Tristán White wrote:
I agree with you 100%. Though word of warning, when I made this comment
here a few months back I got flamed to buggery :-)) The
"Slitherlink" doesn't appear to have too many fans on UTL for some
reason.

I'm not a fan of it mainly because it's so run-down, dirty and
obviously uncared for. Had TfL taken over the NLL early on and cleaned
it up, I'll bet there would be more people wondering why the NLL was
being replaced.


The worse thing is that it's going to take a while for the Stratford to
City Airport DLR to be completed, meaning that for those living near eg
Hackney Central, they would need to get the Silverlink to Stratford, the
Jubilee to Canning Town and the DLR to City Airport.

This is what I don't understand - you (and others) keep going on about
how everyone on this part of the NLL wants to go to and from Hackney.
Why?!?

I would have thought that people living in this area would only want to
go as far as Stratford, or west to Canary Wharf and Poplar, or even to
Bank. I'm genuinely curious as to why you feel that there are
signficant flows to and from Hackney (or further) along this part of
the NLL.


Personally, as a local resident, I'd have liked them improve the
Silverlink service throughout the entire line (which they're going to
be doing anyway between Richmond and Stratford) and dispense with the
DLR idea from Stratford to Canning Town altogether.

I partially agree with this, but only because I'm not sure that the
three new stations being put in on the DLR route are going to prevent
it from duplicating the Jubilee between Canning Town and Stratford.

But you should also keep in mind that this link also allows the service
to City Airport and Beckton (and later Woolwich) to be substantially
enhanced - right now both services are constrained by the junctions at
Poplar and the double track section between Poplar and Canning Town. By
replacing the NLL with a DLR route to Stratford International, at a
bare minimum both branches will get double the number of trains they
currently do. This, at least, is one of the reasons why building this
project is a good idea.


(a) it's not needed what with the Jubilee and the Silverlink, and West
Ham underground station serves the population well enough re those who
live on eg Abbey Road.

Yet the lack of NLL trains means that everyone takes the Jubilee, which
fills it up and overloads it. Having the parallel route might help
relieve the Jubilee of local traffic, allowing it to carry
longer-distance traffic into Docklands and beyond.


(b) by not building it, and simply having more trains on the Silverlink,
people will not have to change trains if going from eg Canning Town to
Camden, or Hackney to Silvertown (City Airport). Or rather, they CAN
change in Canning Town to the DLR (providing they don't have a bike).
And there will be no "downtime".

Again, I am genuinely curious as to whether or not there really are
people doing these types of journeys, and if so, if there are enough of
them that replacing the NLL with the DLR will force them to change
modes.


Changing trains with luggage isn't always a good idea anyway.

That could be said for any interchange.