Transport in London is shit

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.

"charming senegalese" f'ing hell i'll just take my pith helmet off.

Holy shit do they sting you if you forget your wallet & have to pay with (borrowed) cash.

Yes. Discovered this the other month when I went over my overdraft for a day. OUCH.

thought i'd lost my wallet for a panicky half-hour last year and it was so expensive i was going to have to walk from holborn to clapton. found wallet in duffel bag shortly after.

I have to be honest and say that I don't exactly know what my daily commute costs when I touch through on my card (this might be why I occasionally tumble over my overdraft), but fuck me is a one day travelcard ridiculously expensive now.

Ding dong the bridge is dead:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40921373

fuckin finally

We are continuously updating our map database... #gardenbridge pic.twitter.com/aO73FbhJeQ

— A-Z Digital Mapping (@AZdigitalmaps) August 14, 2017

typically exhaustive and fascinating piece at london reconnections about upgrading holborn underground station's capacity.

nothing like large infrastructure project timetables for making you feel mortal either.

http://buzzsteam.com/2018/03/04/southeastern-commuter-train-stuck-at-lewisham/

Jesus fucking Christ, that is hellish.

As soon as it is known that the train is likely to be stranded for a considerable time (> 30 minutes), efforts should be made to identify any particularly vulnerable passengers.

buried in the middle of an official guidance pdf linked from that site but also hardly rocket science, fuckers.

Bit of fucking rain and I'm stranded in Tonbridge waiting for a taxi. Good thing I don't have work tomorrow oh wait

^ got my delay repay declined for this, assumed because I got the departure wrong by one minute, phoned up to try and fix it and the operator said normally they check 5 minutes either side, I said well they obviously haven't this time, and he denied the existence of the train I got, said it's not on his computer. It's listed on southeasternrailway.co.uk at the time I told him. How are you meant to argue with that? I guess it's an effective way to get around paying compensation if you just deny any trains exist, which given it's Southeastern railway, is I suppose quite believable.

Can we please nationalise these cunts

typically excellent London Reconnections article on Crossrail delays.

Some key points

• Crossrail Ltd. infra build issues are the cause of current delays in being able to test trains
• *No* Bombardier trains have been tested yet (this bit and the mitigation of leasing rolling stock to open the Heathrow-Paddington part of the line helped answer some questions i had about the rolling stock they’re using for that, which i had from using that service reasonably regularly - ie no these are *not* the final trains.)
• Much of this effectively becomes a software project, integrating Siemens signalling and Bombadier on-train software, and software projects have a bad habit of overrunning (i’m never quite sure why this is *more* the case than physical engineering projects - tho as this shows these can easily overrun as well - my rudimentary hypothesis that we have much more historical and systemic experience of physical engineering projects than software projects feels way too basic. Regardless, the impression the article gives is that people are saying “once we’re over the build hump we’ll be fine”. That seems highly unlikely.
• Sadiq Khan has made some serious missteps which include probably lying. Two interesting sub-points from that
• It tells us something about him as a political operator. The article points out that his response to this was the same as his response to the fare freeze argument - effectively that he doubled down on a misunderstanding, said it was still possible, and distributed blame elsewhere. (fair to say he would have been *crucified* if he had reversed on that promise, but it sounds like his handling of it was bad). The article is probably right to say this is a v “Westminster” approach. The fact he’s done the same thing again suggests a character issue with someone who seems to be a fairly savvy political operator usually.

ETCS is a European signalling specification for the safe operation of trains. In fact it is used throughout the world, especially in China. The current National Rail standard, Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), is very safe. TPWS is largely responsible for the incredible safety record achieved in recent years. It is not, however, 100% fail-safe in all circumstances and does not always protect against human error. For example, it won’t always prevent a buffer stop collision at a terminal – not the sort of thing you want to happen on a terminal platform in an underground tunnel at, say, Terminal 4.

The problem is that whilst very reliable once working properly, ETCS is known to be a fickle beast. Like all electronic signalling systems, it is very susceptible to hostile electrical environments. Unfortunately, it seems that a hostile electrical environment is exactly the sort of thing one finds in a round bored tunnel with a 25kV, 50Hz AC catenary running alongside it, with the added complication of a similar but different signalling system already present. Which is an accurate description of the Heathrow tunnels.

