On Wed, 25 May 2005, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

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.

Maybe, but the service on the H&C is frankly poor. Many times when I've
had to travel Euston Square to Stepney Green I've found it impossible to
catch a through service and instead wind up having to change two or
three times using the Circle/Met (sometimes both if one stops at
Moorgate), H&C and District.

That's true - a friend of mine used to live in Stepney Green, and visiting
her after work, which in my case is near Euston Square, was no fun. Having
the off-peak H&C end at Whitechapel doesn't help with this, either.

This is not a reason to further impede interchange, though, it's a reason
to improve the service - ramping up the H&C frequency, or swapping the
eastern ends of the H&C and Metropolitan lines, would be a start. The
tangele of flat junctions round there doesn't help, of course; maybe we
should grade them all while we've got the spades out .

An integrated Aldgate station would usually allow me a single
interchange rather than perpetually catching trains for two stops at a
time on a through route.

The only thing it would allow that you can't do now is to change from Met
to District; you can do Circle - H&C at Liverpool Street (or you could
have waited for an H&C at Euston Square), Circle - District at Tower
Hill, and H&C - District (to get past Whitechapel off-peak) at Aldgate
East. My suggestion for Tower Hill would enable the Met - District
change, and brutal suppression of Moorgate short-stoppers and extension of
the H&C beyond Whitechapel off-peak, should patch the other issues.

That said, if the integration can be done without destroying the single
eastbound platform, say by building a better foot tunnel, that's fine by
me. Perhaps what we need is three platforms, one on the outbound line just
beyond each of the three corners of the triangle (so there's only one
platform per destination), connected by huge foot tunnels. Or not.

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.

Are the through platforms at Aldgate long enough to support Met trains?
Otherwise I'm inclined to agree with this.

I haven't been there in ages, but from my memory of looking at a track
map, i think the platforms are islands, with the through faces a few feet
away from the terminal ones, and presumably the same length, BICBW.

tom

--
The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will be live.