We really had been trying to not keep writing about London Bridge. Then, at the beginning of the year, a lot of problems emerged rendering it an apt topic for discussion again. The trouble was that whilst pictures, headlines and hyperbole were easy to find, verified facts were far harder to come by. With a recent GLA Transport Committee Meeting having concentrated solely on London Bridge, however, a steady trickle of information from other sources finally beginning to surface and enough original suppositions confirmed, it is finally time to give some explanation as to the causes of the recent chaos at the station.
Network Rail – not quite open
This article really should not be needed. At the recent GLA Transport Committee Meeting on March 27th (you can watch it for yourself here) the Network Rail delegation tried to assure the committee that they were not trying to hide anything. Network Rail have also shown how open and honest they can be with their own report on what went wrong at King’s Cross last Christmas. That report was a model of openness and one felt that nothing was left out or suppressed.
One cannot so far say quite the same of Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) when it comes to the problems at London Bridge and the reason for not getting the full story in one digestible portion is unclear. The older members of the team here at LR Towers have been reminded of visits to the doctor in the 1970s – it was hard to shake off the impression that a detailed explanation was being avoided because it was felt it might confuse the patient.
It is not that we are accusing Network Rail (or the TOCs) of malice. Their representatives at the Transport Committee meeting clearly had a hard time, despite what one felt was a genuine commitment by the managers involved to get on top of problems and make life better for the passenger. It is just that somehow they don’t quite seem able to get the message across about what went wrong. Nothing significant is being hidden now, but it is noticeable how many different sources one has to go to in order to try and build up a picture of what happened. It is also noticeable how one or two minor details simply are not emerging.
What follows is what we believe happened. In the absence of any further information from Network Rail or the TOCs all the available evidence points to this. Ultimately, it seems that four fundamental problems occurred at London Bridge following the Christmas blockade and we explore all these below. We’ll then look to the future to see if we can expect any improvements.
Problem 1: An evening peak timetable that would never have worked
Incredible as it would seem, what has emerged as a clear fundamental problem is that the planned timetable for January 2015 of trains from London Bridge was unsound and was just unworkable. It is difficult to believe that this could be the case but it appears that a combination of circumstances exposed a fundamental modelling and train operating flaw that until now never got a mention.
Getting squeezed
To understand how this happened we have to look at what the proposed plan was for London Bridge, morning and evening. Three years ago London Bridge terminating platforms used to handle 30tph in its nine platforms in peak hours. Before January 2015, the maximum service that could be run was 24tph using the remaining six platforms. The 2tph South London Line service (Victoria – London Bridge via Peckham Rye) finally ceased running in December 2012 so the 2014 timetable had to remove an extra 4tph from the peak timetable. This could be done in a relatively pain-free way but it was known that beyond that difficult (and unpopular) decisions would have to be made.
Given the extreme inconvenience to passengers of reducing the service further from January 2015, a very detailed modelling exercise was undertaken which simulated what would happen from January 2015 on the revised track layout. The objective was to run as many trains as possible and the results seemed to suggest that 22tph was difficult but achievable. This was from a software package that had been reliable in the past and was known to closely match reality.
The model is not quite right
Unfortunately it appears that, unrecognised at the time, there was a major problem. We get the strong impression that the model, with the appropriate parameters input, had never been implemented in a situation where the critical factor was train movements over a station throat (the part of the station where tracks divide to enter platforms) with no margin whatsoever for making up for any delay. This is most likely to happen at a station where the number of available tracks for trains leaving the station is limited – with one being the worst case. London Bridge manages slightly better than this with one and a bit (a “down” line and a reversible line), but it is about as close to that theoretical worst case as you are likely to find in a major metropolitan station.
The lack of experience of using the modelling in the situation described and an inappropriate parameter would soon turn out to expose a major weakness. For what was quickly discovered when the timetable came into force was that although the new timetable could conceivably work in the morning peak, it just could not do so in the evening.
The problem appears to be that there is a slight delay between a train being signalled that it can leave the platform and it beginning to move out. This is because, when the proceed aspect appears, the station staff have to satisfy themselves that the doors can be closed and then tell the driver or guard to “Close the Doors” (in practice done by pressing a button that causes the letters CD to light up next to the signal). The driver or guard then closes the doors and, once the platform staff have confirmed from the outside that the doors are properly closed and the train is safe to depart, the platform staff give the “Right Away” authority (once again in practice by pressing a button that this time causes RA to be displayed next to the signal).
This delay is inevitably a fraction longer in the evening peak than in the morning peak as the process of dispatching a train being is much more challenging when there are a lot of people on the train, others still trying to board and possibly additional people on the platform block staff sight lines on the platform. It is that few seconds extra that appears to be causing the problem. Unfortunately the value specified for this parameter during the modelling was in hindsight too optimistic.
Whilst the issue seems obvious once pointed out, it seems never to have been a problem before. Although there are circumstances where the evening peak is less intense than the morning peak (SouthEastern being a well-known one) the reason for this has never been given as the fact that it takes longer to dispatch trains in the evening from a London terminus than it does in the morning. It may well be that, until now, no-one bothered or thought it necessary to distinguish between the morning and evening peak and thus when modelling the same value has been used for both.
Southern Railway, Network Rail and Govia Thameslink have published a joint document with their improvement plan. In it they state matter-of-factly:
In addition, we are still working to stabilise the evening peak period as we have less capacity in the evening than the morning at London Bridge. This is because it takes longer to dispatch full trains than empty ones, and while all trains are full in the evening, over 30% of the morning trains are not in service when they leave the station.
Now if this was known to be a problem when writing the timetable and the timetable aimed to run the maximum number of trains possible then why on earth did they attempt to run the same number of trains in the evening peak as the morning peak? Instead it seems clear that this problem, or at least the extent of it, was not realised when the timetable was written.
Timing is everything
If we have read the signals correctly and identified the true cause of the timetable problem we then have a obvious question to ask: How come this problem wasn’t identified in advance by simply using a stopwatch to get an appropriate value to feed into the model? It does seem a bit of an oversight, so it initially suggests that there may be more to this than we have surmised.
After preparing and rejecting a long list of plausible explanations to explain this discrepancy we keep coming back to the notion that maybe it was simply never realised that the figure obtained varied by a small but significant amount depending on what time of day the timings were taken.
Getting out of this mess
Once the problem had been identified in the evening peak then next thing to do seemed obvious – remove two trains an hour from the evening peak departures. The West Croydon trains were chosen for two reasons. The first reason was because it was considered that there was an alternative route available (Jubilee Line to Canada Water then London Overground), although whether or not passengers could actually get on a Jubilee Line or London Overground train is another matter. The second reason for choosing the West Croydon trains was that they were fairly easy to remove from the timetable without knock-on effects or additional complications.
Those wondering why there were multiple minor timing announcements in the weeks following the initial disruption will find their answer here – that extra few seconds meant there needed to be some minor retimings which were worked out during this period. This also applied to the morning peak timetable, which also needed a bit of tweaking, but no removal of trains.
Problem 2: Operational teething and implementation troubles with the timetable and signalling
It is almost inevitable that when a timetable is significantly changed it takes a few days for it to settle down. This is because staff and passengers take time to adjust. It may be trivial things like a drivers checking which stations he is due to call at or passengers hesitating for a second or two before boarding trains.
In the case of the new January timetable there were a lot of other factors that would take time to “bed in”. Drivers were using a new track layout that they had never actually driven on before, signals were located in different places and two of the platforms at London Bridge were completely new.
Of much more significance, trains which had been controlled from the old London Bridge Signal Box (which dated from the early 1970s) were now controlled from a state-of-the-art Regional Operations Centre at Three Bridges in Sussex. The timing of the move would have seemed utterly logical to a signal engineer but operationally it meant people who were perhaps unfamiliar with the approaches to London Bridge and the services run on it were using equipment that was new and possibly alien to them to run trains to a timetable that had just been introduced. Worse, in the first week Charing Cross trains on SouthEastern were still calling at London Bridge. This meant that, because one change had not yet kicked in, more people were going to be using London Bridge than in subsequent weeks.
It does seem a bit surprising that the plan was not to stop Charing Cross trains calling at London Bridge from the beginning of January – even if they were still capable of doing so – in order to ensure that the worst first week was not even busier than the others on the Southern “low level” side.
In this “Big Bang” approach in January the gateline position was changed as was the location of the departure screens. This was quickly identified as causing a problem (and, it has to be said, quickly rectified) as people waited at inappropriate places on the concourse in order to be able to see the screens. Another minor problem adding to the whole.
As a result of the experience at London Bridge, South Western Alliance has vowed not to move the signalling control to the new Regional Operations Centre at the same time as other changes at Waterloo. It will be interesting to see if these good intentions will be feasible or whether the reality is that it is just not practical (or incredibly expensive) to adopt a multi-stage process to this.
Problem 3: Signalling Equipment Failures
There is a well known traditional “bathtub curve” of equipment failure. In the modern world, with quality assured testing, it is hoped that the expected initially high failure rate is a thing of the past. Unfortunately with the new signalling at London Bridge this definitely wasn’t in this case.
Following on from the fracas with the overrunning engineering works at Christmas at King’s Cross, the recent Transport Committee naturally homed in on this and wanted to know exactly what the problem was. The answers given were slightly evasive – which didn’t help – but the problems do appear to be genuinely unforeseen problems using equipment that was previously thought to be reliable.
One problem was a particular set of points at New Cross Gate. It appeared that this failed intermittently multiple times, but that the cause could not initially be determined. The impression given and rumoured was it that it was down to the contractor and supplier of the equipment and “personnel have now undergone retraining” to ensure this is not repeated. What has never been clear is whether the error was an installation error or one that occurred in the factory where the points were assembled. There also appears to be a reluctance to blame the contractor as this goes against modern attitudes and working practices where the approach is “we are all in this together”.
A further problem that has previously never publicly come to light was an earthing fault. Earth faults can be extremely difficult to track down. Sometimes it may not even be obvious that they are the cause of a particular problem. Croydon Tramlink’s opening was delayed for months whilst earthing issues were sorted out and anyone who has an electrical circuit in their house that occasionally trips for no apparent reason will appreciate how difficult these can be to identify and fix.
It appears that the earthing fault here was in one of the new signal rooms. Again, despite promises of not wishing to hide anything, Network Rail haven’t explained the exact circumstances. This problem occurred despite using equipment that has worked successfully and reliably elsewhere. This earthing fault turned out to be the ultimate cause of a number of seemingly unrelated failures and since being fixed we are assured that the equipment is working reliably.
The problem is not now at London Bridge
What has also emerged at the Transport Committee is that most of the problems affecting London Bridge now do not originate there. Typically they are signal failures further down the Brighton Line. The trouble is that, with everything at London Bridge having to be exactly sequenced with no margin for error, it is at London Bridge that the problem truly manifests.
It was notable that even before the work at London Bridge the Brighton Line was starting to suffer a regular stream of signal failures, which is hardly surprising given the age of much of the signalling equipment. The problem appears to be that now it is having even more impact. In the past few months there have been only a few closures due to Network Rail working at London Bridge on the Southern Side. Meanwhile there has been other work going on further down the line as Network Rail tries to either belatedly catch up with the backlog of maintenance and renewal elsewhere or at least keep the equipment in good enough repair.
Problem 4: Driver Shortage
Driver Shortage is a problem that simply shouldn’t have happened. It is also one that cannot be blamed on Network Rail – the TOCs being entirely responsible for providing drivers.
Again this is an area where the full picture has yet to be made fully clear. Unlike the other problems it also predated the Christmas track layout change at London Bridge. There appear to be a number of issues.
The first problem appears to be that when Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) took over from First Capital Connect (FCC) they found fewer drivers than expected. FCC seemed to have just enough to run a basic service but that was all – and even that assumed voluntary overtime. This does seem to be a fundamental weakness of the franchise process and it may be that in future the DfT needs to ensure that TOCs do not run down their trainee driver numbers towards the end of a franchise.
This initial driver problem was then made worse by an unusually high level of winter sickness that swept the country towards Christmas. On top of that, nearer Christmas drivers were naturally more reluctant to work overtime and, at the same time, it was necessary to give drivers two days of training to cover the new layout that would come into operation at London Bridge after Christmas.
Things got so bad that Southern resorted to withdrawing all its Milton Keynes services in the week before Christmas just to ensure they could run the rest of the service fairly reliably – though there were cancellations there as well.
Unfortunately, although Southern and Thameslink have now recruited new drivers it takes over a year to train them. Charles Horton, who heads GTR, claims that they have enough drivers now for normal day to day service provided everything else runs smoothly. The trouble is, of course, other things are not running smoothly and trains continue to be cancelled due to staff shortage.
One reason for the need to recruit so many drivers is to cover future training. Not only will drivers have to be retrained on the new class 387 entering service, they will also need to be eventually retrained further on the Siemens class 700 Thameslink trains. On top of that there will be training for signalling under ERTMS prior to 2018.
It can work
In short summary of the above, the main causes of the problems that occurred at London Bridge at the beginning of the year are now solved or largely solved.
There is cause for hope. Unfortunately at the Transport Committee this glimmer of light was given at the nadir of the Committee meeting when frustration was at its highest. A combination of a less than savvy remark and committee members by now interpreting everything in a negative light meant that the point being made was lost.
It was explained to the Transport Committee, quite reasonably, that things were getting better and that on the previous Thursday and Friday a reliable punctual service had run all day. Unfortunately the significance of this was not previously explained, so a by now frustrated Committee treated this comment, quite unjustly, with derision. The obvious comment was made about treating a good service on two days as no cause for congratulation and other comments were made in similar vein.
