folk who used to use the ELL (and in doing so avoid zone 1 fares)
will return.

~ ~ ~
(3) The third group have some linkages with the first, and they're the
bods who work in and around Shoreditch where there's a lot of
'creative' industry type stuff going on (people who I dare say are
perhaps more likely to be attuned to developments, at least according
to my stereotype!). For them, Shoreditch High Street will be very
useful, as it will be those working on the northern fringe of the City
(e.g. around Bishopsgate). The price advantage of Shoreditch High
Street (SHS) being in zone 2 is no longer to be of course - it's zone
1 now - but nonetheless if SHS is more convenient than a trek in from
London Bridge (or Cannon Street) by whatever means (possibly by foot
for some) then it'll still be attractive. From the get-go I'd say
there'd be a number of people living in New Cross and also the
Rotherhithe area (i.e. inc. Canada Water catchment) for whom this
would provide a no-interchange needed option.

That said, if a rail-only season ticket to London Terminals (London
Bridge, Cannon Street) is cheaper than a season to SHS, then that
might actually pull things the other way (I'll take a punt at guessing
that SHS will not count as a London Terminal from either points north
or south, and perhaps there won't be a rail-only season ticket for ELL-
only sections either, but instead it'll be like the Tube where the
Travelcard is the season ticket, full stop - we shall of course see.)

~ ~ ~
(4) All those who used to use the ELL as a way of getting from SE
London to east and north east London, e.g. via Canada Water and the
Jubilee line, or via Whitechapel for the District line to head east.


Anyway there's a few ideas of people who might be using it early on,
even before through running to points south begins. It will indeed be
interesting to see how demand picks up in the month or so before this
happens. I dare say that off-peak travel might pick up more quickly
than peak-time commuter travel.

When it fully gets going I'm sure it'll be very well patronised, even
more so when it runs beyond Dalston Junction through to Highbury &
Islington (with a stop at Canonbury). I hate to say this, but I do
just wonder whether placing SHS in zone 1 might be beneficial in
preventing the service from becoming horribly overcrowded at peak
times. A significant benefit of attracting people towards orbital
journeys is taking the strain off the central London infrastructure -
in this case for example the 'delightfully snug' Northern line - but
if the ELL became similarly rammed (i.e. with folk using SHS as a
cheap way to get to and from the City), then the attraction of 'doing
it orbitally' might dim somewhat.

Of course, depending on how the fares work, it might well be that
instead of being cheaper, SHS will now be a more expensive choice when
compared to going to the conventional London terminal (e.g. London
Bridge, Cannon Street, Moorgate), losing it custom.

I expect that the re-zoning of SHS into expensive z1 territory will
also dissuade folk from transferring off the buses and onto the ELL
for orbital north-south trips (e.g. New Cross to Dalston), and indeed
those who under previous projections would have been expected to make
new or extra journeys may well no longer do so now, thus losing some
of the wider economic regeneration benefits that the line was to
offer. (In crude terms that I'll inevitably get hauled up on, it
becomes a bit less of a 'people's line', and more a line for 'them'.)


Anyway, a rather longer post than I had initially intended - really
gotta try and keep it shorter! I'm going to x-post this to utl - I've
been intending on making a re-appearance othere for a bit, but it
seems that having been away from usenet for a while (and indeed from
following metropolitan transportational developments in general), I
proceeded to get a little waylaid in uk.railway on my return! (I did
actually have something else in mind for my first utl post in ages,
something short and pithy, but never mind, having written all this
blah it'd be a shame not to inflict it on utl-ers too!)