Transport in London is shit

look mate - it wouldn't work as a poem without the damage bit

'personal property'?

Hurt and Pain seem kind of the same thing unless Hurt is referring to embarrassment at dropping a hot coffee over your orla kiely bag, damaging it, and feeling embarrassed as your situation is taken in by a carriage of people who didnt obstruct the doors, hurt because you know it brightened their day, they wanted it to happen to you, they felt you deserved it, and also the nagging sensation they were right, how could you have been so stupid

see, provoking this kind of deep critical analysis proves it is good poetry

Ah, the Taylor Swift argument

'personal property'?

Yes, probably that, thinking about it. (And I like your interpretation of 'hurt and pain', as well.)

This is the one I was thinking of:

http://thetoychronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/poster_10.jpg

Bit strong but in my heart I support the cull implicit in the poster.

Also support the implicit judgement upthread that people committing wrong-direction "parkour" are very very very rarely as good at is as they think.

Sadie Frost keeping it real at 50 years old:

She loves going on the Tube to meditate. “Even if you’re really crushed and standing and sweltering and uncomfortable, it’s a good exercise, to practise being at peace in a situation that maybe isn’t peaceful.”

(The rest of the incredibly gushing article at thttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11798138/sadie-frost-interview-health-depression-turning-50.html )

thanks, Fizzles, for that excellent article!

Still ploughing through this thread having returned from holiday, but want to echo that

Just had to call TFL because their stupid website is broken and they overcharged me twice for not touching in AND out of Brixton station (which obviously I did not do) and WTF. They asked me to give an answer to a security question WHICH THEY COULDN'T TELL ME! I had to guess what the question might've been, was it my mother's maiden name? No. Eventually they let me pass by telling them my email address. Then they told me there were "discrepancies" but wouldn't tell me what they were. Eventually after being on hold for ages they gave me a refund of £8.50 so I'm getting my money back and therefore don't have that much to complain about apart from the whole WTFness of the whole call. But argh. Anyway. Serenity now.

I get fairly regular emails from Oyster telling me that due to an operational error I am due a refund which I will pick up at my local station, next time I touch in, it's usually about £3 but sometimes as much as 6 or 7. Not really sure what it's all about but it happens a lot, perhaps twice a month or more.

Yeah if I get a notification about an incomplete journey I can just fix it online, but this time I assume due to these mysterious discrepancies it wasn't deemed eligible for a refund. I only noticed because I'd been auto-topped up twice this week which since I've not been anywhere apart from work was a bit odd.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/did-the-london-tube-strike-improve-social-welfare.html

Sunday travel in often affected areas does enable me to find a new (sometimes cheaper) route that I end up re-using.

has the central line deteriorated a lot in recent years? not got it at rush hour regularly since 2013 or so - in about 8 days of using it it's been completely fucked and unusable once (queues out the door of bethnal green) and severely delayed 2/3 times. wasn't sure whether to post this in "society is in the gutter" but it can go here for now.

the central line is literally (literally) full (full) of kids with knives, stabbing the track while stuffing their faces with candy crush

Feels like that's bad luck, and a bad run of it - though I only regularly use it on the other side, from Oxford Circus/Ealing. Been doing that route on and off for about two years now, and it's usually fine.

that is insane, ldn transport is incredible...anyone complaining about it has never lived in another city

― Local Garda, Saturday, 21 February 2009 05:16 (6 years ago)

There's nothing like a spot of actual commuting to change someone's views from 'incredible' to 'completely fucked'.

The Central Line has always been very very close to capacity at rush hour but I'm guessing there are more people commuting into zone one from East London (and especially Bethnal Green) than there would have been even two years ago. The only thing worse is getting on the Northern Line at London Bridge.

Or the jubilee line at waterloo - often literally impossible because they've closed the ticket hall due to overcrowding.

haha - @bobsix nah i do still think this thread title is very wrong. the transport here is brilliant. i lived in dublin. about two buses an hour when i was coming home from school.

yeah central line is always hell but i guess i'm noticing more of the train getting stopped or stalled outside stations. it's not bad getting on (tho holborn in the evenings is a pain, i mostly walk to chancery lane because i find queuing to get into the tube beyond tolerable - then i walk to st pauls and by the time i'm there i might even walk the whole way home!)

had an incredibly easy commute to westminster even if a bit longer than bg - walked to stepney and sat and read all the way in, same thing on the way home, seats most days. the central line train design is terrible.

bit longer than bg to holborn i meant.

Crossrail should take a lot of the pressure off the Central Line. I use the Liverpool St > Chancery Lane leg and it's awful, but a lot of people coming from points east to the west end will inevitably use Crossrail trains instead of Central Line.

yeah that makes sense. i am kind of tempted to walk more - health has kind of stopped me doing any high impact exercise and it's about a 50 min to an hour walk - not really that bad. it's not the effort i guess but the time it takes away.

I should really walk/cycle Liverpool St > Holborn, which would only take a half hour.

The Central Line has always been very very close toway over capacity at rush hour

Can you not jump on an 8 bus?