The point, however, that the transport committee seemed unable to grasp was that running a good service on two consecutive days demonstrates that the current timetable is basically sound and can be made to work. This is highly significant because it shows that the way forward is to build on that reliability, whilst also not falling into the trap of thinking that the problem is fixed. As well as explaining why running a good service for two days was perhaps cause for hope, it might have been a good idea to draw an analogy with the Jubilee Line resignalling – which went through considerable teething troubles but now works very well indeed. So, the timetable has been more or less sorted and it is now time to move on and deal with other issues that are causing problems.
Inevitably, time was wasted in the Transport Committee Meeting with members demanding to know when things were going to run properly and the response the were getting was that there will be steady improvement, but that Network Rail can’t give a date by when the service will reach a particular standard. Unsurprisingly this did not improve the atmosphere.
May Timetable improvements
Now that everyone is confident that they have a timetable that can work, the outlook is more positive and the next stage is to make that timetable as effective and robust as possible. One important thing to do is to reallocate the drivers’ diagrams to the services that are running in a more optimal way so drivers aren’t sitting around doing nothing useful because their train was removed from the timetable for one of its journeys.
The advantage of this reallocation of diagrams is that it will free up drivers, which will leave more spare and therefore reduce the possibility of trains being cancelled due to staff shortage. Inevitably this will involve minor alterations to the timetable and this revised timetable is due to be implemented as part of the May timetable change on Sunday 17th May.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the Committee wanted this implemented straightaway, but is unlikely to have been finalised yet and there are undoubtedly other complications. The new timetable and drivers diagrams are going to be in operation until the December 2015 timetable which itself will probably take into account changes made to the current timetable. It makes sense not to rush it and to get it right.
Platform 10
Not mentioned by Network Rail was the fact that by the time the new timetable is introduced one would hope that platform 10 at London Bridge will be completed and in use to its full operational length. One would hope this would lead to a little bit more flexibility. Currently care has to be taken to only timetable and use it for trains of 10-car maximum length. Having this as a full length platform should also make it possible for more trains to consist of 12 cars.
A warning for the future
Whilst a steady improvement can be hoped for, there is a bit of a metaphorical dark cloud that may appear this summer in the form of sunny days. Not all the trains that run into London Bridge are air conditioned and there is the potentially serious problem of passengers being held outside London Bridge in packed non-air-conditioned trains. Clearly in such circumstances these trains have to be given priority as far as possible which is going to cause considerable problems.
A further problem, exacerbated by this, is that by far the most logical and sensible thing to do after disruption is normally to get trains dispatched out the station even if passengers have not had time to board. Understandably this tends to upset passengers who can’t see the bigger picture – or don’t care and are understandably fixated on their own personal needs.
During disruption one normally has trains waiting outside the platforms. There is an issue that people on some of these trains, if they have been delayed, may be hot and close to fainting or in desperate need of the toilet (if there isn’t one on the train). In any case one wants to clear the backlog as soon as possible and the way to do this is to get rid of the trains in the platforms as soon as one can. One reason for this is that there may not currently be any non-air-conditioned toiletless trains waiting outside the station but if you don’t clear the queue of trains there will be at some point in the future.
Apart from helping prevent a queue of trains building up, or being sustained, outside the station, getting trains to depart from London Bridge as soon as possible after disruption can also do a lot to relieve important stations down the line, most notably East Croydon, which probably by then has a build up of passengers waiting for a train. To put it another way, in such circumstances a train might leave London Bridge half empty but it may well be full anyway by the time it leaves East Croydon.
Things can only get better
In the long term things will improve dramatically as tracks into London Bridge are restored once the Bermondsey diveunder is completed. In the short term it does seem fair to say that an unfortunate and unlucky combination of events has produced a lot of problems. With these largely solved it is probably fair to say that things can only get better. The question really is how quickly and by how much? Only time will tell.
Beautifully explained PoP.
Dear PoP – please ensure this is printed out handed to all members of the London Assembly to read and digest in full. I’m looking at Jenny Jones and Caroline Pidgeon especially. Might stop some of their out of place barking.
@PoP – thank you the lucid account – should be compulsory reading for politicians and operators alike. The modelling failures are only too plausible – the usual “rubbish in,rubbish out” alas. As a hemi-demi-semi-defence of NR’s approach, operators tend to assume (rightly) that the evening peak is less pressured than the morning one and may well have thought that this would make it alright on the night -literally.
BTW, I was amused to hear NR stating categorically a propos this Easter’s closures that there will be no bad things happening. Ahem. (I shall be spending the weekend avoiding travelling but tracking down earthing failures on the garden railway, of course).
This all boils down to the cost of the C-word – contingency. Chiltern for example runs 1 train per day from Paddington, which means that for planned work, and emergencies, drivers can be told “you are running to Paddington vice Marylebone” and as long as the trains can slip in to the paths available, and the time taken can fit with train and crew availability.
At present this has a major time cost – you can run a Euston to Coventry service via Banbury but the failure of the franchise & Network Rail delivery spec to allow for the former 100mph 4-track main line to be maintained in a better state than its current single track 2-way residual railway with some parts limited to 25mph or less means that going this way involves a grand tour of Ealing, and Acton via (appropriately) North Pole Junction, which adds 46 minutes to the 1 hour that the journey normally takes.
It also strikes me that Southeastern, and Southern do not have the slick ‘Plan b’ that c2c, SWT and London Midland seem to have for their routes. If things go bad at Waterloo, the number of trains pouring in can be stemmed by turning back the feeder branch trains at Surbiton, and most diesel services at Basingstoke, with passengers transferring to the remaining services. There are even 4 trains per day via East Putney to Wimbledon and beyond just to keep that route signed for by traincrew.
A few lines might be tweaked in the current plan, and notable the option of running London Bridge trains into Waterloo International, which perhaps might have allowed the rebuilding of the terminal platforms to take place as a single wipe-out clean sweep, and likewise to send some other services there instead of Charing Cross.
Ultimately the cost of time and platform space used to turn a terminating train must see Charing Cross, Euston, Moorgate (if possible) and Cannon Street given the Thameslink/Crossrail treatment and a restoration of the widened lines facility tuned to modern standards.
One key route I would suggest is Bermondsey to Battersea, following the Thames much as RER follows the Seine, and replicating the District Railway on the South Bank. Thameslink saw the elimiation of 6 platforms at Holborn Viaduct, releasing the land for development, and eliminating use of 4 platforms at St Pancras, 2 at Moorgate, and simplifying the use of Blackfriars whilst sending more trains through the stations – simply because they did not need to turn back or hang around in the platforms.
I travel from Norwood Junction to London Bridge daily, and it has got noticeably better in the past two or three weeks, and this week the morning trains have been waiting for less time outside London Bridge.
Typically the fast trains would slow down around New Cross Gate, and usually start their queueing soon after. This normally gives a good view of the closed viaduct that will be removed for the flyunder (which now has two tracks and ballast removed). Now it’s getting a lot closer to London Bridge (although how many train slots there are I don’t know) before it stops.
The missing driver problem has been very bad on some days. I had read before that it was due to the previous franchise owner simply not having enough, nor training new ones. And obviously displacement due to delays could leave a driver nowhere near their next train.
The other half is happier now, and I get to see the boy in the evening again. Sadly, less impromptu pub trips.
Re PoP
Err… not quite! It has only been partially rectified.
They moved some screens from the new location back to the old and put a put few surplus screens back into the old location (as many as they had) very quickly.
The downside to this is at the busiest moments in the evening peak only the next 10-12 minutes worth of trains are displayed (if everything is working ok and not just lots of cancelled ones!). This is not helpful when most services (groups) run at 2tph out of London Bridge. NR claimed more screens were being ordered in early January but there is no sign of them 3 months later…
So when it starts going wrong all the longer distance passengers just take the first service to East Croydon as that should always be on the boards some where.
P10 is 10 car at the moment* so hopefully 12 car shortly? (the old P8 was 8car pre December which is effectively swapped for the new P10 over the Xmas – NY Blockade). With P10 being narrow its best use in the evening peak is possibly receiving ECS with a long dwell time for 12 car services long distance services so the passenger flow is only 1 way on the platform thus enabling othe platforms to be better utilised where quicker turn arounds are needed. An Up move into P10 stops virtually all other moves in the immediate throat so possibly best to do this with an inbound ECS that has been lurking in the loop at New Cross Gate to maximise reliability.
Ansewer to an old PoP question – Passengers numbers** on inbound evening peak services (M – Th) into London Bridge:
The suburban services seem to have around 100-130 passengers arriving on them if running normal which as may not have been factored in to the timetabling.
130 pax off + 700 pax on with 5 minutes dwell time on narrow platforms doesn’t quite compute…
The other significant snippet is that NR are going to use a new consultancy for people flow (GLA/TfL’s favourite?) This may lead to new assumptions on minimum dwell times? rather than the use of standard defaults from elsewhere.
* I arrive most morning on a 10 car into P10!
** Mk1 eyeball survey
@Dave H – “If things go bad at Waterloo, the number of trains pouring in can be stemmed by turning back the feeder branch trains at Surbiton” – hardly a big number and even then they take up paths reversing.
“Charing Cross, Euston, Moorgate (if possible) and Cannon Street given the Thameslink/Crossrail treatment ” – what does this mean?
PoP, you have a rare gift indeed. As clear and informative as ever. Thank you.
ngh,
I am sure you are right. I have changed the comment about platform 10. I was convinced we could only have 8-car on the Caterham/Tattenham Corner service for this reason but thinking about it they have recently been 10-car. So I am not sure if I got confused or the new platform 10 was originally 8-car but is now 10-car and, hopefully, soon will be 12 car.
Re PoP,
P10 Most of the roof, lighting (&PA) are there and at foot level it just needs the all paving (platform edge slabs and block paving) doing but with P10-15 heavily utilised over the easter weekend (inc SE diversions) I’m not sure I can see it all happening for another few week(end)s
Dave H,
I would say the exact opposite of what you state is true and that Southern do regularly terminate late running trains at East Croydon (or start them from there) when it is appropriate to do so. Passengers almost know to expect this.
In fact Southern are possibly in the best situation to do this with their enormous depot at Selhurst. This means that trains can empty at East Croydon, sit in the depot and then take up their booked path for the southbound journey. Alternatively if there is a fault on the train it can terminate short at East Croydon and be replaced with another. This will either run empty to London or start its journey at East Croydon.
What Southern don’t do is terminate trains on mass at East Croydon from the south because you do not want crowds there that you cannot disperse. If the problem is that bad it is arguably better not to encourage passengers to leave their home station until it can be established that one can arrange for them to complete their journey.
It seems that the whole thing is chaos: not in the Daily Mail sense, but I the Mathematical one: small changes in initial conditions cause huge systematic changes.
Thanks PoP, another article of great insight!
“The point, however, that the transport committee seemed unable to grasp was that running a good service on two consecutive days demonstrates that the current timetable is basically sound and can be made to work.”
The transport committee was totally right to challenge this robustly. It suggests the managers were making the same mistake about assumptions which underlay the despatch delay parameter in the first place.
When a timetable is run that tightly, extrapolating that a timetable is fundamentally sound from two days performance involves the key assumption that there’s no variance in dwell times from day to day. That’s likely a false dwell time. Firstly, different days of the week are likely to have different passenger loadings than other days and therefore different dwell times. On average people travel home later on a Thursday than a Monday because people go out more on Thursdays than Mondays – which is why some restaurants close on Mondays. So extrapolating that a timetable which just works on a Thursday will work on a Monday isn’t right.
There is also natural, random variation between days, with probably a normal distribution for the time between a green signal and right away. The standard deviation might only be a second or two but there will be some variance.
As it turns out the timetable had settled down but it could easily have not turned out like that so I think the transport committee actually showed more understanding of the issues than the managers at that point and were totally justified in being incensed.
Two days running well shows things might have settled down and is a positive indicator of course but it certainly didn’t show things had settled down and wasn’t grounds for any complacency.
Quote lifted from a slide in a GTR presentation (discussing their new franchise):
Worth remembering
“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
Il Principe (written c.1505)
Re Briantist,
Exactly the DM didn’t mean this:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-353j-nonlinear-dynamics-i-chaos-fall-2012/index.htm
Unfortunately the modellers probably did (I’ve been in the “double precision” significant figures aren’t enough league several times)
@Theban – and indeed the whole modelling is predicated on the application of averages…
@Graham Feakins
That’s a great quote. Thank you.
But is it aposite or is it positive spin for the innovators? It suggests an unbalance of perception is down to the natural psychology of winners being only lukewarm defenders. For the present changes at London Bridge, however, the situation is that there a great number of losers, including many substantial losers, but only a few winners (if any) and their gains are small. So the situation isn’t as Machiavelli described, but a straightforward case of a horde of losers against a tiny cadre of winners.
@Dave H
“This all boils down to the cost of the C-word – contingency”
I’ve really tried to follow your logic and have traced some of your points on a map and I can’t quite get everyone home from work at the station beneath The Shard.
But following your logic (and crayons…. So sorry to bring them out already) but the obvious
@Grahah H
As you say.
Averages are fine when running a slack 4tph timetable. When implementing something like the new London Bridge timetable though full stochastic modelling with variance in each parameter is essential.. We can only pray that has been done for the planned services through the Thameslink Core because if not the scenes at London Bridge might be repeated in 3 / 4 years’ time at places like Farringdon and then applying the Elastoplast of short term timetable changes won’t be an acceptable solution (or perhaps an even less acceptable solution than it is at LB).
@Dave H
… Sorry, on a touchscreen and hit the big blue button in error!
