London Banter - View Single Post

MIG · March 11th 06, 12:40 AM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:
TfL at 17:37 are advising passengers to travel to Clapham Junction,
presumably from Victoria. No trains Waterloo-Clapham Junction.
Waterloo & City Line also suspended due to power failure after lightning
strike. Met & Jubilee suffering minor delays due to lightning strike at
Finchley Road.

I arrived at Waterloo today at about 1840. Trains about ten minutes
late, but no spectacular problems.

I arrived at Bank at around 18:30, and the whiteboard advised SWT
passengers to travel via tube to Wimbledon or Richmond. Apparently
things had started moving again at 18:07 though, and I got to stand on
the platform at Wimbledon an hour later watching trains that I could
have caught had the information been up to date, or even accurately
mentioning that Clapham Junction was still open, running straight
through.

It got me thinking, wouldn't it be a good investment by TFL to replace
all those whiteboards with centrally controlled electronic signboards
that do not rely on chinese whispers for the information to get to the
station staff, and do not rely on staff, who are probably overworked by
this stage answering questions from desparate commuters, having the
time to keep them up to date? I have seen some electronic versions so
maybe this is already happening, but I'm not sure if they're centrally
controlled.

Absolutely not, sorry. If information is provided by a person, with a
whiteboard marker or whatever, at least it's information. The garbage
spewed out by bug-ridden computer systems is not information. It's
just mindless response to various inputs whose complexities and
implications are not adequately predicted in the programs.