Paul Corfield wrote:

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:16:56 -0800 (PST), Mizter T
wrote:

On 18 Feb, 15:07, " wrote:
Anyone wants to share his/her experience with the recent problems on
the Jubilee line? I just had a very bad day this morning again at the
Canning Town station. When I got there this morning, the next train
wasn't there until another 10 minutes. And of course, I could not get
on to a train until another next 2 trains as they were fully packed.
So in total, I waited for almost 18 mins on the platform! This is
really an unacceptable service.


I'm pretty sure I would have joined the heaving masses in the first
train, or maybe just waited for the second, but not beyond that. Did
you go to one end of the platform - the ends of the train are often
less packed. Out of interest which way were you going? I shall guess
it was westwards towards Canary Wharf/ central London...

I don't think you would have done. Assuming it was the rush hour then it
isn't that easy to get on a w/b train at Canning Town on a normal
headway. It would have been impossible with a ten minute gap in the
service. The flows at Stratford are just never ending - goodness knows
what it'll be like once all of the improved services are in place!

I attended what is called the Ops Committee last week and it was on the
Jubilee Line. The Line General Manager showed two graphs which showed
the growth in traffic, in both directions in the peak, over the last two
years. All of the 7th car capacity increase has been eaten up. The
extent of growth is quite amazing.


I'm a little out of date, but evidently out of date enough to not have
appreciated quite how hectic it now gets at Stratford in the morning.
In which case I offer my apols to the OP for what I implied.

That said the alleged upcoming economic supercrash could sort out this
problem and turn Canary Wharf into a ghost town. As much as I might
like to think that the megabanks might deserve this for their wanton
recklessness and unceasing ability to build bigger and bigger houses
made from cards, a supercrash is not really something most of us would
wish for. Nonetheless an economic downturn could have profound effects
on the transport network, something I'm sure you're only too well
aware of.

Still, it's interesting to ponder just how successful the eastern end
of the JLE is compared to the 'ghost train' predictions that some
seemed to have at the time - there's at least one thread buried in the
archives of utl where this opinion was quite forcefully expressed.

If the sky doesn't cave in then it'll be interesting to see how well
the Jubilee copes with the ELLX, what with the interchange at Canada
Water. Obviously some Docklands bound traffic will switch to using
Canada Water as opposed to London Bridge to interchange between the
lines, but the short hop from there under the Thames could get a
little intimate.


The Jubilee Line has had a rough few months and an awful lot of work is
being done to get it back to normal. This was all said in front of Tim
O'Toole so you can rest assured he will want to see it all delivered.

Glad to here it, and I'm sure the OP will be too.