On Fri, 20 May 2005, Chris Tolley wrote:

On 20 May 2005 01:34:22 -0700, lonelytraveller wrote:

One of the things I find strange about the tube is that they hardly
ever (i.e. everywhere except holborn) seem to attempt to correct the
lack of interchange between lines which cross each other

That's hardly fair. In the case of the last two lines built, Jubilee and
Victoria, it seems like a case of joining up the dots.

That's true, but Dr No Context is talking about improving connectivity
between existing lines, and he's right about that. The answer, of course,
is that the cost of the improvements would sadly be disproportionate to
the benefit they would bring. Except at Park Royal, apparently. The
ELL/Central opportunity at Shoreditch High Street is an example of this -
it was considered, and not found to be worth it, given that the extra stop
would delay travellers from the east as well.

I'd take issue with some of the suggestions, though, like Aldgate; the
current layout is like this:

---+-\
| \ # AE
A #| +---
| /
---+-/

Where lines are, er, lines, pluses are junctions, and # is a station; A is
Aldgate, AE is Aldgate East. Lonelytraveller doesn't like the A to AE
change, so he'd rather have:

---+-\
# | \
A #| +---
# | /
---+-/

Or something, so you can do it all at Aldgate. This, however, would be
awful for anyone who just wanted to head east - you'd have to choose
between two platforms and hope you picked the one with the first train,
whereas at present, you just have one. I'm not really sure who it would
make life easier for; the stations on either side provide easier changes
from the District and H&C to the Circle.

I don't think there's any way to arrange this so that everyone is happy.
Not just by building new platforms, at least; i did at one point work out
how to arrange a station at the junction of three lines so that there's
one platform per destination direction, but it was a bit complicated.

What i'd do, if we were going to dig up bits of the City, is rearrange
Tower Hill - possibly with an extra bit of track from Minories junction -
so that Metropolitan trains could terminate there instead of Aldgate. Oh,
and link the station up with Fenchurch Street and Tower Gateway properly
while i'm down there.

Many of the other suggestions are sound, though. I share his frustration
over Earl's Court - it (or the WLL, depending on how you look at it) is
just in the wrong place for interchange with the WLL (and concomitant
extermination of the Kenny O stub, which i find really irritating).

tom

--
20 Minutes into the Future