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Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
In message , at 08:20:32 on
Wed, 20 Sep 2017, Jarle Hammen Knudsen remarked: Exactly. It may be close to Leicester Square station underground, but Covent Garden station is nevertheless a busy station in its own right. And the surface route between them isn't direct or obvious. It looks pretty straight on Google maps along Cranbourn St and Long Acre, but I don't think I have walked that way when I've been in London. Perhaps because of the talcum powder? Joking apart, I've walked down there a hundred times, and that's without ever having lived or worked in the vicinity. -- Roland Perry |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:33:23 GMT
Recliner wrote: wrote: Its got to the point where its just painful to use in the mornings and unsurprisingly the vast majority of people bail out at Finsbury and get on the victoria line putting added strain on that. Why is it so slow and so unreliable with frequent train gaps of 5 or 6 minutes the rush hour? Trains? Drivers? Signalling? Dwell times? Stations too close together in the centre with too much stopping? All of the above? Here's an interesting article about how the Victoria line, with new automatic trains and signalling, achieves its very high frequency: https://www.londonreconnections.com/...aking-victoria frequent-metro-world/ Maybe, when the Piccadilly line also has state of the art trains and signalling, it will do the same. But it will still have a route with curvier tunnels and more stops than the much newer Victoria line, opened more than 60 years later. The picc only has sharp curves at holborn and kensington. The rest of the line is pretty straight with a long no stopping section between hammersmith and acton that should in theory allow drivers to catch up if they're running late. |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
wrote:
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:33:23 GMT Recliner wrote: wrote: Its got to the point where its just painful to use in the mornings and unsurprisingly the vast majority of people bail out at Finsbury and get on the victoria line putting added strain on that. Why is it so slow and so unreliable with frequent train gaps of 5 or 6 minutes the rush hour? Trains? Drivers? Signalling? Dwell times? Stations too close together in the centre with too much stopping? All of the above? Here's an interesting article about how the Victoria line, with new automatic trains and signalling, achieves its very high frequency: https://www.londonreconnections.com/...aking-victoria frequent-metro-world/ Maybe, when the Piccadilly line also has state of the art trains and signalling, it will do the same. But it will still have a route with curvier tunnels and more stops than the much newer Victoria line, opened more than 60 years later. The picc only has sharp curves at holborn and kensington. The rest of the line is pretty straight with a long no stopping section between hammersmith and acton that should in theory allow drivers to catch up if they're running late. Not really. They're scheduled to run fast on that section anyway, and the old signalling doesn't allow them to run closer. Mostly they run slower than they theoretically could on that section because they're following another train. And they may slow down to a crawl towards Hammersmith or Acton Town as the platform is still occupied by the previous train (that happened to me yesterday). So there's little or no scope to catch up if "they're running late". |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
wrote on 20 Sep 2017 at 09:41 ...
