On Jan 21, 9:49*pm, MIG wrote:
[snip]
With all of this, the journey opportunities that seem least useful and
by far the most disruptive are offered by the extension south beyond
NXG, filling hugely overcrowded paths with short trains going the
wrong way. *I can see the benefit to students from the north, heading
for Goldsmiths etc, but a lot of that was provided by the ELL as it
was, with some useful new links now offered. *People in south London
could reach NX/NXG anyway.

Nearly all of the benefits listed in Mizter T's post were offered
either by the existing ELL or by the extension to the north.

My post/ramble was about those people who might use the line in those
first few weeks *before* through-running south of NXG begins - sorry
if I didn't flag this up sufficiently (it was prompted by Paul C's
ponderings on how quickly demand will pick up).

What I decidedly did not do was to extend my waxing lyrical to the
potential new clientele that the line will attract once through
running south of NXG does begin - but I can assure you that there will
be a lot of people attracted to it, and a good number will be
switching over from other routes e.g. via London Bridge. In other
words there will be a lot of people who'll want to go the "wrong way"
as you so put it (though evidently you won't be one of them) to take
advantage of these "most disruptive" "journey opportunities" (what is
a disruptive journey opportunity anyway? Or do you just expect all the
pax to be rowdy?!).


The planned reduction in service to London Bridge isn't going down
well locally, and is being conflated with the loss of Charing Cross
services on the line as a general battering of local transport.

OK, enough sarkiness on my part. Genuine question because I'm really
not as up to date on this - how much of a reduction will there be,
peak and off-peak? I was under the impression that wasn't going to be
huge, and also that the services that remain would be more likely to
be longer (e.g. 8 carriages vice 4). The reason why it'd be good to
have some specifics is that I'm afraid I remember you making similar
statements a long while back, but my recollection is that you'd
presumed that the ELL services would simply replace existing services,
when that was not the plan. (Damn long memories!)

FWIW I do know how important a route this is, and how busy these train
can be at peak times, so I understand the concern. And I understand
worries about new upstart services displacing old established ones, as
seems to be the plan on the South London Line. But in this case it
seems possible that people might be able to have the advantage of the
new whilst continuing to retain the benefits of the old too.