Thread: Arrrrrrrrgh
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Old November 20th 06, 10:40 AM posted to uk.transport.london
[email protected] bowroaduk@yahoo.com is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Feb 2005
Posts: 258
Default Arrrrrrrrgh


No there won't as there are special facilities built into the entire
system to deal with emergency situations. These have been enhanced to
add new functionality as part of the software developments to support
this change to pre-pay arrangements.


No it doesn't.

On Saturday there was a "one under" at Camden Town which, coupled with
planned engineering work, took out a major part of the Northern Line.
Despite the "software developments" Pauln refers to, it took 3 or 4
people around in the NOC working flat-out over 45 minutes to make the
necessary changes to gate settings at all the stations so-affected.

In fact since the NOC started "dry running" this procedure prior to
today's launch of capping etc it has been common for an incident to be
over before all such settings have managed to be applied, such is the
user-unfriendliness of the program. A classic comment yesterday from
someone at Prestige was that it wasn't the fault of their system, but
rather that it was now "being used too much"!!!

For example, a simple service suspension requires auto-continuation,
auto-completion and emergency bit (return all paper tickets) put on at
each termination point, each adjacent station on any line serving that
station and any other stations within walking distance but not directly
linked (i.e. Aldgate to Aldgate East, Bayswater to Queensway). In
addition settings have to be altered at all stations along the
suspended section too. Changes have to be applied and taken off
separately in most cases. Nor are these changes applied and removed at
the same times. Some settings must be applied imediately, some are
back-dated 3 hours before the incident commenced, some are removed 1
hour after the service resumes and/or the station reopens, others must
be left on for the seven following days!