London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

LUL was pretty poor this morning due to overrunning engineering on the
Piccadilly near Barons Court - no trains between Hammersmith and Hyde
Park Corner, with trains from Heathrow being turned around at
Northfields, Acton Town and Hammersmith - I was dumped at Northfields,
took the next train which took about 20 minutes to get to Acton Town,
where we could finally change to the District - also going very slowly
due to all the Piccadilly people trying to get on and blocking the
doors. Two hours from LHR to Victoria, standing all the way of course.
On the other hand, I flew in from the US where I had all the familiar
problems of subway stations without ticket offices, only machines that
don't take cards (especially foreign ones), only give USD5 change, and
reject most of the dollar bills you feed in. Once you get in, the
systems generally run pretty well.
Tim

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

On 28 Apr 2009 09:46:34 GMT, Huge wrote:

You've obviously never waited for a Circle Line train at Monument.

To be fair, the issues with the Circle Line are well known, and it
will be interesting to see how much it improves with the coming of the
"teacup" in December.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

Clive wrote on 28 April 2009 16:42:41 ...
In message
,
Alex writes
If they were to rate architecture and general impressiveness of
appearance - then Moscow Metro would probably win. But as a transport
service it certainly lags behind.

I found the Moscow Metro a curious setup, the trains seemed old but all
had rheostatic braking, and I didn't like the juice rail right under the
platform instead of furthest away. Paris has stations too close together
and their rubber tyre stock can throw you off balance when braking, like
Ligne 1 at Les Halles, the train brakes, enters the station then
accelerates then brakes suddenly to a halt.

In my experience the acceleration/deceleration of the rubber-tyred
trains is no worse than the Central Line, and your description of
arriving at Les Halles (it's Line 4 by the way) sounds just like the
Victoria Line.

--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:

On 28 Apr 2009 09:46:34 GMT, Huge wrote:

You've obviously never waited for a Circle Line train at Monument.

To be fair, the issues with the Circle Line are well known, and it
will be interesting to see how much it improves with the coming of the
"teacup" in December.

Those changes will just make it useless for most of the journeys I
currently make on it because there will be no service through Edgware Road
between North and West sides of the Circle.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

On Apr 28, 8:26*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009, John Rowland wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

Barcelona's was fine when i was there several years ago, but quite like
Rome, ie nothing exciting. The fact that the network also includes
funiculars and cable-cars is rather excellent, though!

Maybe we should campaign for some in London, up Gants Hill, maybe.

There was a semi-serious proposal for one in Chatham or something, wasn't
there?

Barcelona's has its middle stop at the summit of a mighty tower:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=barc...://bacn.me/37l

Perhaps the Post Office Tower could be pressed into service? The line
could run from Primrose Hill to the GPO, then across the river to the Eye..


Dunno about Chatham, but there was semi-serious talk of a cable car
linking Covent Garden with the South Bank - I've just goggled for it
and found this Indy article from 1995:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...y-1585424.html

It was mooted as a potential Millennium project. It would seem that
this idea lost out to the Hungerford footbridges, aka the Golden
Jubilee Bridges, which were a Millennium project (i.e. funded by the
Millennium Commission), and which provide a far superior route across
the Thames in comparison to the old footbridge on the downriver side
of the railway bridge.

I'm a bit hazy on the details, but I'm not sure these were always
destined to carry the "Golden Jubilee [Bridges]" moniker - however
construction was delayed in part because of concerns about foundations
hitting the Bakerloo line tunnels just under the river bed (were these
not also reinforced around this time?). Whether there was ever a
serious estimated completion date of late 1999 or 2000 I don't know,
but if so the whole thing certainly slipped substantially early on.

I would love for there to be a cable car between Covent Garden and the
South Bank, but being brutally honest I have to say the new Hungerford
bridges are rather more useful overall, and are also rather splendid
at that. They do quite a good job in opening up the South Bank to norf-
of-the-river central London, at least in comparison to their
uninviting and unexciting predecessor. And I rather suspect that the
Millennium Wheel has already taken up the slot for the theme-park ride
already, at least in this part of town.

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:42:41 +0100, Clive wrote:

New York, (where every car
is both a power car and driving car) can be confusing and has a habit of
missing stations unless you're very careful, I've had to walk back the
full length of Central Park before now.

You do realize that you could have just transferred to a local going back
in the other direction to reach your desired stop.

If you can figure out the Metropolitan line, New York's easy. At least
we give our locals and expresses different names (in most cases).

Incidentally, not every car is a driving car, if I understand your
terminology correctly. In the past, most of our rolling stock has
consisted of either single cars or married pairs, but the last of the
married pairs are in the process of retirement as we speak, and most of
the newer cars are linked into half-train-length units (four 60-foot
cars, four 75-foot cars, five 60-foot cars, or five 51-foot cars,
depending on the line). Except for the five-car R62/R62A units and the
four-car R68/R68A units, which were built as singles and "unitized" in
the 90's, only the end cars (called A cars) have cabs; it is impossible
to operate the train or the doors from the middle (B) cars. A handful of
R62A and R68 singles will remain, to handle a few special cases - the 7
train runs 11-car trains (generally one five-car unit plus six single
R62A's), the 42 St shuttle runs two 3-car trains and one 4-car train (all
R62A singles), and the the Franklin Av shuttle runs two 2-car trains of
R68's.

But that's enough New York car trivia for today.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:21:11 +0100, Ian Jelf
wrote:

In message , writes
On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:33:41 +0100
Paul Corfield wrote:

SNIP
I was in Brussels last year a couple of times. The metro seemed quite
tidy to me though the information was woeful. We ended up going in the
wrong direction on one of the underground tram lines because trying to
decode the rats nest system map for the centre was a nightmare.

SNIP
Brussels' metro system is not very intuitive at all. It seems they have
just completed their circle line so goodness knows how it runs now. I
prefer the old traditional street tramway sections in Brussels but I
understand that a fair slice of them have gone and been replaced by the
tunnel sections that were built but not put into use for many years.
Only in Belgium could they spend a fortune on tunnels and then not use
them.

Did I hear the word "Kingsway" echoing in the distance??

DW down under

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

In message , DW downunder
writes

"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:21:11 +0100, Ian Jelf
wrote:

In message , writes
On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:33:41 +0100
Paul Corfield wrote:

SNIP
I was in Brussels last year a couple of times. The metro seemed quite
tidy to me though the information was woeful. We ended up going in the
wrong direction on one of the underground tram lines because trying to
decode the rats nest system map for the centre was a nightmare.

SNIP
Brussels' metro system is not very intuitive at all. It seems they have
just completed their circle line so goodness knows how it runs now. I
prefer the old traditional street tramway sections in Brussels but I
understand that a fair slice of them have gone and been replaced by the
tunnel sections that were built but not put into use for many years.
Only in Belgium could they spend a fortune on tunnels and then not use
them.

Did I hear the word "Kingsway" echoing in the distance??

Brussels is in some respects like Kingsway on acid!

(Never thought I'd type *that* sentence.)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

London Underground 'best metro in Europe'
 

In article ,
(James Farrar) wrote:

wrote in
:

Those changes will just make it useless for most of the journeys
I currently make on it because there will be no service through
Edgware Road between North and West sides of the Circle.

Really? You've never told us that before.

Yes I did. See the limited steps discussion for King's Cross - East
Putney journeys.

--
Colin Rosenstiel