"Paul Scott" wrote in
:

Er.. you haven't been following why the NLL closure is taking place at
all, have you, even living in Canning Town! I gues you won't have
taken part in the consultation process.....

No, I never knew anything about the closure until it was all agreed. I'd
have loved to have been consulted!

Canning Town NLL platforms & Straftford platforms 1 &2 become DLR
platforms - that's the whole point of the NLL closures.....

Shame. Would have been nice to have lobbied for a Canning Town stop on
Crossrail ;-)

But more to the point, WHY?

The good thing about the DLR where it is at the moment, is if I am going
into town, I stand just at the bottom of the escalators to the DLR where
I can see how long for the next DLR and whether it's going to Tower
Gateway or Bank. Depending on whether one of them, or the JLE, comes
first, I take it. Going from Canning Town to Kings Cross, it's slightly
quicker to take the DLR to Bank and change to the Northern Line, but if
there's a JLE in 1 minute and a Bank train in 7, it's not worth it.

It's quite useful to hover in this limbo with easy access to either
platform. So why move the DLR to the NLL platform at Canning Town?

Not to mention the extra expense that this reburbishment will entail,
and the necessary downtime.

Not to mention the fact that the current DLL platform is completely
accessible whereas the future one on the current NLL platform is not
(yet).

Oh well, they had their consultation and I wasn't asked, so I guess it's
too late now.

If I were asked, I would say:

REASON FOR KEEPING IT AS IT IS:
* easy for customers to stand in a spot and choose the first service
into town
* totally accessible for wheelchairs already
* no need to close for refurbishments
* keeps current NLL platforms available for another use (Crossrail,
lol... or anything the future may bring)

Of course, I wouldn't have closed this part of the NLL in the first
place...

REASON FOR CHANGING IT...
Can't see any at present.


I guess what's done is done.

But who do I lobby for a nice, big, clear, dot-matrix display in the
Canning Town ticket hall giving the details for the next train into
town.

Because LUL and DLR are separate, there's not a lot of talking among
them. They want you to touch your PAYG Oyster in on the platform at Bank
for example, even if you entered the gates somewhere on the system. The
"GOOD SERVICE" boards you see at station entrances don't mention DLR.

So I'm not holding out many hopes for a nice combined DLR/JLE board, as
soon as you go through the ticket barrier, showing which westbound train
- JLE or DLR - is coming first, before needing to go up any escalators
(or stairs).

But maybe could they at the very least have two at this point, one for
DLR one for JLE, with the minutes to the next train? It would be a small
concession, after royally screwing us Newhamites around with what is
surely an unnecessary aesthetic change to a system that worked pretty
damn well.

Expecting the usual torrents of abuse from some UTL know-alls here...
please remember, I'm just a punter not an expert or an employee. And, I
add, a punter who was never consulted on jack diddly.