London Banter - View Single Post - Planned engineering work between Acton Town and Hammersmith this weekend

Mizter T · January 6th 13, 11:19 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On 06/01/2013 00:03, wrote:
I find the choice of this weekend to block the route from Heathrow to
central London particularly inconsiderate to passengers. I'm sure this is
one of the busier weekends at Heathrow with people on Christmas and New Year
breaks returning. There were a lot of people with luggage everywhere.

I flew off on a holiday on 27th December with no mention of the works and
got back this evening recommended to change at Acton Town and Ealing
Broadway to reach King's Cross via the Central Line and Oxford Circus. TfL's
Journey Planner suggested a journey time of 1 hour 20 minutes, not too bad.

With no indication at Heathrow T123 we discovered the train we found and
took terminated at Northfields. That is just taking the **** when the
service was terminating at Acton Town anyway. It's not as if the frequency
was high. The next train at Northfields was a 10 minute wait. Then the PA at
Acton Town was directing people to replacement buses when the signboards
were telling them to go over the bridge to get a District service from
platform 2 to Ealing Broadway (as had the Journey Planner). The west end of
platform 1 had stop blocks so was out of use. All that luggage would have
been interesting on replacement buses!

Does the signalling at Acton Town really not allow a District Ealing
Broadway shuttle to and from platform 4? That would have allowed a
cross-platform connection from Heathrow to Ealing Broadway, where there is a
level connection to the Central Line. There was a huge queue for the Acton
Town lift from people with luggage and little staff presence to help people
with the disruption (none at all at Northfields).

In the end our journey to Kings Cross St Pancras took and hour and forty
minutes with four changes. Not good, especially with three large cases plus
smaller bags, a wife with a broken arm and six-year-old granddaughter.

Why oh why don't they let airport passengers use Heathrow Express or Connect
as an alternative when there are blockages like this and why can't they
avoid the busiest holiday weekends?

Who are "they" in the above sentence?

If "they" are TfL, then do you think TfL should accept being held over a
barrel by LHR Airports Ltd (nee BAA), owner of HEx, for the amount
LHR/HEx wishes to charge to allow acceptance of LU tickets on HEx? (I
understand the demand for recompense is rather significant.)

You say you flew off "on a holiday on 27th December with no mention of
the works" - just wondering if you looked out for any posters on your
outbound journey? There would certainly have been mention of the works
on the TfL website here (under "Future dates"):
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/realtime/tube/default.html

Perhaps it was a bad choice of weekends, but in a sense no weekend is a
good choice given how busy Heathrow is.