The “obvious” relief here is to Crossrail London Bridge and Waterloo. Twp though Crossrai type platforms would have provided suffient relief AND a long-term way to get a train from South East London to South West London.
It would be possible because the stations have the same power systems.
But, too late and easily £2bn!
@ngh
That looks like my kind of thing. However, if people want to understanding a bit more but with of a slightly less mathematical bent than my maths-and-further-maths interest, I can recommend:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548f6
On Chaos Theory, And
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ls154
Which covers Complexity.
Understanding the difference between computer models of Complex vs Complicated vs Chaos is vital to understand the issues here. IMHO of course!
Thanks for an interesting read. It has been hard trying not to boil over sometimes with the delays and cancellations meaning getting home much delayed after a day’s work several nights each week. And that’s only from someone leaving Victoria and changing at East Croydon or Gatwick for a train out of London Bridge or Blackfriars. At least now I have something more tangible to tell fellow commuters rather than just that the rebuilding is rather ambitious and it will all be worth it in the end.
Crew shortages are now causing cancellation of GatEx also, an extraordinary situation for a service that before the franchise merger could be relied on to run whatever else was going wrong on the network.
And finally, the focus on delays and outright cancellations masks the problems with skipped stops and short formations. It’s been a miserable few months on the BML.
@Tunnel Bore
The sad thing is that much the same could be said of the experience of WCML modernisation. I’m not sure the lessons from that project were properly learned.
I’d like to draw out another point from your comment as well. When looking at a dashboard of performance statistics it’s easy to fail to appreciate the actual human impact. For me that’s evident in the GLA Transport Committee proceedings. Industry representatives had their performance reports and could see it was bad. Assembly Members were relying on human reports which probably showed that the situation wasn’t just bad but truly dire. I don’t get the sense industry representatives appreciated how bad or that they placed as much weight as they should to the humint from Assembly Members.
The intelligence services know the value of humint. I’m not sure that Southern management understands that Assembly Members have access to a type of performance data which tends to move rapidly through political organisations but only percolate slowly and very imperfectly through commercial organisations – customer experience and perception.
@ PoP – good article and thanks for the clear split out of issues. One query – you mention FCC bequeathing TSGN a driver short fall but how many TSGN (i.e. Thameslink) trains are running out of LB? I thought most were via B’friars / E&C. Aren’t Southern still a separate business with their own MD or have I missed Mr Horton taking over before the July transfer of Southern into TSGN? I know it’s all Govia run but surely there are different financial issues given TSGN is a management contract while Southern is a normal franchise? I just wonder how this translates into what has gone on in terms of staffing issues and whether there is a view that July offers an opportunity for improvement or may well “bring the pains on” if TSGN have made some brave assumptions about staff numbers and deployment.
@ Jordan D – for amusement I happened to look earlier on today at who follows the London Reconnections Twitter account. You may be interested to know that three Assembly Transport Committee members follow the Twitter feed and will have seen this article has been published. In between campaigning for their parties I’m sure they will see what PoP has written and how they’ve been “portrayed”. FYI Jenny Jones does not sit on the Transport Committee so she’s not been commenting on LB AFAIK. Darren Johnson is the Green Party member on the Committee but I’ve not noted him being particularly vocal about LB. I guess if I write any more articles referencing the Committee I shall now have to be doubly careful. 😉
A couple of comments:
In terms of the departure sequence timings NR should learn from LU where the departure sequence commences even though the platform starter is still red as the signalling system knows it will clear by the time the train doors are closed and the start buttons are pressed. There is a hold built in at I think 10 seconds before departure in case the train ahead has not got far enough down the line. That is what you need to do to get 34TPH from 2 platforms.
Also London Bridge suffers from the hoardings that block access along the length of the platforms I can only hope they will be 1.5 to 2m wider when the hoardings go. This problem is made worse by the fact a lot of people arrive before the previous train has departed and as trains almost always leave from the same platforms the people for the next train are already blocking longitudinal movement for those attempting to board the train already in the platform. The same applies to some extent before the next train has arrived. The gap between the Yellow lines and the hoarding is far too narrow for reasonable passenger flows. One solution would be to randomise the departure platforms but I expect there is some reason for always running to the timetabled platforms ?
A good article but I completely disagree about the jibe regarding 2 successful days of operation, which confounds basic statistics.
Even if the timetable is only actually deliverable 71% of the time (i.e. at least once a week on average it goes wrong), then there is still a greater than 50% chance of delivering a successful service on 2 consecutive days.
The PAC were absolutely right to mock this flimsy evidence – a month of trouble-free (or near trouble free) running would be a robust indicator of progress.
Malc and others,
I stand by my point about two consecutive days and still think you have missed the point. Even one day would have been enough. With the original timetable this just would not have been possible. The fact that it worked, even if only once, shows that it is possible and one can build on it.
Lets draw an analogy with surgery. You pioneer a great new procedure to save lives of people would would otherwise have certainly died. It could be heart transplant, another kind of transplant, keyhole surgery. Whatever.
You carry out the operation 100 times and in each case the patient dies. Now consider what happens when you carry out the operation 100 times and one patient lives who would not have otherwise have done so. In the first case it appears that the operation just doesn’t work and a different approach should be tried. In the second case it clearly can work but you are obviously still doing something wrong and it is probably worth pursuing and finding out what you are doing wrong.
Yes, there may be issues that it might work on certain days not others and this would need investigating. Actually Thursday and Friday evenings are probably more challenging than the rest of the week due to people arriving at the London Bridge in the evening peak. It doesn’t matter about the morning. We know that can work OK on any day of the week and it just needs to be improved to work reliably and consistently.
Great article thanks, explained the issues very clearly.
This highlights the importance of good throat junction design at very busy terminals. The more quickly a departing train can clear a new route into not only that same single platform, but the broadest range of platforms possible in the appropriate group, the better. That can be achieved by having junctions as close as possible to the platform ends and incorporating as much parallelism as is possible for a flat junction. The new LB design seems to make a good stab at that, but as far as I can see at a cursory glance it contains slightly fewer point ends and parallel movement capabilities than the old terminal throat as remained during the previous temporary phase which retained six of the old terminal platforms during 2013 after the three southernmost shorter platforms were removed. I wonder if this fact contributed to the problems – i.e. a timetable that worked with THAT six track layout, at least in terms of total train numbers, would not work with the latest incarnation. Maybe those few extra parallel moves provided the ‘safety valve’ to allow six platforms to cope in the evening peak.
Regarding the vow not to move the signalling control to the new Wessex Regional Operations Centre at the same time as the forthcoming major layout changes at Waterloo, I hope the response is to bring forward the control transfer date of the existing layout to the ROC so the staff there can become familiar with the station working using the new equipment for sufficient time before commencing the alterations. The alternative of making significant changes to the existing control panels at Wimbledon would be undesirable, involving repeated complex time-consuming rewiring of all the 1990’s equipment, and data changes to the severely dated ‘one off’ panel processor systems, only for it all to come out of use shortly afterwards on final transfer. Extraordinarily difficult, no doubt expensive and inefficient, and prone to a whole new raft of risks of its own.
The approach taken at Reading, which seems to have been very successful, was to transfer the existing layout complete to the ROC before carrying out the multi-stage layout changes. That was imperative at Reading as the widened station layout extended out over the former panel signal box and station interlocking site, so it all had to go prior to the construction of the new trackbeds and station structures.
Dave H. Southern and Southeastern will never be able to run their network as easily as the other TOCs you mention because they have to deal with a far more complex network with multiple termini, many flat junctions and low speed points. Also I cannot think of any easy way that London Bridge trains could be run into Waterloo International without major work on the infrastructure to boost capacity, speed, etc on the approach routes. Trains from East Croydon would have to be routed via Tulse Hill and Herne Hill which just could not support that number of trains. And where would trains going north of Norwood Junction via Sydenham or on the Peckham-Dulwich route terminate?
If London metro routes were given to TfL, would that simply Southern and South Eastern sufficiently?
@pop
“Actually Thursday and Friday evenings are probably more challenging than the rest of the week due to people arriving at the London Bridge in the evening peak.”
But fewer people leaving, I suspect – either because they are staying in London later, or have taken Friday off as a long weekend.
@Graham H/ dave H
““Charing Cross, Euston, Moorgate (if possible) and Cannon Street given the Thameslink/Crossrail treatment ” – what does this mean?”
I think he is suggesting a cross-London link between CX and Euston, and another from Moorgate to CSt – the latter is probably impractical without cutting a huge swathe through the Square Mile, including demolishing the Mansion House and Bank of England, and diverting the Northern, DLR, Crossrail and Met/H&C Circle tunnels.
““If things go bad at Waterloo, the number of trains pouring in can be stemmed by turning back the feeder branch trains at Surbiton” – hardly a big number and even then they take up paths reversing.”
Most services join the slow lines further in, at New Malden and Raynes Park. And turning any back there, or at Surbiton (or at Wimbledon, or the bay at Kingston) is often done. It may reduce the number of trains coming into Waterloo, but does nothing to get the PEOPLE there – which is the object of the exercise. Instead you then end up with large crowds at Basingstoke, Surbiton, Kingston, Raynes Park and Wimbledon dumped off these shuttles – crowds which the remaining longer distance services cannot cope with because they are full too! Most passengers would prefer to be in a warm carriage, albeit in a train in a queue waiting to get into Waterloo, rather than waiting on a cold platform with little prospect of getting on the next train, or at best doing an impersonation of a sardine, with the DMIs and tannoy arguing with each other about when they might expect a train – and no guarantee either of them is right!
Terminating trains at East Croydon, Lewisham, or anywhere else short of London in the morning peak doesn’t gets the lucky few to work on time at the expense of the others.
“Thameslink saw the elimination of 6 platforms at Holborn Viaduct”
Only three platforms were full length: the others were never electrified and were mainly used for parcels traffic, and had all been closed by the mid-seventies.
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/holborn_viaduct/holborn_viaduct_john_law(1983)old1.jpg
And the remaining three were replaced by two “downstairs” in City TL. (Granted the new Blackfriars only has four platforms where the old one had five)
Waterloo did have a through line a long time ago, the bridge is still there, could be a few issues with 3rd rail across the concourse these days……
@Anon
“If London metro routes were given to TfL, would that simply Southern and South Eastern sufficiently?”
It wouldn’t simplify operation at all – the same number of trains would still be running to/from/through London Bridge, but a third operator would be involved. That is not to say the idea has its merits.
@ Anon 2236 – we’ve touched on this many times. It’s the age old debate of whether passengers would prefer a complex pattern of direct (no change) services at low frequency (today’s set up) or a simpler service pattern running at higher frequencies but with more passengers having to change trains to reach their destination. People tolerate it on the tube because peak frequencies are typically very high. That would not be possible on Southern / South Eastern because the infrastructure is so complex with so many potential conflicts.
As a long term tube user then I have a preference for high frequency, simple services but I may well feel very differently if I had been using “Southern Region” services for 30+ years and had become accustomed to the service pattern / frequencies.
I fear that the demands for “TfL must run everything” are far, far too simplistic. It’s portrayed as some sort of “magic wand” that makes asset failures, staff shortages and strikes vanish whereas that’s simply not true. The Tube suffers from all these issues from time to time. What TfL Rail has done to date is manage expectations carefully and then put in place investment that takes 2-5 years to come to fruition. Whether TfL would ever get the funding needed to “fix” South Eastern, Southern and SWT inner suburban services is doubtful (my opinion). It’s potentially a very, very big sum of money to bring so many stations up to standard, to staff them and then to fund very significant rolling stock investment.
There is also a bigger issue about shared infrastructure and who actually pays for better tracks, new signalling, faster points etc etc. Whoever ran the longer distance commuter trains would also benefit and is it TfL’s job to fund track improvements for other TOCs? I dare say some of this will play out with respect to West Anglia in the next few years given Abellio trains will still run over tracks that LOROL will be mostly using. Crossrail is a wee bit different given there are distinct slow and fast tracks although even there Crossrail has to share. Crossrail has the advantage of being a massive project delivering a step change so some of the investment debate vanishes – it’s simply in the scope for Crossrail and the fact others benefit is a secondary issue.
Don’t get me wrong – I’d like to see TfL take control of more suburban rail services. However that must also be accompanied by the means (i.e. money/ control) to deliver the required improvements that will satisfy passengers. We need to get past the “magic wand” phase and have a realistic debate about what TfL would need to do and how that could be achieved.
This seems to be a very Southern/Thameslink-focussed article. As someone who uses southeastern from SE London every day, I have seen no improvement to services: five to ten
Minute delays in the morning and evening peak are usual, with trains still dwelling for five to ten minutes outside London Bridge. This is even with padding (e.g. Five minute dwell times) being introduced at Lewisham. Significant increases to journey times have been introduced across the southeastern metro network, with no improvement in performance.
After much prodding of southeastern Twitter staff, they will often reluctantly admit that train faults are the cause of ‘congestion’. It would be interesting to know to what extent TOC-on-TOC delays are responsible for performance issues at London Bridge.
Safe to say, though, that southeastern continues to excel with its pisspoor performance on a daily basis: one can accept delays during engineering work but lack of information, dirty trains and staff that would clearly rather be working anywhere than on the railway is inexcusable. All the while, GoVia pockets shed loads of taxpayers’ money.
The politicians are quite right to call them out for the useless parasites they are.
