wrote:
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:33:23 GMT
Recliner wrote:
wrote:
Its got to the point where its just painful to use in the mornings and
unsurprisingly the vast majority of people bail out at Finsbury and get on
the victoria line putting added strain on that.

Why is it so slow and so unreliable with frequent train gaps of 5 or 6
minutes
the rush hour?

Trains?
Drivers?
Signalling?
Dwell times?
Stations too close together in the centre with too much stopping?
All of the above?

Here's an interesting article about how the Victoria line, with new
automatic trains and signalling, achieves its very high frequency:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/...aking-victoria
frequent-metro-world/

Maybe, when the Piccadilly line also has state of the art trains and
signalling, it will do the same. But it will still have a route with
curvier tunnels and more stops than the much newer Victoria line, opened
more than 60 years later.

The picc only has sharp curves at holborn and kensington. The rest of the line
is pretty straight with a long no stopping section between hammersmith and
acton that should in theory allow drivers to catch up if they're running
late.

Not really. They're scheduled to run fast on that section anyway, and the
old signalling doesn't allow them to run closer. Mostly they run slower
than they theoretically could on that section because they're following
another train. And they may slow down to a crawl towards Hammersmith or
Acton Town as the platform is still occupied by the previous train (that
happened to me yesterday). So there's little or no scope to catch up if
"they're running late".