On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:07:15 +0000
Paul Corfield wrote:
making me nervous about making my connection. Once we were allowed to
depart (after umpteen freights and stock transfers were routed across
our path) the driver gave us a spritely run which probably clawed back
about 2 minutes of the delay. This meant it was less of a mad dash at
Gospel Oak for the Barking train. If that "catch up" time wasn't in
the run times then the connection may well have been missed extending
my journey time by 15 minutes.

Of course you could look at it from another point of view - if your train
had been going faster it could have got past the crossover before all
those other trains turned up.

Several of the routes do have closely spaced stations so there's
little point drawing a load of electricity to accelerate quickly and
then have to jam the brakes on. It's also not terribly comfortable for
passegers.

Doesn't seem to bother anyone on the ATO controlled tube lines which accelerate
the trains like scalded cats.

Punctuality and reliability are highly valued by passengers even if

Its supposed to be a turn up and go metro service. I doubt anyone seriously
checks the timetable beforehand. So long as trains turn up every 3 or 4
minutes thats all that matters.

The final point to make is that the slowish running speed doesn't seem
to deter passengers given how overloaded the trains are. If they were

Well its detered me. If I continue on the victoria and change at green
park to the jubilee it almost always gets me to canada water quicker than
the ELL even though its a much longer distance.

see the point. Let's face it the network is vastly better than what
was there before and it is receiving hundreds of millions of extra
investment to raise capacity.

Personally I think the ELL should have remained a tube line and stayed on
its own tracks. Running over NR lines is just asking for delays plus the
longer the route is the more than can go wrong.

--
Spud