@ Beef Queen – and the reality is that politicians are the people who ultimately sign off and approve the likes of Govia taking on businesses that allow “shedloads of taxpayers’ money” to be siphoned off. I know that’s stating the absolute obvious but unless and until the voters / passengers insist on something different for the railways it isn’t going to change. If anyone turns up on your doorstep in the next 5 weeks asking for your vote then give them hell about the railways and ask them what they would do. Another good alternative is to ask what funding will go to London / TfL and to the railways given that the relevant departments are not ring fenced against funding cuts. What happens to investment, to services, to fares?
I’ll be astonished if any canvasser has a clue about the respective parties’ transport policies and that to me will be entirely indicative of the importance attached to it by the candidates / party leaders. However the only way to change it is to make it abundantly clear that transport and funding for it does matter electorally. It is usually a factor lurking amongst other issues but people don’t make the connection. I noted with interest that the pensioner in Leeds interviewed on BBC News tonight about her concerns did identify the need for a good bus service, for the free bus pass to continue and that decent transport access stops old people being isolated. Sounds like a decent policy line to me and not just for pensioners.
I know it’s too late now, but could anyone explain why they couldn’t have started the diveunder 2 years earlier than they did?
Bang on the mark there Walthamstowe. Politicians at Westminster under all parties have put in, and continued with, the system as we see it today. Southeastern are only operating to the system and financial settlement national politicians drew up. Sitting MP of the ruling government can’t say much about southeastern, and blame them for all problems as many try to do, as their colleagues at the Department for Transport drew up the franchise extensions.
Unless Beef you were referring to local politicians like London Assembly members calling them out in which case fair enough. Your right about added dwell time too. A lot added at Lewisham and also at the end of routes eg Dartford.
Walthamstowe – Regarding this – “Whether TfL would ever get the funding needed to “fix” South Eastern, Southern and SWT inner suburban services is doubtful (my opinion). It’s potentially a very, very big sum of money to bring so many stations up to standard, to staff them and then to fund very significant rolling stock investment.”
Ideally TfL and the GLA would be able to raise funding themselves and have power devolved from Whitehall. Unlikely with the UK’s ridiculously centralised system. TfL could though secure a fair bit more revenue with SE metro, if they took over and staffed stations, as we would see far less fare avoidance and more income. I believe that’s what they proposed as they were aware that on much of Southeastern metro paying seems optional.
@Ratty
i don’t know but a cynic might think there was a budget for the diveunder to be built early but they got diverted to build the Borough Market viaduct early instead which has sat there unused … But it did enable the council to get in their redevelopment of Borough Market instead of waiting 5 years.
I don’t know if that’s the reason but the cynic in me finds it plausible. It may even have been the right priority – if a choice had to be made.
Having said all that I think Southeastern have generally done a good job since January, but they are aided by some additional time. Theoretically many trains can be 10 mins late at certain times heading out of London and the excess time allowed at the penultimate station means many would arrive under 5 minutes late. The service is normally good enough though that hasn’t happened often but doesn’t mean people look even more skeptically at official stats.
I believe though that a fair bit of signalling and point work is still to come for the SE side? Southern have seen much more new stuff installed and then the subsequent failures as it beds in.
Also, a shame networkers never saw a proper refurb. They’re looking very tired now.
Ratty, Theban
The diveunder is the really critical bit. If the money had been there and the plans were all ready you could start the diveunder two years earlier – but what would that achieve? You would then have to clear the tracks around it two years earlier so you would have to reduce the tracks into London Bridge two years earlier which means knocking down the old station two years earlier etc.
Some times there just isn’t a nice neat solution to a nice neat problem. Did someone mention the four colour map theorem on another thread?
WW – Off topic (but you raised it) but the job of a party canvasser in an election period is not to debate issues or get you to change your mind but to ascertain how you are going to vote.
If you raise an issue they will normally make a note and then get someone else to send you the details from the manifesto etc.
If you try and engage in extended conversation they will polity withdraw and mark you down as ‘not us’ and leave you alone.
@ChrisC – you know that and I know that (if I care to remember it). But it isn’t what the man (i) on the doorstep thinks. Especially as it’s, in general, the only time they’re contacted on a personal basis by anyone representing a political party.
(i) only used as an oblique reference to “man on the Clapham Omnibus”, not being gender-specific.
@WW and others – recent evidence is that TfL will do the necessary with extra carriages. There are now lots of 5-carriage trains running on LO. TfL got off their proverbial and did the necessary. Meanwhile, in SouthEasternLand, all the infrastructure work is complete for 12-car trains. There’s about 3 diagrams running at 12 carriages in the Metro area. All that can be done about the overcrowding for the best part of 2 years is to make it better for Peter by making it worse for Paul, until DfT throw some crumbs over the fence.
So, whilst the past is no indicator of future performance, it seems TfL would actually make things better. To say nothing of getting the customer communication better, and raising more revenue.
Talking of TfL rail …
New colour-schemes appearing at Liverpool St.
Unmarked, plain white/cream coaches with dark blue band along bottom ( AGA are white/cream all the way down) & blue doors.
Presumably all ready for “TfL rail” branding in 8 weeks time …..
“fair to say that an unfortunate and unlucky combination of events has produced a lot of problems”
Fair to say that poor planning, inadequate modeling, a lack of simple common sense and massive underinvestment in the Brighton line over many years has produced a lot of problems…
@BeefQueen. I’m not sure which London Bridge you are using, but iit sure as hell isn’t the one near the Shard. 5-10 minute delays and similar dwells outside London Bridge on Southeastern services are far from usual and performance has very definitely improved. The last month saw 93.1% of Southeastern’s services meet PPM, which is the best for a long time (and the best March for even longer). 70% of trains were right time or early, which again is the best for a long time, and is approaching the levels of Chiltern and LOROL, who, frankly, do stick in lots of ‘padding’ in the approach to final destination.
The ‘padding’ you refer to is only in some trains, and then only to make the timetable work as the infrastructure is so restricted. And let us not forget that with 5-6% growth year on year in South London, station dwell times rise. That time has to go into the timetable somewhere.
I would say overall this is an interesting article and I’ve never heard of the earthling issue anywhere else.
That said, PoP does seem to be a bit pro-Southern and glosses over what we’ve been left with. The point is that the metro routes via Forest Hill have lost 50% of their evening peak service with nothing taking up the slack. It’s even worse for Anerley and Penge passengers as they no longer have any peak trains at all!
It is difficult to persuade me that the cuts are for the greater good when metro passengers get nothing out of the Thameslink works. If I was a Brighton commuter I would accept cuts now knowing in 3 year’s time I would have a damn fine service. If GTR were to stop the Caterham and/or Tottenham Corner services at Forest Hill from 2018 I’d be far more cheery. Otherwise I’ll have lost my morning peak 0831 train and half of my evening service all so I can watch Brightonman speeding through London non-stop.
@FOH – It’s a misconception that this work does nothing for Metro (both Southern and SouthEastern) travellers. The transfer of the long-distance traffic from the terminating platforms to the Thameslink core will ease the pressure on metro traffic to a significant extent. Remember that before this started, all the BML traffic to London Bridge in the a.m. peak terminated there (bar one), since there were no paths for them through Borough Market and Metropolitan junctions (let alone the infamous platform 6). For SouthEastern passengers, the improvement will be more to off-peak traffic (I suspect) with the Thameslink trains no longer getting in the way. In addition, it gets rid of the peak non-stoppers (which admittedly were mostly long-distance) and gives 2 platforms on the Charing X line in each direction.
@SFD – I think it would be fair to say that you’ve fallen prey to the effect of the PPM stats being for the whole day. The peaks are very, very different from my (limited) experience and feedback via twitter and elsewhere. There have been requests from travellers’ associations for a breakdown of these stats to verify this anecdotal information. I believe someone, somewhere, has done it with publicly-available info, but I haven’t checked that out yet.
I was shocked the other evening, just after the peak, to stand outside Lewisham for a good 5+ minutes on the down (after a crawl up to and along the Tanner’s Hill fly-down, or fly-up in this case), long enough for the driver to apologise, and then find we were actually only 1 late at the station. However you cut it, that’s shocking sandbagging.
@MikeP: fair point, but improving all day performance generally means improving peak performance too. Anyway, the stats for the previous 4 weeks before this one are nudging 89% PPM for morning peak up Southeastern services at London Bridge (and this is before the ‘padding’ between there and the terminii, so the actual PPM will be well into the 90s).
There are regular days where PPM is 100% for the morning peak for southeastern up services via London Bridge, the most recent being Wednesday morning (and no, that’s not an April fool). Yesterday was 93%.
And the overwhelming majority of trains that are delayed fall under 10 minutes. The number of up morning peak trains that were more than 10 minutes late at London Bridge for the first 4 weeks of March was 37. That’s 2% of the total.
So I stand by the coment that delays of 5-10 minutes on approach to London Bridge are not ‘usual’ – far from it, delay of more than 5 minutes is experienced by around 10% of morning peak passengers each day, on average. Or once a fortnight for the typical commuter. Hardly ‘usual’.
Are inbound trains permitted to leave stations before the scheduled departure time if the train is ready and a path is available?
This practice has been introduced on the outer suburban Blue Mountains line in Sydney, New South Wales to maximise capacity on the congested approaches to Sydney’s Central station (a terminal station for this line). The practice only applies at Strathfield (equivalent of an East Croydon) and Redfern stations (equivalent of a Vauxhall or Clapham Junction) where a good frequency of suburban services exist and people only board the outer suburban services for a quicker trip and/or to take advantage of the space created by people alighting at those station.
Footnote e in the timetable mentions the practice: http://www.sydneytrains.info/timetables/pdf/Blue_Mountains.pdf
Mike P; sandbagging or publishing a realistic timetable based on current constraints? Time and time again whilst working trains I am frustrated by arriving late not because I have driven slowly or because there are particular problems, but because the timetable has not taken account of the time it takes to make a conflicting move, station dwell times or the defensive driving policy. The timetable is an artificial construct, not an invisible hand. Surely better to publish an achievable timetable than an impossible one? I’m sure there are examples of unnecessary padding but most of the time I find a right time railway is just not possible either due to unrealistic schedules or variables that cannot or are not taken in account.
Gt, we have that in a very limited capacity on Southern certainly. Up trains at Clapham Junction and Battersea Park are permitted to go as soon as the doors and signals are clear. However that presumes they have arrived on time(!). Other than that it’s with special permission from control/signaller to ease a congested platform.
@Sad Fat Dad PPM includes all trains, most of which are off-peak ones that no-one’s using. I suspect the stats for the peak trains are damning.
The industry needs to stop hiding behind self-serving metrics like PPM and ask itself whether it is doing the best it can to serve the passengers who pay for it. Certainly on Twitter, complaints to Southern have gone through the roof since the year began.
@PoP
I suppose a timetable that occasionally works is better than one that doesn’t work at all, but I still don’t think the PAC were unreasonable to reject two successful operational days as “proof” that the timetable was working. They were well within their rights to expect more than flimsy evidence that things [i]might[/i] be improving.
SFD & GTR – I can see some extra time being needed at peak times in some cases. Off-peak seems a bit much though. Trains from Waterloo East are arriving at Lewisham 5 minutes early at eg 10pm and sitting there. It seems too much at off-peak times.
It may have made sense before the new timetable came in to be cautious, but now it seems too much will it change in future or remain to improve stats for those rare occasions a train leaves 10 minutes late at 10pm?
@anonymous 15:27. Read my comment again. The figures quoted are for the morning peak into London (Charing Cross / Cannon St).
Question for those at LR Towers. have you FOI’d the modelling results report?
Walthamstow Writer 19:09 2nd April
My understanding is Charles Horton is in charge of TSGN but Southern aren’t yet integrated into it yet. Nevertheless Charles Horton is responsible for the lot. I believe Southern are currently on revenue support.
There are loads of Thameslink services that terminate at London Bridge. From the customer point of view, some people argue that it would make more sense if they were branded as Southern but they aren’t.
Malc
Clearly we are going to disagree on the 2 successive days thing. It is not so much that things may be improving. It is indeed flimsy evidence for that. I keep repeating, the significance of it is that it shows that the timetable can work i.e. it is not fundamentally flawed. Given what has happened that is an achievement and a significant milestone. I was just disappointed that it seemed that the Transport Committee couldn’t grasp that and made cynical comments.
FOH
Personally I think Southern does quite a good job. On a separate issue I think that it does seem rather illogical to put the long distance stuff through the Thameslink core and leave the metro services to terminate but I have stated that many times and explained why, historically, it worked out that way.
Anonymous 17:43
Speaking for myself, I haven’t got time to FOI requests in. If anyone else wants to though … FOIs is what makes this reticence of Network Rail to explain what happened in great detail a bit silly. Maybe their attitude will change a bit now that the FOI Act applies to them.
PoP @ 18:21
“I haven’t got time to FOI requests in” You now have access to a valuable source of information, but appear to write it off?
But I also try to have a life. And if anyone wants to know then they can put a FOI request in themselves.
Two questions spring to mind at this point.
1) a train waiting at a platform is a good thing – compared to the alternatives of waiting outside a station or running at a show pace – because arriving passengers can detrain and departing ones can find a seat?
2) trains can’t leave early or run fast because they need to coexist with others? Or can trains now overtake or jump the lights because … People on the Internet are cross?
The moral seems to be that if you wait until extra capacity is desperately required before starting your capacity increasing project, then the project is probably going to be 100% more difficult and expensive (and disruptive to passengers) than if you start it when (say) the loadings are at about 90% of total capacity. I know we can blame (possibly) lots of folk in high places for the ludicrous delays to Thameslink ‘2000’, but I do wonder if the real risks that could arise from a serious delay were clearly expressed to the decision-makers of the time?
@Fandroid – Once the project is complete, I am waiting for the first tabloid article on how much money was wasted on “spare” capacity that isn’t being used.
