The journey appears as a weird wee "U" on the tube map (though the implication that you can get a through train from Olympia to travel north of High St Ken is utterly wrong):
But it's been a restricted service for some time now, as the legend on the Tube Map attests:
In a massive shock (for weird people like me), Transport for London has announced that, from December, it is minded no longer to run any weekday District Line trains to or from Olympia. Instead, they say, with the revived London Overground service, passengers can use those more frequent trains (every 15 minutes from May, allegedly) and buses instead of the District Line.
The only problem with this fine sentiment, of course, is that the Overground from here doesn't easily connect with central London whereas the District Line does.
The other problem is that Overground trains on this section are already hideously overcrowded at almost all times, as we worship at the temple that is the Westfield shopping complex at Shepherd's Bush.
The service currently operates with three trains an hour (delightfully asymmetrically organised rather than being at the 20 minute intervals you might expect), and this is supposed to go up to 4/hour in May.
Still, after the fiasco of turning the Circle Line into a tea-cup (in the interests of providing a "better service", apparently, despite then actually reducing the number of Circle Line trains from 7/hour to 6/h, and forcing all SW-N passengers to change at Edgware Road. A notorious Hell-hole of inefficient operation)... who knows what TfL is capable of?
Could this really be the, er, end of the line for weekday District Line services?
Yeah, I don't think I quite managed to make that as dramatic a post as I had intended. Maybe this is not really news at all, actually.
3 comments:
Hi LeDuc,
I don't usually disagree with your observations on public transport matters which are generally sound and sensible, but I think your comments about the review of the Circle Line miss an important point. As a Transport Consultant for the last 25 years (and a Bus Company manager for 30 years before that)I have worked in over 50 countries advising on Transport Network revisions. Wherever my colleagues and I have come across plans for closed circle Metro lines, we have advised strongly that they should be reviewed (much as TfL has done) because closed circles degenerate into an operational shambles and have to have layovers en route which infuriate those travelling across the layover point. I often had to travel between St Pancras and Notting Hill Gate and could never resist using the Circle Line just to see what sort of shambles it was on each occasion. On the rare occasions when a train came promptly it would give me quite a turn! By breaking the Circle so it actually has two termini (Edgeware Road and Hammersmith), layovers can be taken there instead of clogging the track around Tower Hill, and prompt departures can be assured. Hammersmith gets a 5-minute headway and the transfer at Edgeware Road only affects a proportion of the passengers as previously if a District train came first at Notting Hill Gate it was always wise to step aboard and change (usually to a Hammersmith & City train) at Edgeware Road rather than wait, and wait, and wait for the Circle Line to turn up. I saw on a trip to Paddington last week that Edgeware Road Station appears to be in the process of expansion to the south, presumably to make the cross-platform interchanges easier. So full marks from me to TfL.
Peter
But who actually uses the Olympia service? It's only really of use if you're going to the exhibition halls (and the trains will continue to run on days with a show). Both Earls Court and High Street Ken aren't *that* far away to walk. And the Overground goes to West Brompton, so you're still one change away from a train into the centre. Not so good if you want to go to points West, but still not terrible.
Personally I think it's worth the sacrifice just if it cleans up a bit of the mess at Earl's Court.
Merseytart: Yes, those are the key justifications being used -- that hardly anyone uses it (which is true), and that it causes disproportionate operational mayhem at Earl's Court by constantly crossing backwards and forwards on the level. Actually, despite my almost-ranty post, I think those are not altogether unreasonable justifications.
Although the West Brompton interchange is nowhere near as convenient for most passengers as Earl's Court -- nowhere near!
Peter: Hmm, yes, well, I kindof agree with you, but only up to a point. You use the same rationale that those sane and reasonable civil servants use when they remove all long-distance rail services from the timetable.
Their argument goes that the longer the journey and the more it crosses other lines, the more chance there is that the long-distance services will be very unreliable. And that's actually true. So long-distance through trains should be split, forcing passengers to change trains at strange-sounding places like "Reading" and "Carlisle" and (God forbid) "Birmingham New Street", places with which the passengers are likely to be utterly unfamiliar, and changing trains at which may make them anxious or nervous ("will they hold the connection if this train is running late?" "Will I get my bags up the stairs and across to the other platform -- assuming I can find out which platform I need?" Etc, etc).
And we know that the next thing which happens is most of those passengers who have a modal choice say "fuck it: I'll take the car/plane". Brilliant! So we have a much more reliable system on paper, but we appear to have lost a big chunk of our passengers as a result.
I'd be more sympathetic to schemes like this if the passenger information systems were up to scratch. But they are so not. Standing on the District Line platforms at Paddington underground station today, the staff member kept announcing that the next train via Earl's Court would be within 5 minutes, while the dot matrix display showed absolutely nothing. And continued showing nothing until "2 mins" suddenly appeared. So they'd obviously known for ages and ages when the train was coming, but couldn't be arsed/didn't have the nouse to inform customers except by shouting at them through loud-hailers. What century are we in?
And that's before we get to play the guessing game at Edgware Road of "which platform will my train leave from", or "which train will leave first", or even "will they say one thing on the monitors and then do something else" -- a situation I have experienced several times at Edgware Road (and, indeed, at Earl's Court) -- and don't even get me started on the utter balls-up that is High Street Kensington, where you get off a southbound Circle line train because you want Earl's Court and there's a District Line train standing over there in the bay platform. Should I wait on here, where the monitor claims an Earl's Court train will be here in 5 mins, or do I race over the footbridge to that waiting District Line train...?
My point? They obviously don't have decent PIS (and there's a well-made acronym, telling you all you need to know about what they think of passengers); they obviously can't run the system with a reasonable level of predictability (which I understand: a lot of it is crap and falling apart); so they've decided to manage it for their own convenience rather than that of their passengers, including people with luggage or small kids or disabilities (or all three) who all now have to clamber up and down inappropriate stairs at Edgware Road.
And didn't I read a report a few weeks back that showed that, far from making the Circle line more reliable, since the new system was introduced it had actually become less reliable? As well as less frequent, of course.
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