Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Dave Arquati wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Dave Arquati wrote:

John Rowland wrote:

"Adrian Auer-Hudson" wrote in message
glegroups.com...

What would it take to make at least one of these, GC and Piccadilly
Line, pairs into an interchange station?

The addition of an NR symbol to the tube map! The Sudbury Hill
stations are certainly very close.

The philosophy of "we don't need to stop the Chilterns there because
the tubes stop there" is certainly very strange

What sort of demand do you envisage for interchange between Chiltern and
Piccadilly at Sudbury? I use South Ruislip from time to time and the
interchange demand appears to be poor at best.

It's not about the interchange, it's about people wanting to get into town
quickly: it's 17 minutes to Marylebone by train, or 27 to Earl's Court by
tube.

Depending on how you look at it, of course, that's either only 10 minutes
or a whopping 60% longer.

A Chiltern service hourly, or a Piccadilly service every 10 minutes.
Theoretical average waiting times 30 min and 5 min respectively - 17+30
minutes to Marylebone, or 27+5 minutes to Earl's Court?

Dave, there's this wonderful thing called a 'time-table', which, for the
big railway, tells you when trains are going to turn up (roughly), so you
can get yourself down to the station at just the right time to catch them.
Barely any waiting necessary - it's genius! I imagine they'll have them
for other things one day, like aeroplanes perhaps.

Ooh, sarcasm... :-) I'm pretty good with timetables... but that doesn't
negate the point that if I live in Sudbury and want to leave *now* for
central London, my journey is a choice between frequent Picc services
where I can turn up at the station when I like, and infrequent Chiltern
ones which are only useful if they happen to be going at the time I want
to go.

It would be extremely foolish to turn up at Sudbury Hill Harrow in this
weather and pray for a train :-)

On the other hand, I trust Chiltern much much more to run to their
hourly timetable than I trust trains on the Piccadilly branch to appear
every ten minutes!

Also, frequency is the central point of John's criticism - more trains
should stop at these stations, then the fast journey to London wouldn't be
crippled by aeons-long waits! I don't know much about the Chiltern
services, but i should imagine there are enough trains that you could get
4 or even 6 tph at these stations.

Really don't think there is any demand - 12tph total to the Sudbury area
would probably be a gross oversupply. Better to let Chiltern concentrate
on what they're good at, which is an exemplary service to Bucks stations.

There is then the pathing problem, though, which is probably the real
reason these stations don't get more trains. If some four-tracking could
be provided, that would be lovely, but i have no idea if it could; it
probably wouldn't be cost-effective anyway.

The Ruislips are 3-tracked already, mostly for freight purposes I think.

Of course, it also depends where you are going.


True. This is where Marylebone is a very weak link; you can either get on
the Bakerloo if you happen to want to go somewhere it goes, or walk to
Baker Street (well, or take the tube to Baker Street, but i don't think
it's any faster), so actually getting to a destination from a Chiltern
train takes disproportionately long.

It's only worth taking the Tube to Baker St to catch a Jubilee across
the platform, and even then it's a bit spurious.


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London