Transport in London is shit

Im my experience "late people" always have their lame excuses and often blame other forces rather than their own tardiness or lack of attention to detail:P

Jokes obv, I have ended up in Manchester or York on a few occasions after getting the wrong train or falling asleep on one!

autocorrects my destination to Cosplay Junction

Could only happen to Louis.

I knew Southern was a shitheap, but this is pretty outrageous. Down to one train an hour on certain already-packed lines, others cancelled entirely
http://www.southernrailway.com/your-journey/revised-timetable#impact4

(Word has it that DfT is sanctioning all this because they want the unions broken)

http://www.londonreconnections.com/2016/railway-roulette/

Transport in the UK is shit.

Having spent 30 minutes in a traffic jam at 11pm, on a Monday night, in Cricklewood, this does not come as news to me.

It took me over 4 hours to get home from work on Monday, and it's lucky I work from home Tuesdays and Wednesdays because it hasn't been much better since then according to colleagues. I thought my commute might improve since I'm not using Southern trains anymore, but Southeastern aren't much better.

"UK tops list of most traffic-congested EU cities"

ya we're making progress on changing that tho

xp
I'm usually small-mercies grateful I'm on Southeastern rather than Southern, but they've been having their worst spell for years.

Nothing says 'welcome back' like one train every forty five minutes on the Piccadilly line from T5 because the wheels are wet.

as usual the obv place to is London Reconnections.

It's still not entirely clear to me why this has happened this year. Yes

The result was an unprecedented level of leaf drop in a short period that seems to have quickly exceeded a level that the Piccadilly line’s mitigation could cope with.

But leaf fall feels like something which wd have an effect proportionate to its level. i.e. in previous not-so-bad-but-previously-quite-bad years trains wd have gone out of action and the service wd have been affected.

The fact that they've had severe delays for getting on for, what, three/four weeks now, as they try and push repairs through a bottle neck seems crazy.

But I guess it may be that a critical volume of repairs was needed which it's been impossible to complete quickly enough.

Just getting this thread ready for today's hellish journey.

I've already tried and given up, as I watched two completely full trains arrive and depart from my station. Still, it does mean I get to work from home!

I don't start till 12 so hopefully should be OK?

If you leave now

Hey why don't you drive, then you'll get in no problem!

(xp) No chance.

look at this moron https://twitter.com/MarkChutney/status/818356480671936512

LOLz

if(MARK)
‏@MarkChutney

My favourite #Bowie track is This Town Isn't Big Enough for the Both of Us

So this is a sort of clueless hipster Barry Shitpeas perhaps?

woah, imagine being that guy, and spending moments of your painfully finite life trolling people so ineptly and pointlessly

East London equality!

Coffee, gin, East London, equality!

Is Sadiq Khan's bus driver dad still alive? Needs to take his boy home and ground him for his bullshit rn.

so it seems if you are fighting for better working conditions in London or against your own gentrification then mayoral candidates Zac Khan or Amir Goldsmith are both useless fuckers.

...

Khan previously made it quite clear (i think actually 80 times) that getting into power is all that matters, so you can erm.. make a difference or something.

seems unfair to expect a boxer to have much effect on London transport tbf

unfair tbf

lol! I mean Sadiq of course but Amir might even do a better job

Sadiq Khan is at least trying to hold talks! Other mayors in recent memory refused to do this.

The way he shills for affordable housing is exactly what Zac would have done imo

Wouldn't trust Sadiq Khan as far as I could throw him tbh.

He's a little lad tbf

Walked in... Did notice that some of those new to walking and cycling in London could do with basic training.

@PeterTatchell
I support rail workers but strikes hurt commuters, whereas opening barriers & allowing passengers to travel free would hurt rail bosses

Tatch one of many calling for rail workers to actually break the law as opposed to simply taking conventional industrial action.

Relieved this is over. I walk to work anyway, but the guy I share an office with kept yelling TUBESTRIKE! in a put-on scottish accent and hitting me on the arm. It was starting to hurt.

Ticket revenue from Southern goes to the government, not the rail management company. idk what the point would be when the vast majority of people have already paid for their weekly/monthly/annual tickets. Not sure how it works for TfL.

The weekend disruptions email seems to now be missing the single most useful feature - the map of tube closures. Maybe the bloke who does them is still on holiday.

(There's usually one when you get to the station but that might be too late. And goldhawk road station always has the map the other side of the barriers, which is idiocy iyam)

I think Diamond Geezer covered this on his blog on 5 Jan.

Th map is also disappearing from the station posters as well. He quoted part of an internal TfL document:

"Over the past year, we have been continuously working with research agency 2CV to better understand what customers think about the posters on our whiteboards. From now, the posters on our station whiteboards will have fewer words, more colour, more graphics and simpler information, with the most important information shown first. This is so that our posters stand out and quickly communicate what is most important. For example, the weekly closures poster will no longer contain a Tube map as over 90% of customers surveyed said they found it confusing rather than helpful."

"The research also highlighted the ways in which our staff play a vital role in getting messages across and how we can make their jobs easier. During the consultations, staff said that they found the new posters were clearer, stood out better and helped them direct customers better during closures."

"All of the changes are supported by trials with customers and staff at Liverpool Street, Brixton and King’s Cross St. Pancras stations."

I highly recommend reading his entry for Jan 10 - http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/ (no direct link afaict)

The problem I have is when the words say something like the central line is closed between x and y and neither x nor y is on my usual route. So is my trip ok or not? One glance at the map will tell me.

They have ruined london by doing this.

Apparently there is snow in the South East of England so it is now officially a national crisis/disaster/calamity, expect questions in Parliament, wall-to-wall media coverage etc etc.

i think i mentioned elsewhere that rush-hour Underground was terrifying to me; hats off

did it twice a day for 10 years

> (no direct link afaict)

click on the time posted. the hover text says 'permalink'.
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/express-tube.html

There is a link to a map in this week's email, albeit in the text not at the top.

However, clicking on this link on my phone (eventually) shows the required map but doesn't let me see more than the top left corner of it. I can zoom in and scroll, but not beyond the top left. Is this the same for everyone? It's not particularly useful...

Worth keeping an eye on:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/28/uber-v-tfl-court-hears-written-english-test-will-cost-33000-driver-jobs

Not a fan of Uber but this looks like a completely unnecessary law designed simply to inconvenience minicab firms at the behest of the taxi lobby.

that is idiotic, unpleasant and unnecessary. i took a black cab the other and the driver was a gobby anti-everyone "guvmint shd do something about it" card, uber later on, driven by an intermittently comprehensible but charming senegalese, who told me, i think, about how his dad can't really go out all that much any more because he's losing his marbles a bit and who had studied engineering.

one thing they shd do is apply congestion charge to uber which wd level the playing field a bit, plus perhaps help with the fact i think there are something like 28,000 additional PHVs on the road since 2008. don't quote me before i dig up the stat.