So glad I don't have to deal with the Central line any more. Switching to riding a scooter has been bliss: 1hr 5mins each way down to 30 mins each way. Reserve the right to moan when winter really bites, though

hate a bus

not a big fan of the buses, yeah. don't they take ages?

i only ever get the 8 when it's the n8. (nate)

i'm basing this on getting the bus once when the tube wasn't working, and it took a very long time.

London buses at rush hour are such a hit and miss thing that it's impossible to rely on them, especially anything going west through the City.

You would be genuinely be better off walking between Liverpool Street and St Paul's most days.

yeah i only ever use them at night for journeys north, even then you can get a long delay at 7/8 pm on a 106 or 254 or whatever.

xpost

can't wait for crossrail but it's 3 long years away and oxford st at 6pm literally has its gates shut due to overcrowding i'd say 70% of the time. it blowwwwz

You have to pick and choose rush hour buses very carefully; for example, 38 from Victoria to Cambridge Circus - a breeze as far as Green Park but then you're really better off walking the rest of the way. I usually hang on one more stop to Royal Academy and from there, I can usually outpace the bus all the way to Soho. Because the thing about Piccadilly Circus? It's like bloody Piccadilly Circus. 73 actually a better bet these days (Oxford Street never actually that bad).

Getting on the Tube at Victoria is often impossible so I haven't bothered trying in about five years.

i think there's a lot to be said for that. better to walk 1/2 miles than stand for 7 minutes packed next to aggressive people in a space where you can't breathe.

yes, and inevitably the central line was f'd for me this morning.

i realise this may involve replacing one form of unpleasantness with another, but have you thought about using hire bikes for part or all of the journey? it's been a while since I've done the bethnal green/whitechapel to centre route, but i think it's not impossible to do on back roads.

You'd have to do something like going through Lincoln's Inn Fields - Holborn (specifically the junction at the station) is grim for cyclists.

Both of the big Holborn junctions are grim for cyclists. This is why I don't recondition the Flying Pigeon given to me a few years ago; I'm terrified of being blindsided and killed by some idiot in an articulated lorry.

the new totally-isolated cycle superhighway across Vauxhall Bridge and down to Oval looks like it'll be great when it's finished. Makes things tougher for motorbikes, but is so massively safer for cyclists than the old mayhem it's impossible to begrudge them it.

i'm not really physically well enough to cycle these days - i mean i guess i can walk okay, but just chronic health makes me more fearful of cycling than i would be anyway (which is pretty fearful based on the stories i hear. i have a low attention span, i've stayed away from cycling cos i think i'd get in an accident)

Yep, fair enough. Cycling still relies heavily on constant vigilance and risk of accident in London imo.

I use the Vauxhall bridge junction whenever I cycle, at least three times a week, and it was terrifying even for a regular cyclist. It was also one of the high fatality junctions in London. Even the limited completion so far is very welcome, and I can't wait for the rest of it to be completed.

Yeah, it doesn't take much for me to think "Nah, I'll get on the tube instead", though I am getting better at not letting cold stop me.

The new Cycle Superhighway from White Hart Lane down to Liverpool Street will go practically by my front door - but in the short term that means all the nice cycle-friendly lanes that are my usual route will be in various stages of upheaval for a few months yet.

I am looking forward to what they're going to the bit in front of the former Foundry - separate bike and pedestrian road crossings there will benefit everyone, it's the site of the nearest I've come to being punched on my bike.

Two things:

Times between ticket gate and platform on LU and DLR. (At stations with multiple lines and/or ticket offices, the highest value or combination is used. Entry point is used for stations without gates.)

Unsurprisingly the highest values are at major terminuses, though lol monument/bank obviously.

A London Reconnections blog on TfL's plans to pitch for devolved overground franchises when they come up for renegotiation.

Basically confirms what anyone who uses the overground london franchises already knows: they're shit. A couple of things from this one struck me. One is the comment on pricing:

That cost features so highly on the list of perceived problems is hardly surprising. One could perhaps argue that the issue of overcrowding was perhaps of greater concern (as frequency and capacity are both often manifestations of that) but even so the fact that over half of one’s customers identified price as a key issue would be damning in any industry, let alone rail.

The other is that commuter-belt councils, traditionally Tory/private enterprise heartlands, have finally given their support to Concessions with SLAs by TFL. It suggests that the cost and poor quality of transport into London from these commuter-belt regions is being considered serious disincentive for people thinking of moving there.

The point is made at the end that subsequent Concessions will be unlikely to have the impact of the ones completed so far (citing the difficulties with the Greater Anglia change). I'm not entirely clear from the article how TfL Concessions work where they need to work with another franchise outside of London. If TfL SLAs only apply to part of the route, how do they prevent them failing where the responsibility for the late-running/cancelled etc service lies with another franchise?

can i just say WOW re: covent garden stairs

i had no idea about the existence of london reconnections magazine - it is kind of a miracle publication

what the shit is this idea

http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-11-25/stand-on-the-left-golden-rule-of-tube-travel-abandoned-in-bold-new-experiment/

that's infuriating - i actually noticed it faintly working this morning as i attempted to walk up the stairwell at holborn.

i find this p sad. like cos so many people can't be bothered to walk up a stairwell, everyone must stand. holborn is a huge staircase but the fact there are like 20 people queuing just to stand is enough to mean i just walk up it every day.