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Mill Hill East
Dave Arquati wrote: MIG wrote: Dave Arquati wrote: MIG wrote: Dave Arquati wrote: MIG wrote: John B wrote: Kev wrote: This does sound like the thin end of the wedge. Ask people who used to use the Watford Junc to Broad St (Liverpool St) and Watford to Croxley service what they think of this. OK, so in the first case a poor frequency service has been replaced partly with the current NLL clockface 4tph timetable (set for further improvements under TfL Rail) and will be replaced further with the ELLX between Dalston and Shoreditch. In the second case, the link is set to be rebuilt with more useful connections. During London's decades of stagnation and decline, many useful rail links were short-sightedly destroyed. The ideological antipathy of a progression of governments and transport ministers towards public transport didn't help matters. However, it's now clear that the default mode for public transport in London is one of expansion not contraction. Since Mill Hill East isn't an Aldwych or an Ongar but somewhere with decent loadings, it would therefore be hard to see why anyone would choose to close it... But once it loses the through service it will have poor loadings. Aldwych is right in the centre of London, but that didn't save it. I don't suppose for a moment it would have closed if it had a through service (or why not close Temple, St Pauls or Chancery Lane?). Not sure of the logic here - St Paul's and Chancery Lane are extremely busy during the week. I was mentioning non-interchange stations that have a through service, in the same general area as Aldwych, which didn't, and wasn't as busy. I'm suggesting that the lack of through service reduced demand for Aldwych rather than its location. As other posters have suggested, Aldwych was probably doomed from its birth. If Aldwych were reopened today with through services to Cockfosters (which in itself is physically difficult), I think demand would still be poor for two reasons: 1. The frequency with which Aldwych could be served would be limited by capacity considerations on the rest of the line (it's not as though you can just slot extra trains in the timetable between Holborn and Arnos Grove, and the existing trains are busy with people heading to and from places like Piccadilly Circus). In turn, sending trains to Aldwych would pose reliability problems. 2. Even if served by a relatively high frequency, it's just too near other Piccadilly stations to be particularly useful - even Holborn is only a few minutes' walk away, and Covent Garden is much more useful for the key theatre-going market. I think we are both saying that the inevitable poor service made the station unattractive. The poor service at Alwych follows from it being on a stub with necessarily either a shuttle or infrequent through service. A station on an imaginary through line at that location might well have been popular. I think we're getting the concepts of through *services* and through *lines* muddled up here. I was saying that a through *service* to Aldwych would have never have been able to attract high levels of demand. A through *line* is an entirely different kettle of fish. I don't really see why the distinction matters in this regard. If you can get on at a station near where you are and there is a frequent service that goes a long way without changing after one stop, the service is more attractive than if you always have to change after one stop or if the service is infrequent. You have explained why the service from Aldwych is inevitably unattractive, relating to the nature of the branch. The unattractiveness of the service makes the station unpopular, whatever the reason. The proposed changes will go a long way towards making Mill Hill East unpopular as well, always having to change trains after one stop and cross over a bridge (unless there is going to be a reversing manoeuvre, which certainly won't help reliability). Once people stop using it in the off-peak, there will be an excuse to cut it to peak only. Once it's peak only, people will drive to Finchley Central so that they can get home if they happen to stay late after work, and then MHE will close. It's a familiar pattern. |
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