On Nov 27, 3:46 am, Steve Fitzgerald ] wrote:
In message
, MIG
writes

Does that mean that a train going from Oakwood to Cockfosters is
heading east?

Yes, sort of. It's heading west on the eastbound track. It's still an
eastbound train though.

Whatever your annoyance, I don't think the use of genuine compass
directions is worthy of criticism.

It's very important to know what everyone is talking about. That's
where (potentially) tragic incidents occur. The Piccadilly is an east -
west railway, regardless of the actual direction travelled.


That's fair enough in a safety-critical context between relevant
professionals. In normal conversation* involving lay-persons, and
also in an emergency communication between professionals and the
public, I think it could be very confusing to throw in technical terms
which happen to have a similar morphology to everyday terms, but with
an opposite meaning.

In a non-safety-critical context, the poster used an everyday term (he
didn't say northbound, but that the train headed north). There can't
be any doubt about what he meant (and which you disputed the truth of,
so must have understood).

Incidentally, it would seem like a good idea if another pair of terms
was used, on the lines of A and D ends, which are constant and don't
imply compass directions, and would be guaranteed to be unambiguous.

What does TfL do when a bus route is on a parallel road such that a
replacement bus heading east would be going the same way as a
westbound train? Do they refer to the railway direction, which might
be opposite to how the same driver refers to the direction on his/her
normal route along the same road?

*I know this isn't quite that.