Mizter T wrote on 29 August 2010 00:50:57 ...

On Aug 28, 11:53 pm, wrote:

On 28 Aug, 21:41, wrote:

On Aug 28, 8:00 pm, Mizter wrote:

On Aug 28, 7:11 pm, wrote:

Is there much chance that the TfL "live departure board" information
will at some point be improved to lessen the incidence of specific
displays defaulting to nondescript destinations such as "Unknown",
"District Line", "Special", "Awaiting confirmation" etc.? I realise
that there will be some occasions where at a given time the
destination of a given train might be indeterminate but not to the
extent that the boards would sometimes have us believe. On other
occasions the destination display can go to the opposite extreme of
depicting locations in terms of the "road number" of the particular
sidings in which the train will berth following its last set-down
point. A happy medium would be a preferred option.

I'm just curious as to how many genuine punters make use of the LU
live departure boards, given the frequent service on many parts of the
network?

Quite a lot, it's the quickest and most reliable way of seeing if your
line is disrupted before setting off for the station.

I'd be happy if the District Line ever displayed any information at
all on the platforms. As far as I know it never yet has done, at
least not less than a minute before a train arrives. Maybe it's
repeatedly fixed and breaks down again on the occasions when I stray
that way and it's not closed for engineering works.

Today was a day when there was no engineering work on the section of
the District that I was planning to use and, surprise surprise,
absolutely zero information on the platforms. In this case, not even
displaying the expected arrival of the train whose headlights are
already in sight.

One has to wonder why District Line stations are part of any programme
to install expensive electronic equipment on the platforms, when the
will to create any information to display on them continues to be
lacking.

Someone can come along and correct me, but my understanding is that
the sub-surface lines (inc the District) will only get decent live
running information when the new all-singing, all-dancing signalling
system eventually goes live in x number of years

I think that's true, but we already have a situation where at some
stations the displayed information is next to useless but the live
departure boards are much better. For example at Hammersmith westbound,
the District trains seem to appear on the platform indicator only
seconds before the train itself does, presumably because the display
system has to wait until the signalling system confirms that it's not
going to switch the District train on to the Piccadilly tracks! But the
live departure boards will happily tell you that the next Richmond train
is 7 minutes away, being currently between South Kensington and
Gloucester Road (say). Evidently they take their data from a different
system.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)