"Morton" wrote in message
...
Just come back from Paris for a couple of days and had my first metro
experience. A few comments:

A lot snipped

4. I did like the cross-city trains (RER) in Paris. Double-decker trains
were impressive. I do hope that cross-rail does this.

The RER double-deckers are good for shifting more people but they are a
bu**er to get on and off. The vestibules tend to get extremely crowded with
people who don't want to go up or down the stairs to the seating areas.
I have lived in the London area all my life and never been mugged or been
subjected to a pickpocket on the London Underground network. On my very
first visit to Paris, however, I was the subject of a two-man pickpocket
attempt and I understand that pickpocketing has been a serious problem on
the Metro.
The complexity of the system, particularly the parts which the passenger
doesn't normally see, is fascinating and I would love to have some videos of
cabrides showing all the hidden sidings, etc.
Cheerz,
Baz

Morton wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 30 Oct 2004:

Shame. I've seen double-decker trains in Paris and Amsterdam now and it's
obviously much better than what we have in London. Why cant we bite the
bullet and make a transport system that thinks ahead?

This would involve joined-up thinking, something which our transport PTB
have *never* been capable of. I don't just mean the present moguls,
either - I remember, as a child, how often down trains from London were
timed to just miss the bus, so one had a half-hour wait for the next
one.... and so on.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 26 September 2004

In article ,
Morton writes
I may be wrong but I think London Underground is extremely fool proof. As
long as people can distinguish North from South, East from West. LUL make
the signage 'really ****ing obvious'.

I don't entirely agree, especially with the Circle Line. Not long ago I
arrived at Liverpool St somewhat tired, and getting down to the Circle
Line saw that the directions were marked as "Eastbound" and "Westbound"
and was momentarily confused. Most tube maps show Liverpool St as the
extreme eastern end, with the line running north-south, so how is the
poor foreigner to work out which way is clockwise and which
anti-clockwise? If only they used those terms all every Circle Line
station all would be much clearer.

Another case: take the Northern Line northbound from Kings Cross one
stop, switch to the Victoria Line and take it one stop again northbound:
where do you end up? Back at Kings Cross.

Also I recall seeing several stations where the two opposite directions
are called "Westbound" and "Northbound". There may be good reasons for
these, but they are guaranteed to confuse. The Paris system of naming
directions by the terminal stations isn't at all bad, in my opinion.


--
Clive Page

Clive Page wrote:
In article ,
Morton writes
I may be wrong but I think London Underground is extremely fool
proof. As long as people can distinguish North from South, East
from West. LUL make the signage 'really ****ing obvious'.

I don't entirely agree, especially with the Circle Line. Not long
ago I arrived at Liverpool St somewhat tired, and getting down to
the Circle Line saw that the directions were marked as "Eastbound"
and "Westbound" and was momentarily confused. Most tube maps show
Liverpool St as the extreme eastern end, with the line running
north-south, so how is the poor foreigner to work out which way is
clockwise and which anti-clockwise? If only they used those terms
all every Circle Line station all would be much clearer.

Similarly at High Street Kensington, where the line runs north-south,
but station announcements sometimes refer to a "westbound Circle Line
train", meaning (I think) one that is going south and then east. The
directions are based on the District Line trains which share the same
tracks but go south, then west.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"Marratxi" wrote:

4. I did like the cross-city trains (RER) in Paris. Double-decker trains
were impressive. I do hope that cross-rail does this.

The RER double-deckers are good for shifting more people but they are a
bu**er to get on and off. The vestibules tend to get extremely crowded
with
people who don't want to go up or down the stairs to the seating areas.

This certainly is a problem in doubledecker trains. It is not possible to
have more doors than the ones above the bogies at the end of the carriages
(it takes way to much space to make doors + stairs in the middle; it would
cancel out the gain of having a doubledecker). Therefore, twice as many
people have to use fewer doors than in an ordinary metro-like train.
Therefore, I think doubledeckers are not very suited to railway lines with
many stops and little distance between stops.

Here in the Netherlands, doubledeckers have been in use for almost 20 years
now. They are mainly in use on the middle-distance commuter lines between
the big cities and the more distant commuter towns (Amsterdam-Alme (25
km, Amsterdam-Amersfoort: 40 km etc) where many people get on the train at
the starting point and the trains get gradually emptier. For this type of
services, doubledeckers are perfectly suited.

In the 1990s. Dutch doubledeckers have been tested in the Munich S-Bahn
(comparable to the railway network in South-London or the RER in Paris.
Somewhere between metro and train). S-Bahn services travel between the
busiest point in Munich and surroundings of the city and people usually
travel short distances (in the city, at least). This means many people go on
and off the train on most stations in the city. The tests showed that
doubledeckers weren't suited because of a lack of doors.

regards,
hgrm

"Han Monsees" wrote in message
...

"Marratxi" wrote:

The RER double-deckers are good for shifting more people but they are a
bu**er to get on and off. The vestibules tend to get extremely crowded
with
people who don't want to go up or down the stairs to the seating areas.

This certainly is a problem in doubledecker trains. It is not possible to
have more doors than the ones above the bogies at the end of the carriages
(it takes way to much space to make doors + stairs in the middle; it would
cancel out the gain of having a doubledecker). Therefore, twice as many
people have to use fewer doors than in an ordinary metro-like train.
Therefore, I think doubledeckers are not very suited to railway lines with
many stops and little distance between stops.