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:33:23 GMT Recliner wrote: wrote: Its got to the point where its just painful to use in the mornings and unsurprisingly the vast majority of people bail out at Finsbury and get on the victoria line putting added strain on that. Why is it so slow and so unreliable with frequent train gaps of 5 or 6 minutes the rush hour? Trains? Drivers? Signalling? Dwell times? Stations too close together in the centre with too much stopping? All of the above? Here's an interesting article about how the Victoria line, with new automatic trains and signalling, achieves its very high frequency: https://www.londonreconnections.com/...aking-victoria frequent-metro-world/ Maybe, when the Piccadilly line also has state of the art trains and signalling, it will do the same. But it will still have a route with curvier tunnels and more stops than the much newer Victoria line, opened more than 60 years later. The picc only has sharp curves at holborn and kensington. The rest of the line is pretty straight with a long no stopping section between hammersmith and acton that should in theory allow drivers to catch up if they're running late. How do you catch up if you're normally running at the 45mph limit for that section? In practice, if the service is running late, the westbound Picc trains often queue up to get into Acton Town. It's ironic that at a 4-platform station they manage to make it a bottleneck by changing drivers there and not always using the extra platform. -- Richard J. (to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address) |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
Richard J. wrote:
wrote on 20 Sep 2017 at 09:41 ... On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:33:23 GMT Recliner wrote: wrote: Its got to the point where its just painful to use in the mornings and unsurprisingly the vast majority of people bail out at Finsbury and get on the victoria line putting added strain on that. Why is it so slow and so unreliable with frequent train gaps of 5 or 6 minutes the rush hour? Trains? Drivers? Signalling? Dwell times? Stations too close together in the centre with too much stopping? All of the above? Here's an interesting article about how the Victoria line, with new automatic trains and signalling, achieves its very high frequency: https://www.londonreconnections.com/...aking-victoria frequent-metro-world/ Maybe, when the Piccadilly line also has state of the art trains and signalling, it will do the same. But it will still have a route with curvier tunnels and more stops than the much newer Victoria line, opened more than 60 years later. The picc only has sharp curves at holborn and kensington. The rest of the line is pretty straight with a long no stopping section between hammersmith and acton that should in theory allow drivers to catch up if they're running late. How do you catch up if you're normally running at the 45mph limit for that section? In practice, if the service is running late, the westbound Picc trains often queue up to get into Acton Town. It's ironic that at a 4-platform station they manage to make it a bottleneck by changing drivers there and not always using the extra platform. Northfields trains tend to use the westbound District platform 1; Rayners Lane trains use 1 or 2; and Heathrow trains normally use 2. |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 08:39:13 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote: In message , at 21:08:35 on Tue, 19 Sep 2017, Recliner remarked: I wonder why covent garden was spared? Its a small cramped station that can't really cope with evening crowds and its literally a 3-4 minute walk to leicester square. Its a bit of an anomoly IMO. IMO the explanation is lots of tourists, who support lots of shops and restaurants, who pay lots of business rates, add up to a good case not to make it harder for tourists to find Covent Garden (on the tube map) and get there. I suspect the opera house is more likely to be the reason. Covent Garden was still a fruit market when the other Picc stations closed. Not to mention the LT Museum — wouldn't it be embarrassing to close the nearest station to it? The museum opened in 1980, when were the closures of York Rd, Brompton Rd etc? Almost fifty years earlier I think. I was suggesting that it survived the 1990s closures partly for that reason. I dare say that there were suggestions to close it rather than replacing the lifts. Apart from Aldwych that closed for very different reasons, what others were shuttered up in the 90's? The Ongar branch closed on the same day as Aldwych. They could well have closed Covent Garden on the same day, had there been a desire to do so. The Ongar branch is the same kind of completely different closure as the 'Aldwych Branch'. There's no synergy whatsoever with closing just one intermediate station on a line that's still operating fully. The synergy is that they could have slipped it in to the closures list had they really wanted to close it. But they didn't. |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
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Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
In message , at 12:55:41 on
Wed, 20 Sep 2017, Recliner remarked: The Ongar branch is the same kind of completely different closure as the 'Aldwych Branch'. There's no synergy whatsoever with closing just one intermediate station on a line that's still operating fully. The synergy is that they could have slipped it in to the closures list had they really wanted to close it. But they didn't. You'll need to cite rather more about the process of closures to make that opinion stick. -- Roland Perry |
Why is the piccadilly line so slow?
On Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:30:02 +0100
"Richard J." wrote: wrote on 20 Sep 2017 at 09:41 ... is pretty straight with a long no stopping section between hammersmith and acton that should in theory allow drivers to catch up if they're running late. How do you catch up if you're normally running at the 45mph limit for that Except in my experience they don't. section? In practice, if the service is running late, the westbound Picc trains often queue up to get into Acton Town. It's ironic that at a 4-platform station they manage to make it a bottleneck by changing drivers there and not always using the extra platform. They manage that at arnos grove too. Its quite an achievement really to get something so simple so arse about face. I guess they just let the clockwork computer at earls court to do its thing and no one bothers to override it, easier to just let the line block up and read The Sun. -- Spud |
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