There is a general Goldilocks attitude when it comes to infrastructure capacity – not too much, not too little, just enough. This applies to everything – railways, roads, airports, power stations, water supply and so on.
So on that basis, no, everyone will wait until it is too late to start work on adding capacity, because it can’t be that difficult, can it ? The problems at LBG are surely down to poor management, so we just need the people to do it right, don’t we (sarcasm before anyone comments).
London Bridge and its “metro” services were overcrowded (and unreliable) back in the post-war 1940’s weren’t they ? After all, that’s why Bulleid built the 4DD and when that didn’t work the infrastructure was enhanced for 10-car running. I guess the fall in rail use in the 80’s bought some breathing space, but apart from that it’s been problematic for at least 70 years – certainly on the high-level side. The 70’s resignalling helped, but wasn’t enough – so we had the introduction of the up avoiding line (sacrificing one terminal platform – which tells us which side has the long-term problems).
Then there’s the increased platform occupation times once the slam-door stock went.
@ Fandroid and Jim Cobb – I remember as part of my peripheral involvement in the re-design of the station standing in an exhibition on the forecourt in about the year 2000 explaining to visitors that completion was due in 2007! At the time we were designing to predicted demand in 2016 and the basics of the design have hardly changed since, so I don’t think there will be too many signs of spare capacity when it is finally completed in 2018.
@JohnM 2nd April – ‘Also London Bridge suffers from the hoardings that block access along the length of the platforms I can only hope they will be 1.5 to 2m wider when the hoardings go’. I think you may be disappointed as the hoardings are pretty tightly installed adjacent to the openings for the stairs and escalators down to the concourse, but of course once they are opened the numbers of people needing the squeeze along these pinch points will be reduced.
Unlike the through platforms which have 4 escalators, two flights of stairs and a lift per pair of platforms, the terminal platforms (where the entire train is emptying) just get one escalator and one set of stairs to supplement the exit via the platform ends. Platforms 11 to 14 get the benefit of a lift as well but platforms 10 and 15 do not even get that – very odd in this era of equal access for all.
On the issue of timetable padding the key is to measure reliability for arrival at all station stops including intermediate stops, not just the final one.
Anyone know what work is being carried out on the SE side this Easter weekend with a 4 day complete closure? I vaguely recall reading this weekend sees some of the first times when new signalling and/or points go in. Other stuff has been done before of course but it was smaller scale and mainly like for like replacements. Is that right?
Theban says “On the issue of timetable padding the key is to measure reliability for arrival at all station stops including intermediate stops, not just the final one.”
I disagree. You are probably right about the desirability of including arrival times at intermediate stops in any reliability measures; and I think there is some evidence that this is not always done in the measures used at present.
But this is quite a different issue from (what I understand by) the term padding. That term denotes extra time allowed anywhere in the timetable which is not really required (or at least, is not required if everything is running smoothly). Timetables can be padded by so adjusting any of the times, whether intermediate or final stops.
Use of the term “padding” usually indicates the user’s belief that the added minutes are some sort of bad thing; “I allow recovery times, you pad the timetable”.
@Malcolm – it was the Passenger’s Charter – the first attempt at some sort of commitment to performance – that turned your recovery times into my timetable padding.
Particularly because, a year or so into the Charter, greater padding, sorry, recovery time, was suddenly needed.
@Ed – the country end of the new tracks 3 and 4 come into use – freeing up 5 & 6 through the Bermondsey Diveunder for ripping up.
MikeP,
I am pretty sure the up platform loop (which is what I think you are referring to) was introduced as part of the 1970s resignalling. The work done in the 1990s which led to the loss of platform 7 was the lengthening of platforms at London Bridge to take 12 cars. This work also involved widening platform 6 which is why the canopy stopped well short of the platform edge. Incidently this must have, if anything, reduced the use of the up platform loop since more trains (the 12-car ones) were now capable of stopping at London Bridge.
Ed, Mike P
They are also doing what is advertised as viaduct strengthening work. There is a big mobile crane in Tooley Street and the road is completely closed except for pedestrian access.
Ed, Mike P. Several areas of work.
1) as Mike P says, bringing lines 3 & 4 into use between North Kent East Jn (near New Cross) and roughly Spa Rd Jn; concurrently taking 5 & 6 out of used that work on the dive under can progress to the next stage. This involves slueing the track at both ends, commissioning new point work at North Kent East Jn (most of which was installed a few weeks ago), and many signalling amendments. Interestingly, the signalling will ‘think’ that lines 3&4 are lines 5&6, so interlocking and panel amendments are minimised for that part.
2) plain lining a crossover on the slow lines at Met Jn.
3) demolishing the units on platforms 1/2 (the cafe and toilets).
4) work to the Tooley St side of the viaduct, requiring the crane, ans street closure.
Bizarrely, the notices on (both) facilities on P1/2 said they’d been closed to prevent anti-social behaviour (or some such wording), not in preparation for demolition to make the platforms safer….
I think the discussion on the target for reliability is forgetting Goodharts Law.
Wikipedia explains:
Goodhart’s law is named after the banker who originated it, Charles Goodhart. Its most popular formulation is: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
The inevitable consequence of including all stations in the reliability measure will be even more padding/recovery time.
@Bryn Davies – I’d not come across Goodhart’s Law before – thank you. Goodhart is absolutely right:in the narrow context of train performance, the moment TOCs started to be penalised for late arrival at termini, journey times became extended – nothing to do with recovery time (that was already in the timetable). Even more impressively,TOC timetable writers carefully calculate the optimum balance between penalties for failure to meet the target and the revenue loss from slower journey times (applies, of course, more to IC than NSE)
Going back to the point that the layout is complicated, I think you’ll find the layout now goes:
6 platforms into 3 tracks;
3 tracks into 4 tracks;
(Until this point, this is the permanent situation. The future allocation of the remaining 9 tracks on the viaduct will be 4 to Charing Cross, 2 to Thameslink and 3 (as present) to Cannon Street.)
Continuing from the bay platforms:
4 tracks back into 3 tracks;
From these 3 tracks there is a double junction for the 2 tracks to South Bermondsey and beyond;
Continuing on the 3 tracks, they then drop to 2 briefly before rising to 4 and quickly 5+ at New Cross Gate.
The brief drop to 2 tracks at Blue Anchor Junction is a bit of an own goal – semi-sensible in the long term though. A single extra bridge span over Surrey Canal Road may have allowed the Up Sussex Loop just north of New Cross Gate to have continued and avoided the brief constriction? It may well have paid for itself already (in delay savings) if it had been done. It was one of the points at the 2 track constriction that failed badly in January – I never did hear what the original reason was.
I do wonder if it would have been better to not build a lot of the crossovers/tracks that were not absolutely needed yet, then come and install them once the Down Sussex Slow goes through the new diveunder and they can be used properly. Too many toys in the toybox to know which one to play with? I think that the designers may have fallen into the trap that requires all space on the viaduct to be used – sometimes less is more? I realise that this means disruption for Southern commuters in two phases, but may have been a price worth paying?
It would seem that the London Overground 5 car services arrived just in time. With the longitudinal seating they have huge capacity, but West Croydon services are leaving full from Canada Water in the evening peak. LO have taken a major hit in right time performance, mainly due to the knock on effect from London Bridge issues, although as mentioned in the article there have been signalling problems over recent months affecting our services between New Cross Gate and West Croydon/Crystal Palace.
Turn around times have been significantly reduced and in my experience we are often being held for longer at either West Croydon or Norwood Junction waiting on delayed services to cross our path. From the driver perspective the work is much more intense than previously, although I do feel for platform staff who must bear the brunt in terms of public frustration and anger.
@jim cobb
Once the project is complete, I am waiting for the first tabloid article on how much money was wasted on “spare” capacity that isn’t being used.
I’m sure the tabloids will do better than that. They will additionally complain that after all this money spent and disruption suffered there is still overcrowding… probably in the same article that complains about the waste of money on ‘spare’ capacity!
@Graham H, 6 April 2015 at 10:19
Adding more padding also eats into plain line signalling headway capacity. The reason for this is that signals are spaced for optimum headway at the design speed. Traverse a 60MPH spaced section at 50MPH and it will take longer to clear the section for the next train. If you want 50MPH then respace the signals for 50MPH, but that is incredibly expensive particularly for gantries across multiple track terminal approaches like London Bridge, and it also removes the opportunity to go a bit faster to catch up if there’s space in front. ETCS should help to solve this as with more and shorter blocks, trains should be able to ‘close up’ more readily according to actual speeds.
Not that this will necessarily happen, but it is perfectly possible for a given part of the transport network to simultaneously suffer from spare capacity and overcrowding. There are various ways this can happen, but one obvious one is to build “too many” tracks and invest “too little” in rolling stock. Or in staff. If this were to happen, tabloids might validly complain at both sides.
Such imbalances, arguably, are rather more likely in a fragmentedly managed system than in an integrated one.
Mark’s comment about headways should remind us, if reminder is needed, that the sooner railways can move away from lamps on sticks, the sooner they will be able to make better use of whatever tracks are available.
Latecomer,
It would seem that the London Overground 5 car services arrived just in time.
And that was just luck or, to give it a posher name, serendipity. The Mayor wanted 5-cars on London Overground because he could both put it in his manifesto and deliver it within his period of office (and it would be popular). It wouldn’t have been a top priority for TfL otherwise.
@Malcolm 16:39 – like extending all the SouthEastern metro platforms to 12-cars. And then having just 3 12-car diagrams for the whole day because some Government department or other didn’t order any extra carriages, perhaps ?
PoP & SFD
‘There is a big mobile crane in Tooley Street” & “work to the Tooley St side of the viaduct”.
Is this crane really on Tooley St, on Dukes St Hill or at the junction of the two?
Is the viaduct that is being worked on actually the Joiner Street bridge or something else?
Re Ray K etc al.
See
https://twitter.com/NetworkRailLBG/media
&
https://twitter.com/se1/media
New beam going into Joiner Street Bridge
Also photos of the other items SFD mentioned in this post:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/a-perfect-storm-the-story-behind-the-london-bridge-delays/#comment-244869
Track slew near New Cross tracks 3+4 to 5+6
Metropolitan Junction track relaying
P1+2 cafe etc demolition.
@ Moosealot – the two classic headlines for post completion Thameslink will be
“We were promised everyone would have a seat. Look at this – people having to stand after £3,000bn have been spent and commuters have been put through hell for years”
“We travelled on the 0752 from Sutton to St Albans and it is *still* the most overcrowded train ever in the whole wide world of London. What was the point of new trains if the overcrowding hasn’t been solved”.
[headlines might contain slight exaggeration] 🙂
The fact that the real world and compromises got in the way will be beyond the headline writers.
RayK,
Junction of the two.
ngh and PoP
Thanks for the enlightenment.
Re Anonymous 6 April 2015 at 13:46
Quite a lot more complicated than that as there are 2 short 4 track sections before South Bermondsey Jn, 1 remains temporarily the other is permanent. The usage of the tracks and how they are signalled at this point also adds to the complication.
The long term situation is where the viaduct is 11 track (west of Spa Road, circa 1mile from the buffers on at terminating platforms) there are 3 reversible lines (tracks 9,10,11) for the terminating platforms. East of Spa Road where the viaduact widens to 12 track viaduct, there will be 4 lines (tracks 9,10,11, 12) for the terminating platforms in the post diveunder world.
Pre Christmas Spa Road Jn was the main sorting point for dealing with sorting out the pair by direction& fast /slow lines to/from via New Cross Gate services as well as South London Lines into the platforms. In the longer term it will do this as well. Pre Christmas at Blue Anchor (& in parallel just before South Bermondsey Jn) the terminating platforms had 6 tracks (Down Slow (track 7), Down Fast (8), Up Fast (9) Reversible (10) Down SLL/Spur (11) Up SLL/spur (12).
The Future east of Spa Road is Down Slow (9) Reversible Sussex (10) Reversible SLL (11) Up SLL (12). Currently 10,11,12 are in use as the 3 tracks which means there ia an awkward swap from 3 reversibles (west of) to 2 reversibles & 1 Up line (east of) at Spa Road. This appears to cause quite a few issues if everything isn’t on time at the moment. Track 9 should be available again Easter 2017 when it will be connected to the Down Slow via the Diveunder and Bricklayers Arms Jn.
Don’t you mean Bricklayers arms Jn?
Part of the issue here here is the 2 tracks are signalled and layed out the for the long term, the southern track is signalled for use as the Up slow for the long term and the Northern track as reversible with the main long term use the Up Fast for the few remaining fast services to the terminating platforms (e.g. Uckfields) and occasional use in the down direction (Down Uckfields will normally take the Down slow till joining the Down Fast just after the Surrey Canal Road Bridge.
This means till the the Down slow through the dive under is available (easter ’17) and Thameslink services in full swing (Dec ’18). All then some Down services via NXG will effectively run the along the Up fast at Brick Layers Arms Jn and then cross over to the Down fast (and then Down slow if heading along the slow lines). It look like the final interlocking there is in place which will mean that 2 track section is much more restricted than it might appear and hence the need to swap all the Up fast services to the Up slow line before the ELL flyover…
Southern Delay Repay is over £3m+ so far this year with only an estimated 10% of those eligibel reclaiming (Govia response to Assembly hearing)
Indeed the points on the down fast where down trains swap from the Up fast at the moment.
Agreed different temporary track layouts and signalling would have been more expensive and might be more reliable for users in the interim (also allowing higher capacity / resilience than currently?)
First hour of Southeastern trains through London Bridge lost this morning because of late finish.