That was similar to the problem that was encountered with the BR Southern
Region double-deckers (4001 and 4002), when they were tested on the suburban
services on the Dartford lines (in addition to the appallingly cramped
conditions required to fit within the British loading gauge). Although there
were additional doors between the vehicle ends, the additional time taken by
passengers from the upper decks detraining cancelled out the benefits.

"Richard J." wrote in message
...

Similarly at High Street Kensington, where the line runs north-south,
but station announcements sometimes refer to a "westbound Circle Line
train", meaning (I think) one that is going south and then east. The
directions are based on the District Line trains which share the same
tracks but go south, then west.

Yet, bizarrely, out of the public arena we refer to Circle trains as either
clockwise/anticlockwise or Inner Rail/Outer Rail!

Han Monsees:
This certainly is a problem in doubledecker trains. It is not possible
to have more doors than the ones above the bogies at the end of the
carriages (it takes way [too] much space to make doors + stairs in the
middle; it would cancel out the gain of having a doubledecker). ...

Paris does in fact have some double-decker RER trains with an additional
set of doors in mid-car. I have here a La Vie du Rail special from 1999
about the then new RER Line E (also called Eole), and here's a free
translation of one section of it:

# Rolling stock specifically adapted to the operator's demands
# ------------------------------------------------------------
#
# But with the MI2N rolling stock, ALSTOM (leader of an industrial
# group formed with ANF-Bombardier) has broken a sigificant barrier
# in favor of client satisfaction. The builder has learned to develop
# and product a specific stock conforming 100% to the requirements of
# the two customers ordering the MI2N trains. The RATP, confronted
# by operational constraints related to station dwell times, had in
# fact made it a non-negotiable requirement to install three large
# doors per car. The objective was to speed loading and unloading,
# and thus the dwell times of the trains in the stations. 14 trainsets
# are currently being successfully used on RER line A. The SNCF, for
# its part, faced with the increasing growth of the daily migrations
# in the Ile-de-France, had to find rolling stock with the greatest
# possible capacity while assuring improved comfort.
#
# The bet was won. A double MI2N set offers the capacity to load or
# unload 1,100 people in 50 seconds, thanks to the three doors per
# car, each providing an opening 2 m wide. And it can carry close to
# 3,000 riders. Such performance, never achieved by other stock,
# makes Eole a unique product in the world, a reference point on the
# battlements of Mass Transit. In peak hours, MI2N trains can provide
# the capacity to transport 90,000 passengers per hour in each direction.
# Such levels of traffic permit the operator to more effectively
# amortize the infrastructure cost.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "We don't use clubs; they weren't invented here.
| We use rocks." -- David Keldsen

There is also the matter of some of the station names being so long
and similar that they get abbreviated on signs, in ways that may not
be obvious to foreigners. I don't remember any real examples offhand,
but it wouldn't surprise me to see "Montreuil" used instead of "Mairie
de Montreuil" to mean eastbound on line 9, say. One might easily think
that was a different station, maybe on a different line; and an
English-speaker might also think that "Mairie" was the important word,
since it comes first, and would never be omitted in abbreviating.

That one can go one worse - if there's a definite article involved.
Mairie des Lilas station is in (and is often shortened to) Les Lilas.

2. Signs on the Metro are much inferior to the Underground. I've
been in London for 4 years now so perhaps am used to the
Underground but I felt the Metro's signage was really confusing and
incomplete.

In what way did you feel the signage was incomplete?

I may be wrong but I think London Underground is extremely fool proof. As
long as people can distinguish North from South, East from West. LUL make
the signage 'really ****ing obvious'. The line colours, North V South, East
v West means I could jump onto an unfamiliar station and flow through it
without much brain power. At various stations in Paris, signs would point to
different lines, I'd walk via the directions then come to an intersection
but less obvious pointers. I'd wander around for a few minutes until I catch
sight of a poor sign then move on. The Underground has flow. The Metro
doesnt.

You're just used to LU. Try riding the Northern (Charing X) Line
Southbound and getting off at Waterloo. Try following the signs to the
exit (they rather peter out - you're left deducing it by the fact that
you don't want to go to the bloody Jubilee Line, which there are too
many signs towards). If you want even more of a laugh, try finding the
subway under the main line platforms or the Waterloo & City Line.

Oh, and which way does the Piccadilly Line run? Get on an eastbound
train at Leicester Sq, ride two stops and you're on a northbound
train.

Paris has perfect flow if you know what you're doing (and they haven't
recast the bloody timetable in the intervening period - I waited a
good 10 minutes for an Austerlitz bound train at Pte d'Auteuil one
time before realising that all trains now went to Boulogne). Some
things aren't intuitive. If you arrive by TGV at Montparnasse and want
to go to CDG Airport, most people would look at the map, take the 4 to
St-Michel or Châtelet, then transfer to line B. For a start the RER's
nearer Halles than Châtelet (and don't even think about St-Michel),
but why walk all that way to line 4 (and it IS a VERY long way to
lines 4 and 12 at Montparnasse) only to sit on a slow packed train
anyway. The answer is, if you didn't know, line 6 towards Nation,
changing at Denfert-Rochereau onto the RER.