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)