Another good, yet personally frustrating article. I wish I were able to say what I want to say, but I’m afraid I can’t.
Let’s just say that the little mismatch between how RailSys replicates operations and the reality on the ground is only part of the picture. The bigger question that people need to ask is why was an overambitious timetable plan approved in the first place? Modelling flaw or no modelling flaw, there were serious doubts over how many trains could physically operate into/out of London Bridge and I believe Network Rail were not very happy about what they were being told to approve ‘for the sake of commuters’.
@ Straphan – “oh dear” re your last sentence and let’s leave it that.
Re WW & Staphan
Or more likely the sake of politicians and Govia staff dealing with the resulting “correspondence” from those commuters 😉
NR’s timelapse video of the Easter blockade works at various sites around London Bridge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFcyx_Wor04&feature=youtu.be
@WW/ngh: The only other thing I can add without fearing for my job is that the DfT need to really wake up and realise they are ultimately solely responsible for running the railway in this country. They hold both ends of the string: on the one hand they quite tightly specify each franchisee’s Train Service Obligation (number of stops at given station within time period, minimum/maximum journey time to given station from London) and have the power to amend this through the franchise variation process; on the other hand they pay Network Rail their subsidy and define what Network Rail should accomplish within each control period through the HLOS/SOFA mechanism.
Yet when certain things hit the fan, the DfT is nowhere to be seen. All press reports talk about Network Rail and Govia being dragged into yet another meeting where they receive the blowdryer treatment from yet another self-important local hench… politician. All the press releases full of apologies are issued – again – only by Network Rail and one of the three Govia companies that run through London Bridge. And the DfT who told them to run the railway with this timetable? They are nowhere to be seen, and – with the notable exception of Roger Ford – everyone else in the media are too lazy or thick to understand how the rail industry works; and to ask what role the DfT plays in all this.
Which is why I suggest someone officially puts the question to them: did the DfT know how precarious the January 2015 timetable plan for London Bridge was? And if so, what was their justification for progressing with it?
@ Straphan – you surely cannot be surprised at the state of affairs you describe? No point having power unless you use it to ensure there is a nice line of patsies arranged to take the flak on your behalf. It was ever thus and I don’t see it changing one bit. And while I appreciate why you are disparaging about the Assembly Members they are the only set of politicians who have taken some sort of lead in getting answers. All the other politicos have followed in their wake. You may think they’re not doing a good or the right job but can you imagine what it would be like without them there? People would be wasting their time trying to get an answer from the DfT that is never going to be forthcoming.
I have my own set of concerns about political control of transport in London but they’re mostly aligned to my own set of prejudices as to how *I* think things should be done! If my demands are met by an elected Mayor or whoever then whoopee. If not then I’m going to grumble and be unhappy. I’d still rather have that than take us back to the decades of ruin and neglect under Central government / quango control.
“Which is why I suggest someone officially puts the question to them: did the DfT know how precarious the January 2015 timetable plan for London Bridge was? And if so, what was their justification for progressing with it?”
And if they didn’t and didn’t check, should they then have been the ones signing off…
It’s noticable that when the works go largely to plan as seems to have happened this Easter that no mention of work undertaken is to be found in the press !
Perhaps they want Network Rail to spend money on advertising when things go to plan ?
One has to ask why Network Rail does not explain what actual differences work undertaken over a Christmas or Easter will have for rail users ? Especially work like the new bridge at Watford Junction which took benefit of a 4 day Easter to out with the old and in with the new .
As to money or subsidies going to Network Rail this is nowadays money that TOCs have paid to DFT in premium payments which then allow politicians to proclaim how they are funding rail improvements . I suppose a system where a premium payment by say SWT went straight to NR instead of via DFT would prevent politicians announcing funding to projects on SWT a useful device when elections are due !
@Melvyn “money that TOCs have paid to DFT in premium payments”
….and, as the TOCs are expecting to make a profit, they are not in the habit of giving money away – the money they so proudly trumpet they have “invested” in the system is (some of) the money they took from us in fares.
@straphan – this is one of the wonders of the age – how are DfT allowed to get away with it. As we elderly Whitehall hands remarked amongst ourselves in the old peoples’ clubs and similar at the time of privatisation – how will DfT answer the PQ “Why is the 17.06 or whatever composed of only four cars”? In the bad old days, Ministers had been trained to say it was a matter for BR – indeed, that was what BR was for, as I have remarked before. But, when the length of the 1706 is effectively specified in the franchise agreement how can they blame the TOC? But – no one has been clever enough (ie not very clever) to ask the Question. No, I don’t know why; a bit of persistent probing would destroy Ministers’ defences…
@ Melvyn – the news media were positively salivating at the prospect of Bank Holiday travel disasters for days before Good Friday. You’d think the world was going to end the way they were droning on. Of course this was all about creating the backdrop for “Network Rail are hopeless” / “Sack Mark Carne” stories if there was any sort of disruption after the weekend.
I assume you don’t inhabit the world of Twitter because the Network Rail media machine has been in overdrive with photos of the works going on across the country, tweet sessions with project managers and Mark Carne plus photos of Mr Carne on site and in project offices. Clearly this was a response / “fight back” following the problems at Christmas. To be fair it all seems to have gone reasonably well with major works being completed but I expect the media will be retreading the same old story line every bank holiday for at least a year in the hope of being able to say “gotcha” to Network Rail when something does go wrong as it surely will. It’s all rather pathetic but that’s what passes for “news” these days – being able to poke an organisation with a stick and laugh at it. If there were any really knowledgeable transport journalists in the mainstream press then there are plenty of important stories that need reporting but they never see the light of day.
It is also worth remembering that the new Thameslink franchise was meant to be awarded in 2013, which would have given plenty of time to sort out the driver shortage. Also the new trains are years late because of the amount of time it took to agree the procurement. No prizes for guessing whose fault both delays are.
@WW: This hinges on what DfT knew and when. If they knew, signed off a plan of action that didn’t work and then let NR and Govia take the flak then fair dues. That’s how the game has always been played. But if they knew of a fundamental conflict between the TOC’s franchise obligation and NR’s obligation to upgrade London Bridge and did nothing but shrug their shoulders and say ‘you signed it – your problem’ – then that is a different ‘game’ altogether.
@Melvyn: Consider the humble toilet. If it works day-in day-out they sit quiet – nobody praises a toilet for working as advertised. But if it breaks down – or if the person in charge decides to close it for a few days to upgrade it… All hell breaks loose and people moan to high heaven because they now have to find somewhere else to go for a bit.
In terms of public perception, the railways are no different.
@Graham H: I presume you’ve heard all this before, but I think no matter who is in charge, a decision needs to be made once and for all. We either run the railway on the basis of tightly-specified concessions that run for 5-10 years at a time, do away with all the silly repainting and branding (aside from Virgin nobody gives a toss about the brand of the operator) and have either the DfT or NR (or some new quango) play the role of Fat Controller. Or we devolve decisionmaking to operators and the mythical ‘free market’, give them long, 20-30 year franchises with full revenue risk, and turn Network Rail into merely the custodian of the infrastructure, with operators building infrastructure and handing it back into NR ownership.
There are success stories on either side: Merseyrail and London Overground on the one hand; Chiltern Railways on the other. I have not heard much praise about any of the ‘in-between’ arrangements that we have had for most of the period since privatisation.
@WW – how I agree with you about the need for the thing to be either fish or fowl! As it is, there’s so much scope to bury responsibility in a deep vat of fudge – and both the user and the taxpayer are the losers. Note the interesting remarks in the last two or three posts on this thread about DfT signing off the LBR programme in detail. (I also agree with you about some of these camelopard intermediate “organisations”, so reminiscent of Voltaire’s jibe about the Holy Roman Empire*…)
*Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire
I think the relationship between the industry and the media is an interesting one. It is frustrating to see the media leaping on any perceived problem with glee to trot out the same tired old opinions time and again, and also largely ignore any successes, but from a psychology perspective they are doing something that makes perfect sense.
Generally speaking people tend to have very ingrained and largely negative opinions towards the rail industry in this country. Where people hold strong opinions, cognitive biases come into play to protect these cherished views as we don’t like them challenged. One such bias is confirmation bias.
The media is probably only fulfilling a role in confirming a lot of widely held opinions (fares are a rip-off, trains are always late, things are better abroad, the industry is riddled with incompetence, etc.). Should they start challenging any of these beliefs then they risk alienating their readership. People want to have their views reinforced not shattered.
It is disappointing to have pretty much relentless negative media coverage on rail matters (Crossrail excepted, but expect that to change come 2018), but I do think it does have a role to play in driving up standards and making Network Rail and TOCs accountable (would the Easter works had been so well planned if the media coverage of the Christmas overruns had not been so extensive?), even if the stories are generally superficial and grossly unbalanced.
WW
I’d still rather have that than take us back to the decades of ruin and neglect under Central government / quango control.
But that, with the carefully-invisible DfT, is exactly what we are getting, like it or not.
Unless & until, of course someone in “real” politics gets a grip & directs the DfT to come out from under cover – a somewhat unlikely scenario, methinks.
For the avoidance of doubt Southern were told this time last year that their timetable plan wouldn’t work. RailSys simulations were carried out endlessly during the summer by NR to prove this fact. Southern stuck to their guns and virtually demanded that NR accept their 22 tph timetable.
@ South Coast Ed – ‘It is disappointing to have pretty much relentless negative media coverage on rail matters (Crossrail excepted, but expect that to change come 2018)…’
This issue could be helped by more positive and proactive press releases by the industry, in an effort to control the agenda rather than react to it. The Thameslink Programme website has a grand total of 4 news items published so far this year, all relating to the negative topic of disruption. By contrast the Crossrail website has 21 news articles in the same period (to find the last 21 Thameslink articles you have to go back to July last year on their website)!
Admittedly Crossrail does not have the same issues of interacting with existing rail services to anything like the same extent but both projects have great success stories to be told around engineering challenges and achievements yet Thameslink seems far less focused on presenting these to the outside world.
Brockley Mike – I quite agree. But I’d be willing to bet that there are more people in the Crossrail comms team than the whole of the Network Rail comms team nationwide. It seems that TfLs funders are more willing to pay for selling a good story than NRs funders.
Anonymous @2046. Interesting statement. Not consistent with my recollections of being involved throughout. And certainly not something I would post about here.
@ Greg – my reference was to TfL not the wider rail network when discussing democratic accountabilty. While I understand your dislike of the DfT for a wide range of reasons I do not accept the premise that the DfT is presiding over a railway system in the calamitous state that BR was in in the 1980s (as was LT at the same time). There may well still be loons, full of conspiracy theories to tarmac over the rails, in parts of the DfT but Network Rail is generously funded as are the TOCs and the general feel is one of expansion and growth. We can moan about the efficacy of the IEP and Thameslink procurements but trains are being built and they will come into service. Much as I like IC125s I doubt there is merit in them running in front line service when 50-60 years old. Now it might all fall off a cliff in a few weeks time when we have a new government but until then we have a generally expansionist policy for London and for the national rail network. You can argue about the accountability but at least a lot of good things are being done.
@ SFD – the irony, of course, about your comms team comment is that the main funder of both Crossrail and Thameslink is the DfT. Yes Crossrail has some TfL and external funding but I think the project philosophies are just different. If the Head of Press and PR at Crossrail is still who I think it is then he was quite a performer when at LU. He even tried to “turn me” from being a somewhat critical voice to a nice compliant one. Didn’t work but I admire the fact he tried. 😉 He also threatened me with “thumb screws” which showed he wasn’t averse to applying pain when necessary. That showed strategic thinking about how to get the right message “out there” and also how to stop the wrong message getting out. A latter day Thomas Cromwell in some respects.
I am sure that the XR project will face their nightmare moments as they approach the difficult part of the project and then we’ll see how they compare to Thameslink / Southern. I do agree with your basic point, though, that Thameslink could provide vastly more positive information about the project and progress. For example Siemens had the press over to Germany last week to see the Class 700s but have we heard much about that? Not yet but there may be an embargo in the run up to a bigger announcement – who knows?
@ Timbeau Fares are the basic income of TOCs and increasingly improvements to stations etc is part of the new franchise deals, my TOC C2C promises to make all stations fully accessible during its new franchise . With further fare income paid to the DFT and its this revenue that politicians use to boast about rail investment and with fares now covering around 75% of costs there is a lot of money going to the DFT !
@ WW Your assumption is correct I don’t use Twitter just like the bulk of rail users . Perhaps Network Rail needs to take a leaf out of TFL book where they have a page in London edition of Metro which allows them to explain work either undertaken or planned . Network Rail could issue a similar page post Christmas and Easter to explain work undertaken .
@ Straphan Your comment about the humble toilet seems to have resonance at Barking Station where they have installed posters on how to use the toilet ( no standing on seat) . Luckily I can’t post a copy on this site …!
@Anonymous
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/a-perfect-storm-the-story-behind-the-london-bridge-delays/#comment-245015
What you are saying puts more mud on the DfT: if the TOC knew about this in good time, the DfT should have known about this in good time as well. The only reason Southern stuck to their guns was that they had a franchise obligation to fulfil. Had said obligation been eased by the DfT we potentially would not have this whole London Bridge problem…
WW
Yes, I’m quite aware that the “destroy the unwanted railways” ethos of the 80’s has gone, thank you.
However: but Network Rail is generously funded as are the TOCs and the general feel is one of expansion and growth.
For now – until someone decides otherwise, especially as electrification costs appear to be spiralling ever-upwards.
