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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2017 21:48:40 GMT
I'm serious, it's very inefficient, often long waits between trains, the first line to be suspended when there's trouble along its shared lines,and you often have to use other lines anyway. I think we can get rid of it!! Use the trains to create an enhanced Hammersmith and City Line, with a new branch, from Liverpool Street to terminate at Tower Hill, and a new District Line branch from Gloucester Rd to Edgware Rd and beyond, maybe terminating at Kings Cross. These two branches would cover the usefulness of the circle line.
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Post by ibus246 on Dec 12, 2017 22:14:49 GMT
I'm serious, it's very inefficient, often long waits between trains, the first line to be suspended when there's trouble along its shared lines,and you often have to use other lines anyway. I think we can get rid of it!! Use the trains to create an enhanced Hammersmith and City Line, with a new branch, from Liverpool Street to terminate at Tower Hill, and a new District Line branch from Gloucester Rd to Edgware Rd and beyond, maybe terminating at Kings Cross. These two branches would cover the usefulness of the circle line. I agree that it's quite unattractive - whenever I've wanted to go from Liv St to Vic there are always long waits at Liv St with no info displayed on screens as to when the next train will actually be
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Post by sid on Dec 12, 2017 22:36:37 GMT
I'm serious, it's very inefficient, often long waits between trains, the first line to be suspended when there's trouble along its shared lines,and you often have to use other lines anyway. I think we can get rid of it!! Use the trains to create an enhanced Hammersmith and City Line, with a new branch, from Liverpool Street to terminate at Tower Hill, and a new District Line branch from Gloucester Rd to Edgware Rd and beyond, maybe terminating at Kings Cross. These two branches would cover the usefulness of the circle line. If you ran extra District Line trains on the southern side of the circle there wouldn't be enough capacity at Minories Junction to run H&C trains to Tower Hill.
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Post by snoggle on Dec 12, 2017 22:40:13 GMT
I'm serious, it's very inefficient, often long waits between trains, the first line to be suspended when there's trouble along its shared lines,and you often have to use other lines anyway. I think we can get rid of it!! Use the trains to create an enhanced Hammersmith and City Line, with a new branch, from Liverpool Street to terminate at Tower Hill, and a new District Line branch from Gloucester Rd to Edgware Rd and beyond, maybe terminating at Kings Cross. These two branches would cover the usefulness of the circle line. The problem with your idea is that it means a loss of 7.5tph along the south side of the circle between Tower Hill and Gloucester Road. That's not acceptable. You can't increase the District line if you insist on having conflicting moves to reach Gloucester Rd and Tower Hill from each side of the circle. Therefore you might as well keep running the Circle Line as is. It's a d*mn sight more reliable now than it used to be before they turned it into a "pan handle" service pattern. The other issue is that if you start mucking around with service patterns now you will undo the business case and benefits for the SSR resignalling which is now getting to the point where it might well be switched on on the Hammersmith Branch and then stretching into Zone 1. The plan is to try to get some early benefits from increased service levels in the Central area by progressively enhancing frequencies on selected services. Tipping out and turning trains at Kings Cross won't work in the peaks at all - you will lose a lot of capacity as a result meaning poorer services and a likely reduction in Met Line services into the City which will go down like a lead balloon with people in NW London / Bucks.