Howard Smith’s comment to the TfL Board perhaps sums the current situation perfectly:

It performed as expected as in functionally it works, but the reliability needs a lot of work before we’d be happy with it as a passenger service.

of course the impact is that they’ll probably have to go back for even more money and that other projects will shelved or delayed.

i’d like to see a pie chart breakdown of the comparative impact of lower passenger numbers, the removal of government subsidy this year, and split out from the passenger numbers the likely impact of full Crossrail service being delayed. Of course these aren’t strictly comparable as the loss of government subsidy has been modelled into the business plan (TfL becomes a real estate developer! what a world), but the passenger numbers were not.

all of this also feels fairly luxurious when you look at the state of Northern travel systems - intercity, suburban and at the city level - but after all money for this is not zero sum. We just have a government that hasn’t invested in transport infrastructure and expects TfL to run without subsidy. The impact on productivity of failing transport systems, whether in London or in the north is huge.

odd question:

did jenny holzer ever have her truisms printed on the back of london bus tickets or did i dream that? i can't find a single picture online but i'm sure i have a couple somewhere, probably tucked into books.

Quite literally shit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-48068457

*pride*

Tube trains were delayed due to "soiled cars" on 801 separate occasions.

Maybe they should just have a 'soil car' on the night tube. A toilet, is what I'm saying. The drivers could offload the full tanks in Zone 5 somewhere, although obv. not in the parts where decent people live.

Sat two seats away from a copiously vomiting young woman on the Overground only today. This was only 7pm! She had a pal with her, thank goodness.

People in Birmingham paying in cash on the bus (and discussing various ticket options with the driver), it's like the dark ages up here.

They do have contactless but our main route is run by two different companies and only ones caps at the day pass price. Deregulation!

I had to pay cash in a bus in Leeds. That was odd

In Glasgow you pay in cash and the drivers do not give change back

That's what it's like in Glasgow, mate

Soft southern bastids.

turns out transport in london is not so bad

they do contactless on arriva in this bit of w yorkshire since a couple of weeks ago, although I've not seeing anyone using it. "whither be this witchcraft, take these cumbersome threpenny bits or i'll strike thee"

since I stopped commuting by bus (not in London) they've changed from only accepting cash with minimal chance of change available, to accepting contactless AND some sort of elaborate app where you pay in advance and activate tickets when you want them and give a secret code or whatnot

In Medway it’s basically impossible to guess how much the fare is going to be, when the bus is meant to leave or, for the most part, where it is going, without consulting a website approximately as complex as a 17th century farmers’ almanac but the recent addition of contactless has been useful.

Drivers can’t not give change, but they also leave the depot with zero cash - so if nobody has actually given them any coins before you get on, and you want to pay with a £5 note, they just refuse to take you.

sending a driver out without at least a basic float of £50 in coins is ridic, maybe not so much now but it has been standard practice for years before contactless.

they give you a token for yr change in dublin, you can go ten miles to the head office to collect it if you like

That is - or was until recently - the deal in Glasgow, you get a little piece of paper that you can go redeem somewhere lmao

Drivers can’t not give change, but they also leave the depot with zero cash - so if nobody has actually given them any coins before you get on, and you want to pay with a £5 note, they just refuse to take you.

drivers up here mostly let ppl on for free when they're out of change

Thats the common sense approach, especially if you are getting a day ticket. But some of these miserable fuckin drivers...

This can get all the way to fuck.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/18/woman-knocked-down-while-on-phone-wins-payout-from-cyclist

Disgraceful judgement.

Outrageous.

who works for a finance firm in the City of London and runs yoga retreats

Most people who run yoga retreats?

Ah wait I see now

Horrendous decision. I constantly see tourists moronically wandering into the road or fucking around blocking people from crossing safely - that’s the kind of unexpected behaviour I see most often and it’s so common. London continues to be shit for cyclists - if they weren’t forced to merge with traffic esp on overcrowded junctions, you’d remove this worry.

Fuck this. Cyclists should be prepared to turn sharply into the path of all the cars and buses going past them if some idiot steps off the pavement without looking?

she brought the case, waived her anonymity, and is about to suffer national wrath. worth it?