Which is a general, not London topic, though relevant:
“Why is everything engineering so expensive here, compared to other places?” [ Always excepting the new Berlin airport, & “Fyra” of course ]
[Snip. On can overdo things. PoP]
@WW and others
It’s certainly true that the DfT have always been pulling the strings behind the railway, more or less invisibly and in governance terms there is not an ocean wide difference between what happened pre and post privatisation. What has changed fundamentally is the political attitude towards the railways.
Margaret Thatcher notoriously hated the railways, notwithstanding the analysis of the 1979 election, which ascribed a larger than average swing towards the Tories in the South East to commuter dissatisfaction with the railways. The 80s were a decade where philosophical dislike of public sector bodies by the ruling party was combined with a personal dislike by the prime minister. How could you expect to get anything better than lethargy and disinterest?
Come the 90s and privatisation takes place. The Major Government (Major liked trains personally) knew it had to be seen to make privatisation work. The Blair government was also more temperamentally inclined to be sympathetic to the railways (especially with RMT pushing) and given a refusal to renationalise had also to be seen to make privatisation work.
The Cameron Government, being perhaps more acutely aware of voters’ pressures than any of its predecessors has also shown its willingness not to upset commuters too much by, for example, moderating a stated fares increase policy of RPI+3% down to RPI. Hence, also, the commitment to get rid of pacers in the Northern franchise. It will be interesting to see if either of these commitments survives for long after May.
Effectively, what I am saying is it’s not the structures which have necessarily made the railways better or worse (though clearly some structures are distinctly worse) but the attitude of the Government of the day.
@Quinlet – “It’s certainly true that the DfT have always been pulling the strings behind the railway”. As a senior professional string puller and later a puppet I can assure you that that is not the case in the terms in which you state it. Up to the point of franchising, the state certainly intervened in some aspects of the railway system -the money, big investment and strategy but it emphatically did not in relation to operations, IR, commercial structure, and so on. Attempts by Ministers to intervene in such matters were firmly rebuffed with the steel ruler on the ministerial knuckles. What changed with franchising – albeit only after Salmon’s failure- was direct intervention by the Department in all those areas which had been off-limits before. In simple terms,the PSO I used to impose on the Board specified nothing more than a train miles target and a schedule of overcrowding measures. Now compare that with the small forest-sized franchise agreement in use today. Why, the EC franchise documentation made its second priority (after running the trains) the food to be served in the restaurant cars. How Ministers in the ’80s would have loved to get their hands on that but didn’t.
This hands-on approach we have now is a radical transformation of the relationship between state and industry. In effect, DfT has become the BR Board (actually,it has become the BR subsector management) and the change has happened unnoticed by politicians and industry outsiders alike. Whether it’s a good thing has to be questionable, not least because of its lack of transparency and accountability.
The micromanagement by DfT is the inevitable consequence of an artificial market model that has failed. Part of the reason for this failure is the omission at franchise level of any vision of the railway as a network. Hence, in particular, the purchase of trains directly by government and the requirement in the Southern and now Northern franchises to act as government agent in train purchase.
Since we are in an election period, I will put a policy straw man up for you all to knock down.
The next government should establish a publicly owned group of sector train service companies. Once established, the DfT (and Scottish equivalent) will give each sector train company a remit covering overall service levels and growth, fares and subsidy. The sector train companies will be responsible for operating trains and for letting franchises / concessions where appropriate and/or required by policy. They will also be responsible for arranging train purchases / leases, in partnership with ROSCOS etc. The franchisees and concessionaires will use these trains. Leasing contracts will be standardised to allow for frictionless train transfer between sectors. A set of common technical standards for trains will be established for the same purpose. Open access services will continue. For the sake of argument, the public train service companies will be called:
Rail Scotland (to distinguish from the operating company)
Regional Railways
Network South-East
Inter-City Directions
Please to demolish.
@answer=42 – how could one possibly dissent from that?! One might make all these companies subsidiaries of NR just to avoid unnecessary complications…
Two biref comments, as this isn’t the thread to carry on the nationalisation debate, as I’m sure we’ll be told:
1) I suspect politicians have swallowed the Treasury line that it costs money tor renationalise. It doesn’t; in saves money because of the switch to cash over accruals, and because you eliminate the profit element on intra-industry transactions. No one has had any incentive – financially or politically, to do the research.
2) We did briefly ponder in BR HQ whether we could shoot the Tory fox by having just such a massive contracting out programme. Interestingly – DfT please note – we concluded that we could do the trick with a BRB of perhaps no more than 250 staff. (Subsequently, I gave a presentation to Tony Ridley and his team on the impact of privatisation and my advice to them, in response to Tony’s “Que faire?” question, remained that the fox should be shot.)
I should have said this earlier.
PoP, your article was a truly excellent, forensic analysis of the London Bridge situation. I had not understood before. I do now.
answer=42,
Thank you. I am pleased you understand it. I cannot say I fully do. I get the impression from various sources that my explanation is not quite 100% accurate though pretty close to the truth.
I also personally think that the full explanation will eventually come out. I suspect that this will only happen much later to avoid mudslinging – especially so close to a general election. The impression I get is that it is quite possible to choose someone to blame. (Candidates are: DfT, Southern, Network Rail, John Mayor’s government that privatised the railway and delayed the Thameslink Programme in the first place, First Capital Connect for allowing the number of drivers to get critically low – take your pick.) Having chosen someone you can twist the facts or be selective to argue that it is all down to the organisation that you have decided is at fault.
The other thing that I have subsequently got a strong impression of is how the individual failures magnify the other ones. If there were plenty of drivers then more training and familiarity with the new layout could have been instigated. If there were no signal failures elsewhere (unrealistic) then actually the original evening timetable may have just about worked on a good day. If the timetable wasn’t so tight and optimistic then small failures and delays (especially dispatching) wouldn’t have been so critical. If everything hadn’t have happened at once then maybe individual problems (including other ones that have not yet come to public awareness) which were not significant on their own would have been identified quicker and resolved.
It almost certainly won’t happen but if someone wrote a book about what went wrong it ought to be compelling reading as a salutatory lesson everywhere for all managers (not just transport ones) about how events can conspire against you. It all has the feeling of the Concorde disaster where lots of seeming insignificant events all came together to produce a toxic result.
@ PoP – I got half way through your comment above and thought “it’s the combination of events / issues that’s the killer” and then you nicely went on to confirm my thought. It’s one of those horrible things where individual risks look inconsequential on their own but when combined turn into a nightmare. You need some skilled people to be able to do the analysis of how risks might combine and what’s needed to mitigate those scenarios.
PoP. London Bridge 2015 will be chapter 13 in my memoirs. Published in 10 years time.
@SFD
Hopefully published on LR. 🙂
There is almost certainly a body of knowledge concerning accumulation of interactive risk. The oil industry probably knows it off by heart (or should do – remember BP’s Gulf disaster). Most of this knowledge is built up after a disaster or several, and then slowly forgotten (or taken less seriously) as those with first-hand experience of the failures retire or move on. Given that Mark Carne is an ex-oil industry man (with experience of the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster) we can expect that he is well aware of such things. Perhaps he just hasn’t been in NR long enough to dig down into the complexities of it all.
@Fandroid
Bob G mentioned this in regard to the oil industry experience here in January 2015 in the “Know When To Run: The Story Behind The Xmas Kings Cross Problems” thread:
“For many years the international oil industry has used a ‘Rule of Three’ approach to identify potential failure paths. As a former safety professional I have several times personally advised senior management that an ‘unwanted event’ is looming, based on my interpretation of what to them appeared to be only minor glitches in otherwise normal operations. On one occasion I tried hard to persuade managers to stop an engineering operation so they could stand back and take stock, before making any decision about whether to carry on. This was not accepted because of the ‘pressure to finish the job’ and a perception that for them to call a halt would somehow call into question the professionalism of the very highly skilled engineers leading the work. One £10 million loss later, but thankfully no injuries, I had no more trouble in getting my point across. The events described in this article appear to provide good material for case study on ‘The Rule of Three’ – here’s a link that explains this all very well.
http://www.eimicrosites.org/heartsandminds/userfiles/file/ASA/ASA%20PDF%20rule%20of%20three%20paper,%20P%20Hudson,%20C%20vdGraaf.pdf“
@Brockley Mike
In terms of the final passenger flows I am not sure how many will use the new basement concourse – all the foot passengers across London Bridge and all the Bus passengers are hardly likley to want to go down to the basement only to go up to the platform level again so I assume they will still go on the present level access if still possible. The LU customers may use the basement route in preference to going up the existing escalators but it depends which end of the train they want – if it is the buffer end they may use the ‘JLE’ escalators to the existing concourse instead. Also people on the platform level can see trains coming in and decide which one to get when they have options such as the East Croydon Travellers. If their train is late it is quite common to see them waiting by the buffers ready to go to the ‘next train out’ on one of the other platforms. You used to see this with people waiting on the old overbridge as well.
As you said there are no lifts on some platforms I presume they will have to retain the existing concourse access to comply with the Disabled Access requirements.
It will be interesting to see how it all ends up.
On a seperate note I think Southern customers are getting a rough ride – lots of disbenefit during construction and less paltforms and thus less train services at the end. Alll the publicity seems to be about the benefits to Thameslink Customers.
John M. If by the ‘JLE’ escalators you mean the bank of four that lead from the vaults to the Shard concourse, they go next August. The best route to the tube will always be via the new concourse.
Southern customers are getting a rough-ish ride, at present, true. But when it’s finished many of them will have many more services to London Bridge (and beyond) than at present. They will just be Thameslink services. The capacity increase in the mainline to Croydon is significant. Acknowledging that this is jam tomorrow.
John M – there is a diagram in this document:
http://www.ice.org.uk/ICE_Web_Portal/media/eastofengland/Thameslink-KO2-London-Bridge-Presentation.pdf
which shows the predicted onward journey from the terminal platforms in the morning peak. the split is roughly 30% to LUL, 20% to the through platforms and 50% to ‘City / Street’ which covers buses, walking over London Bridge and local journeys too (as the primary options at least). From that I would estimate that going down to the concourse was the right choice for maybe 65% – all LUL, all through platform and all local exits. I suspect that pedestrian congestion either leaving via the single platform stairs or on the lower route to the tube might mean some of those opt for alternatives, but it is still a fairly healthy proportion and should make a difference to the current pinch-point capacity problem.
For the two platforms without DDA lifts, the option seems to be to exit via the barriers and use a new single lift at the edge of the terminal concourse to drop down to the new lower concourse. The only reason not to have lifts on platforms 10 and 15 looks to be that they would mess up two new retail units underneath – there is space for them to be provided, so not a good excuse in my view.
I agree on your last point and remain to be convinced of any direct benefits to inner Southern users, although to be fair we do get a shiny new station to spend waiting time in.
@JohnM
There will be no JLE escalators, that will be the main access from the tube to the new concourse. Also don’t forget that a huge number of the current Southern customers will actually be Thameslink when it’s finished (eg Brighton, Redhill, East Grinstead, Caterham and Tattenham, Littlehampton)
Re Brockley Mike, Anon, SFD, John M,
I would note that slide 54 of that presentation appears to show 100% of exits through the ground level concourse (46%+35%+19%=100%) therefore:
a) I call b*llsh*t on that modelling as anything including no exits via the current concourse belongs in an alternative universe. (Few passengers off SN metro / Uckfield services will go across London Bridge to the City via the ground floor concourse unless Southwark have agreed to pedestrianise Tooley Street)
b) according to a senior NR employee at the Assembly hearing it might explain why a different consultancy is now being used for pedestrian flow modelling than the one that produced those figures???
Answers on a post card to the usual
addressthread as to which one of the above / both is correct…The Planning Application document for LB at the terminating platform level clearly shows what I guess will be ‘standard’ small lifts on the island platforms 11/12 & 13/14. Greater lift access is to be provided in the area between platforms 9 and 10.
Perhaps more of concern is that only a single escalator will be provided on each of island platforms 11/12 & 13/14 and one also on platform 15 serving the central concourse down below at street level. That means, whichever direction it is decided to run those escalators, up or down, there will be a significant contra-flow, especially in the evenings, forced to use the multiple flights of stairs. Alternatively, they will still have to walk around the buffer stops and back to the escalators adjacent platform 10 to the area wonderfully annotated on the planning application map as the “Central Void” down to the main concourse and vice versa.
And thus it will come to pass that one doubtless will read of those lamenting the loss of the footbridge or a replacement (which in my view could easily have been achieved within the future envelope) when they discover what such an arduous task it will be simply changing between the new Thameslink platforms and the Southern terminating platforms. Of course, they might well be diverted whilst downstairs into one of the attractive outlets on the concourse to part with more money whilst for train after the one they had intended to catch.
So yet again, here is an example of how the terminating side and the infrastructure serving it has been sacrificed for the ‘golden’ through Thameslink services, itself to be served by new trains with seating less comfortable (no tables either in Standard Class) than much on the network today.
SFD suggests “jam tomorrow” but overall, I feel that the jam will be on ration and spread too thinly to be appreciated; indeed, for many, it won’t taste as good as before and the proper stuff will be on the ‘excluded’ list for a long to come. They might even seek a job elsewhere.
Accumulated failure, from small, apparently insignifican causes, mounting up.
The classic ( I’ve referred to this one before ) is the Hull, Paragon smash of 14/02/1927.
Where an apparently safe system had tiny “holes” in it, & on the appropriate day, the cumulative errors all lined up to the precise point for the system to fail.
IIRC a 0.7 second “window” fitted inside another 1.1 second “window” with all mechanical signalling & interlocking.
