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Signal Failure
On Feb 24, 2:19*am, john amber
wrote: I have travelled on metro systems all over the world and none, absolutely none, is anywhere near as utterly hopeless as London Transport. First of all, there is no such thing as London Transport, unless you're somehow managing to post through a time-warp from before the year 2000. Assuming you mean London Underground, have you *commuted to work* on metro systems all over the world? Until the answer's "yes", you can't compare them. IMX Paris, Sydney and Melbourne are as bad as London Underground for delays and general failures. Hong Kong is better. It is almost beyond belief that any transport system can be run so badly. And there is no shame. They just don't care. Customers are treated with contempt. Signals are forever failing. Why? They don't fail every day on other systems. Yes they do. I'd stake my life that *every* major commuter rail network has at least one signal failure every day (which, as discussed on other current threads, encompasses *all aspects of the signalling system*, not just red and green lights). If signals failed at Heathrow airport people would die and the airport would close. Not true. Again, signals *do* fail at LHR regularly, in the sense that ATC computers go down, aeroplanes' transponders break, and so on. We have very strict rules in place to minimise the chances that these failures will compromise passenger safety - precisely as we do on railways. London Transport staff are overpaid ( 40k to drive a train for 4 and a half days a week!) Why not apply, if you think it's such an awesome and easy job? and no one has any interest in providing a proper service or looking after the customers who pay them. What other organisation in the world performs so badly that they need to announce incessantly over their public address systems every time they are working as they should do? Most public transport systems - or at least, those which actually conduct research into what upsets and reassures passengers. LU's communication policy is based on serious research into passenger and group behaviour. I think most passengers would put up with a few months without LT if it meant that they could all be sacked and drivers replaced with automatic driverless trains which work perfectly well on the DLR. Close down *all of LU* for six months? How, precisely, do you anticipate people will get to work (clue: the roads, mainline railways and DLR are also all overloaded beyond capacity)? Or are you assuming that businesses in London will close down for six months? Even if that part of your scheme were viable: 1) the DLR was a purpose-built system designed with automatic train operation from the start. LU isn't. It would be possible in theory to convert the Central and Victoria lines as you suggest - for all the other lines, it would require an enormous, multi-billion-pound resignalling effort. Now, this is going to happen over the next 25 years - but not over the next six months. 2) DLR trains all have trained (sorry) operators on board. They get paid GBP33k a year. So your scheme saves a grant total of GBP7k per train operator. Woo! We should not put up with it. LT is expensive, inefficient incompetently run and a disgrace. It is a safe bet that they are already planning strikes during the Olympics because they know they can and they know we will all pay up. I'm fairly sure London Underground isn't planning strikes during the Olympics, except possibly planning on how to mitigate the effects of any such strikes. It is possible that some of LU's employees have a different attitude. -- John Band john at johnband dot org www.johnband.org |
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