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Old November 17th 05, 04:49 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Paul Corfield Paul Corfield is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,995
Default TfL Bottleneck Plan

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:12:11 -0000, "londoncityslicker"
wrote:


"Kev" wrote in message
oups.com...
This was in the Metro taday and I think was in the Standard yesterday.
Just wondered what the Harrow-Rickmansworth stopping patterns refers
to. I know that all fast Met line trains have to cross over the slow
lines at Harrow on the Hill but I can't see what other bottleneck there
is.
It also describes Willesden as a bottleneck. What are they referring to
here?
Kevin


Tfl want to get control of National Rail in London.


Not exactly a secret though is it?

By highlighting all the problems (which they could've done by just reading
this NG) they are raising the profile of TfL.


All organisations jostle for position over big issues like this. The
rail industry reps weren't backwards in coming forwards to defend their
position. The contrast is that the rail industry players talk a lot and
produce very little and yet TfL are at least proposing to do something
on a big scale to make things better. The only rail franchises I have
any time for in terms of their "vision" are GNER, Virgin and Chiltern.
The rest are a waste of space in terms of any real innovation.

In reality though, there is no funding for the improvements, doing the lot
will cost billions.


Yes - and? Are you saying that London and the South East be condemned
to yet more decades of ever worsening rail congestion and delays? Money
*has* to be spent to improve matters. There are no short cuts left -
all the easy stuff to improve reliability has been squeezed out of all
of the franchises.

To my mind all TfL are doing is applying the basic DLR model to other
parts of the rail network - tackle capacity issues with a blend of
service pattern changes, signal enhancement, longer trains, amended
infrastructure and in some cases extensions where they can be justified.
Apart from the odd minor moan I don't read about a lot of problems with
the DLR operation. This is in spite of the fact that the day to say
operation is franchised, the core network is owned in the public sector
and two extensions are effectively PPPs with a third under construction
on the same basis. Goes to show that these sorts of arrangements can be
made to work.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!