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Post by Alex on Dec 12, 2017 23:11:27 GMT
I'm serious, it's very inefficient, often long waits between trains, the first line to be suspended when there's trouble along its shared lines,and you often have to use other lines anyway. I think we can get rid of it!! Use the trains to create an enhanced Hammersmith and City Line, with a new branch, from Liverpool Street to terminate at Tower Hill, and a new District Line branch from Gloucester Rd to Edgware Rd and beyond, maybe terminating at Kings Cross. These two branches would cover the usefulness of the circle line. Well, there have been discussions for many years about the role of the Circle line and the way it operates. The ideas you mention are the sort of thing that has been mentioned before, ones I can think of were a District line Wimbledon - Moorgate service, a Circle line service that ran Hammersmith - Circle (via Liverpool Street, Victoria, Paddington) - and then onto Barking on the last part (so a kind of loop-the-loop Circle), there has even been discussion of a modern day Metropolitan line service running from Uxbridge to Barking! The big change that came was in December 2009, where the old 'round and round' Circle was replaced with the new Hammersmith - Circle - Edgware Road arrangement. Two main reasons for this, one to give the Hammersmith branch a more frequent service, and two, to give the Circle a start and end point, with stand times for service recovery when things ran late. Now, to touch on the ideas specifically, the District extending from Gloucester Road round towards High Street Kensington would suffer the same problems the current Circle does - probably even more as the distance from Upminster is a long way (if trains started from there) and problems on the District would affect the service. This has similarities to now - but at the moment let's say the Met line service was running ok (top side of the Circle) and the District wasn't running too well, at least only part of the Circle journey is affected, and not all of it. Also this might make the District line maps a bit too complicated on where they are today. With running a service to Tower Hill, this currently isn't possible (or at least to reverse trains from Aldgate back towards that way again). There is a new bit of track linking the westbound into the middle platform at Tower Hill but it is not commissioned and has no signals. It will be like that until the line is resignalled. Having interchange at Tower Hill would probably be very heavy in peak times and the extra time it would take to signal a reversing train might affect the main line service too. As to the line being suspended, this doesn't happen as much as you'd think. The thing with the Circle is it only runs every 10 minutes so any late running or cancellations are very noticable. For example, train runs 5 mins late = 15 min gap, train is cancelled = 20 minute gap. I do know that Circle line services are not routinely taken off the road to assist the running of other lines - the Metropolitan line has it's own methods of managing the service while the District tend to keep most (if not all) of their service out with disruption. Talking about the 10 minute service, while for London Underground this is a low frequency, the figure is determined by the amount of other trains on the other lines, there is a 24 train per hour service off peak on both sides (Met side, 2 x Chesham, 2 x Amersham, 8 x Uxbridge, 6 x Circle, 6 x H&C - District side 3 x Wimbledon - Tower Hill, 3 x Wimbledon - Barking, 6 x Ealing - Upminster, 6 x Richmond - Upminster, 6 x Circle), with the current signalling system there realistically isn't more space to squeeze a service in, if they could the pattern would be very uneven. This goes up to 27 (and in isolated bits 28) trains per hour in the peak which is the maximum the system is scheduled for. The other thing is the amount of S Stock trains available, only a certain number were built (and the order is finished now) so that dictates how many trains can run per hour too. Add to this the flat junctions at Gloucester Road/High Street Kensington, Edgware Road, Baker Street and Aldgate, the margins on these are tight now so any extra junction work (trains using them) could have an effect on the other lines services. Personally I think the Circle earns it's money and it certainly plugs the gaps, it's well used on the Liverpool Street - Tower Hill section and also on the Gloucester Road - High Street/Notting Hill section too. The thing is the Sub Surface Railway (four lines - Circle, District, H&C and Met) is quite a beast, problems on one part can affect operations on loads of other areas, it's a bigger picture than just the Circle line. On another personal note, I do agree with enhanced H&C, I've pondered before if I had my way I would revise the H&C to run 12 tph Hammersmith - Barking, put a 6 tph 'old fashioned' Circle line service in each direction and take away 6 Met line trains (stopping them at Baker Street as opposed to Aldgate) so it all fits in. For many reasons it almost definitely won't happen though (I say almost as engineering works, disruptions etc throw some strange arrangements sometimes, as a main service I couldn't see it happening). The H&C is very well loaded from the city out past Liverpool Street and into East London, I think the capacity would be better used for the H&C as opposed to the Met.
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Post by Alex on Dec 12, 2017 23:13:58 GMT
SSR resignalling which is now getting to the point where it might well be switched on on the Hammersmith Branch and then stretching into Zone 1 Apologies for double post but just seen this - that's correct, end of May is the planned 'go live' date for the new signalling from Hammersmith to Latimer Road, with Latimer Road to Paddington Sub being pencilled in for around a month after. EDIT - the Circle does 6tph, 7.5 was the old pre-2009 traditional (8 minute) service
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2017 23:26:15 GMT
Thanks for all the interesting replies. There's obviously more to working out possible routes than is apparent to the layman. I just wish you could still go from Bayswater direct to Liverpool St as in the past.
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Post by snoggle on Dec 12, 2017 23:30:16 GMT
SSR resignalling which is now getting to the point where it might well be switched on on the Hammersmith Branch and then stretching into Zone 1 Apologies for double post but just seen this - that's correct, end of May is the planned 'go live' date for the new signalling from Hammersmith to Latimer Road, with Latimer Road to Paddington Sub being pencilled in for around a month after. EDIT - the Circle does 6tph, 7.5 was the old pre-2009 traditional (8 minute) service I so rarely use the tube that I was out of date on that. I should really have known it was down to 6tph given the 5 min service on the Hammersmith branch.
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Post by snoggle on Dec 12, 2017 23:31:43 GMT
Thanks for all the interesting replies. There's obviously more to working out possible routes than is apparent to the layman. I just wish you could still go from Bayswater direct to Liverpool St as in the past. You just walk a few yards to Queensway station and take the Central Line - faster and vastly more frequent. Bayswater and Queensway stations are almost next door neighbours.
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Post by Alex on Dec 12, 2017 23:35:07 GMT
Thanks for all the interesting replies. There's obviously more to working out possible routes than is apparent to the layman. I just wish you could still go from Bayswater direct to Liverpool St as in the past. No worries it's a question which many people have pondered, and discussion both at company and personal levels have been going on for a long time. Many people would agree with your Bayswater example, there was quite a bit of opposition to the 'new' Circle back in 2009 (one political party even put reinstating the old Circles in their manifesto!) and many thought it would never work (particularly the whole service reversing in one platform at Edgware Road), but it seems to have held up. The main problem recently (using Bayswater again) was that people had become accustomed to Circle line terminating trains using platform 2 at Edgware Road and merely walking to the other side of the platform for eastbound connections - in May this year the new (current) timetable swapped the platforms around so now you have to use the bridge to connect at Edgware Road. Doesn't make connection easier in that direction but I suppose in the opposite direction it's slightly better (Hammersmith trains on platform 4 have a Circle opposite on platform 3) and it means District line users heading east get the easier connection. In times of disruption trips from Bayswater will extend past Edgware Road on a regular basis but of course these are not timetabled so you wouldn't know when it's going to happen. There is always the extreme option though - go to Liverpool Street the long way round via Victoria EDIT - Or Snoggle's example which completely escaped me
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Post by sid on Dec 13, 2017 10:18:06 GMT
Another idea that I've seen mooted before is to run ex Wimbledon trains from Earls Court anti clockwise round the loop and back to Earls Court and Wimbledon with trains from Ealing Broadway and Richmond going clockwise round the loop. The big advantage is that this would remove conflicting movements at Earls Court.
Trains from Upminster and Barking would go alternately from Aldgate East both ways round the loop.
The downside would be Hammersmith via Shepherds Bush being reduced to a local shuttle service to and from Edgware Road.
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Post by RandomBusesGirl on Dec 13, 2017 16:04:42 GMT
Is there a reason why S-Stock lines often don't have an ETA until the train is very very close? Bringing up Liverpool Street reminded me how many times I was annoyed at the vagueness of the departures board.
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Post by Eastlondoner62 on Dec 13, 2017 16:47:54 GMT
Is there a reason why S-Stock lines often don't have an ETA until the train is very very close? Bringing up Liverpool Street reminded me how many times I was annoyed at the vagueness of the departures board. I've heard its because the next train can't be displayed until the train crosses over a set of points, for example at Tower Hill a Circle can be waiting for clearance at Aldgate while a District can be waiting for clearance at Aldgate East and the system won't actually know what one is coming first until the train starts moving.
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Post by routew15 on Dec 13, 2017 17:46:41 GMT
Is there a reason why S-Stock lines often don't have an ETA until the train is very very close? Bringing up Liverpool Street reminded me how many times I was annoyed at the vagueness of the departures board. Diamond Geezer extensively covers NTIs on the subsurface network - here is just one of the half a dozen articles on them
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Post by snoggle on Dec 13, 2017 19:28:03 GMT
Is there a reason why S-Stock lines often don't have an ETA until the train is very very close? Bringing up Liverpool Street reminded me how many times I was annoyed at the vagueness of the departures board. Mr East Londoner has given a detailed answer. The broad brush answer is that the signalling is ancient and can't "talk" across junctions nor communicate the correct passage of trains. It will be resolved as the new signalling system is rolled out and the "big computer" will know where all the trains are. LUL are trying to stitch together some more straightforward sections together to try to get more accurate departure info on the east end of the District Line. Diamond Geezer's blog has detailed the antics at Bow Road in great detail. The basic issue is that passengers' expectations are set by the best info they see on some lines and they want the same standard everywhere. Unfortunately the technology, especially on sub surface, doesn't allow it. Picc and Bakerloo are also pretty dire in places.
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