Please bear in mind that in December 18 there will be about 20tph arriving into the terminating platforms in the peak and about 10tph off-peak. Most of these will be 8-car metro services rather than 12-car longer distance ones. There will thus be a reduction in the number of passengers using the terminating platforms, and most of those who will use the terminating platforms will be headed for the tube or station exit, as they will have a choice to use through Thameslink services from East Croydon or Norwood Junction.
I am not a pedestrian flow expert and cannot tell whether the pedestrian access to/from the concourse will be enough or not, but I do reckon there will be fewer people who will need to change from Sussex terminating trains to other trains.
Re Staphan
” Most of these will be 8-car metro services rather than 12-car longer distance ones. ”
Uckfield services at upto 10x23m (11.5 car equivalent) will still remain
With the internal southern rolling stock cascades post service transfers to Thameslink (i.e. 377s displaced by 700s) GTR seem to aiming for more of the Metro services the could be run as 10 car being run as 10 car*.
So it might just be 8 tph via South Bermondsey that remain as 8 car in the peak?
*Additional 10 car mostly achieved by using all rather than just a few 3car 377/3s to make 10 car from 3+3+4 and probably greater utilisation of 5 car 377/7 freed up by greater availability of 377/2 ex Thameslink for WLL services. With nominal utilisation of 455s dropping but presumably plenty on tap at Selhurst, Streatham Hill or Stewarts Lane as hot spares so the worst short form would be 8car. Presumably especially useful in the autumn leaf fall season when wheel flats can’t be sorted as fast as they become a problem?
@ngh – I thought Mark Carne was making the autumn leaf fall season a thing of the past with serious cutting back of trackside growth ?? Which, naturally, will be maintained……
Re Mike P,
They can drastically reduce the problem caused by their trees but it doesn’t any thing about leaves form trees on adjacent land. So they might be able to reduce, but eliminate is another matter. Given the cutting back programmes was based on trials to assess the BCR, it look like it might pay for itself. Maintaining the foliage at low level will be cheaper than the initial cutting back.
One wonders what leaf fall will do to the reliability of SN’s London Bridge timetable this autumn…
Ah – http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/london-bridge-disruption-april-13.
Seven separate failures seem surprising if unconnected to the works going on.
Re Mike P
Sounds like Sunday was the mopping up session for the Easter Blockade where things like welding the rails where the track was slewed or replacement track was put in (joins usually temporarily clamped till everything has settled in). So plenty of opportunity for things to get disturbed again.
I was disgusted by the Network Rail press release which stated that the failures were unrelated.
They had possession of the whole area affected and there was evidence of cut cables beside the tracks, new ballast & re-aligned track.
Spinning gone too far. Proper planning and management is needed.
The press release didn’t say they were unrelated to the works, they were unrelated to each other, ie different causes. And as it happens, many of the failures had nothing to do with the work, although some did.
Not wishing to be pedantic, not my role after all, but any faults that wouldn’t have occurred absent the Sunday works were connected. They were connected by being caused by the works.
Sorry, but if 2 or more of the faults were connected to the works, then NR’s press release will absolutely seem weasel-worded to those affected.
NR’s press release may well seem weasel-worded to those affected, but I would be interested to know what form of words people might prefer. The sense of “(apparently) unrelated” seems quite clear to me, it means apparently unrelated to each other. Whether they were related to the works is not stated, and may not be known. Obviously the co-occurrence of 7 faults is in itself an unusual situation, which will require, and will presumably get, urgent investigation and attention.
Are you suggesting that two people miles apart, albeit working on the same project, both putting a shovel through a cable, count as connected faults?
I would understand two faults to be “connected” if one of the following applied:
– they happened to the same piece of kit (cable severed in two places)
– they were caused by the same error in procedure (incorrect installation method or incorrect kit installed)
– one of them caused the other (e.g severed cable caused blown fuse), or a botched attempt to fix the first failure led to the second
– the failures were caused by the same fault (blown fuse causes two signals to fail: JCB cuts through two cables at the same time)
– (arguably) if the same person was responsible for them (same navvy puts his shovel through two otherwise unrelated cables)
@ Malcolm and others – the press release was undoubtedly put out fairly quickly because of the inevitable media scrutiny over anything affecting London Bridge. There’s an obvious “desire” to link anything and everything to the “project” at London Bridge – presumably so a witch hunt can be conducted and someone’s head put on a stick. The press release says that the full facts were not known when it was released and that an investigation would be held (standard practice). It’s entirely possible that many of these faults were unrelated even if some might look similar. Someone might have cut through a signalling cable while days before a maintenance person may have dropped something on a signalling cable but it took days for it to finally fail. Look similar, might have a similar impact but unrelated in terms of time of damage and the “department” responsible.
I’m not trying to make light of the impact but I’ve seen this sort of stuff a thousand times when doing daily conference call reports and incident attribution. What looks to be the same thing being repeated very rarely is and getting to a genuine, rather than knee jerk, root cause can be time consuming. If there was a major delay or overrun we would also have the press office hammering the door down or my boss’s door demanding answers, explanations. lost customer hour calculations etc etc. All because someone on the Standard or at the BBC had LU in their sights. I imagine Twitter and smartphones have made it much worse.
the work for the southeastern side of London Bridge includes a lot of track re-alignments between there and New Cross.
Having gone very slowly past the sites on Monday morning I can assure you that the debris around the track is considerable with the cut ends of cables clearly on show.
There was also a late finish last Tuesday (first hour of trains through the station lost). The late finish on Monday obviously reduced the opportunity to check things out before passengers were delayed.
The use of the word unrelated is open to interpretation. 7 faults in the same area after a weekend of major works in the area is hardly a co-incidence.
@Chris Patrick: And yet the rules of chance say that it could be…. A perfect storm…
The latest issue of Rail suggests no margin of error was built into the programme and that the recent work in the Bermondsey area was fairly radical.
Rule of railway management #6. Distrust everything you read in the papers (RAIL included).
@SFD – not just a rule for railway managers, of course.
@Chris Patrick
‘The latest issue of Rail suggests’
This is rather too vague a reference to be helpful. I would rather have a reference to the author of any statement and the title of the article/ page number so that I can find the reference without having to read or reread said magazine from cover to cover. It would also be helpful to have the issue number/date given to help people who will pick up the thread at a later date.
This sort of vagueness is only too common. It really helpful to bear it in mind whenever posting comments on something in print.
The issue concerned (15th April) had a major feature on the work at London Bridge.
The lack of margin for error was a direct quote from Mr Solly the project manager.
I won’t bother posting anything again.
Mr Solly the project manager?
Never heard of him. Certainly not the current Thameslink project manager though he may have been once. Even if he was once, I lose count of the number of people who insist something is true because it was once believed to be true and they ignore what has subsequently happened.
I am not saying that there isn’t a lack of margin for error but this Mr Solly, whoever he is, is yet to be identified as a reliable source.
Sorry, my mistyping – Mark Somers, Thameslink Programme Project Director – Railway Systems (KO2).
Hope this is sufficiently pedantic.
Chris Patrick,
Aha. The previous project manager. As I say, what might well be true then might not be true now. If I hear it from the current project manager I may well think differently.
As he was interviewed on 4th April this year it appears he is still managing at least the Bermondsey dive under part of the work.
This is the element that has caused significant delays in the last 2 weeks.
PoP et all
Mr Somers is still very much the project manager for the London Bridge works.
James Forbes,
I could well believe that. Last year at any rate he was “Project Director – Signalling & Track Thameslink, Network Rail” but that is not the same as the Project Director for Thameslink. I have been to many talks by people on one side of the railway who state things outside their area and they get the supposed facts wrong. I have rarely known people in overall charge of projects be wrong in their assertions about the project they are managing (although I once did very politely correct Andrew Wostenholme when he got the occupations of the people the first TBMs were named after the wrong way round).
@Chris Patrick
My plea for detail was more inspired by your post than directed at you. I find it very frustrating to read any reference which supplies insufficient information to enable me to read the context etc.. I could well have expressed it better so that you didn’t feel so got at. And yes! I do tend to stray on the pedantic side sometimes. At others I too say too little to be helpful.
PoP
You are letting yourself down by not understanding roles. Mark is the big boss in charge of Francis. Francis is in charge of Simon who is the Major Programme Director for Thameslink. Simon is Mark Somers boss.
Major Programme Director = all of TLP, Project Director – Signalling & Track = bloke in charge of LB area (a part, albeit very significant, of TLP)
Coming soon a new LR article:
“Understanding the Thameslink Map – No not that one, the Organogram that is more complicated than the 2018 routemap”
😉
@RayK
Quite. As a general request, comments should ideally have contextual information about references made, and precise issue numbers and dates for news items or external articles, are most helpful to avoid wasting time chasing down the information, and to more quickly and effectively the point the commentator wishes to make. Otherwise we have a slew of comments asking for such detail…
Webpage links are good, although they tend to go dead over time, which can be a problem when reading a comment that is several years old.
James Forbes,
I stand corrected but still slightly confused.
@PoP – re: areas of expertise. Even last year, the “indicative Thameslink services” map showing Dartford services (that had been dead & buried for some while) was still popping up in presentations all over the place.
It seems work on the Thameslink Project has uncovered the remains of the firmer Spa Road Station which closed about a century ago due to competition from trams and buses see link to NR site for details –
http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/ghost-station-uncovered-as-thameslink-team-tackles-victorian-viaduct-in-bermondsey
@Melvyn 21:31
The actual station is Southwark Park station, and not Spa Road, although they both closed to passengers 100 years ago in 1915. I also seem to have read that they remained open for staff until 1925.
The BBC even showed pictures of the station remains on Breakfast this morning!!
Spa Road is still open for maintenance crews. There is a hoist to lift equipment up to track height…
For what it’s worth, Spa Road & Bermondsey Station was another station, closer to London Bridge, that was also killed by the electric tram.
Southwark Park station was close to the still-extant South Bermondsey station, roughly at the point where the lines from points south converge on their way towards London Bridge.
Actual location of relevant stations shown HERE
Another copy from the “Railway Junction Diagrams”
Note that the current S Bermondsey station is not shown
Rail Issue 772 page 22 Reports Mark Somers as saying ‘The first train goes under the box on December 2016.’. The Stage3A – Part 1 diagram from the KO2 presentation suggests that this was due to happen three months later. Is this really a change or is it just that the staging diagrams are too course grained to show every change in detail? I suspect the latter as I would expect more to be made of any bringing forward of any tunnel ending lights.
RayK,
As mentioned in a previous article that presentation is full of out of date stuff and inconsistencies. It was clearly put together for the a particular audience which would not be too bothered by the final exact details of implementation. As his job title suggests, Mark Somers seems to be more involved with signalling and track and not the finer details of operating. A good reason to take his comment about “no margin of error was built into the programme” as something that could mean absolutely anything and probably wasn’t referring to the timetable and should be taken with a few bagfuls of salt.
Re Ray K and PoP,
The civils work has so far appeared to proceed very well so that sounds very plausible for 18-20 months.
I would note the difference between an engineering train (tamper etc.), a test train and a train in service… as that quote very carefully doesn’t specify which!
The first lines under the BDU are scheduled to be commissioned on 3/1/17. At 0400. First service trains under it will be shortly thereafter.
I’m not certain if this has been linked on LR prior to now (I don’t believe so, but I may be wrong), nor if it relates to the London Bridge issues per se (so apologies if it’s misplaced here) but the following “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” study, which attempts to quantify the effects of shocks on the London Underground and predict subsequent traffic volumes, may be of some interest:
http://m.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/15/1412908112
Thanks Andy. Not been linked to on LR before.
To read the 6 page paper PDF and the Supporting Information, go to the second last box and click on “PDF + SI”.
Yes, thanks Andy Carpenter, and if you go to the second last box and click on “PDF + SI” as suggested by LBM, you will see a map of TfL services (tube, DLR and Overground only) that illustrates precisely why, if that is solely the area and stations under consideration by TfL in the piece, it is totally inadequate to use in order to quantify and predict services etc.
Just taking the South London Overground, you will see that none of the National Rail services are shown (apart from a ‘dagger’ at each station), so that one can never see, for example, services from Peckham Rye and environs also include services to three main line termini (London Bridge, Blackfriars and Victoria). That is an appalling omission and oft-discussed.
It is high time that the “London Connections” map was adopted by TfL as the *primary* map of choice, no matter how ‘busy’ it may appear. That is the reality but once people get used to it, then maybe traffic projectionists (?) and users will come to wonder why they weren’t told before. Many in South London have relied (have had to rely) on that map for years and, so far as I know, is still handed out upon request at local stations. Here it is:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.pdf
@Graham Feakins
I suggested just this (that the London Connections map should be the primary rail map for London) to Tony Ridly, then MD of LU, in front of Dave Wetzel at the GLC in about 1984. While Dave was quite interested, the look of shock and horor on Tony Ridley’s face was quite a picture.
And, maybe relevant, maybe not … heard last night @ Carshalton, waiting for a northbound train:
“Only services that are already running are advertised”
[ One train vanished from the service, for no apparent reason .. ]
But, if this level of “logic” is being applied & then inflicted on the public, one does wonder what is going on?
@Graham F
Passages like “Edgware Road at Hammersmith is distinguished from Edgware Road in the Circle Line”, which is wrong on at least three levels, suggested to me that it was written by someone who had never been to London, so I was quite dismayed to see that two of the three authors are based at UCL.
A footnote explains that they have omitted Tramlink from their considerations, but nary a mention of NR, even though for many stations (e.g Stratford, West Croydon, Wimbledon) it is impossible to accurately partition entrance /exit data between operators.
The results of the research may be useful, but it is naïve to omit any reference to these limitations, and throws some doubt on their reliability.
If the London Connections Map were to succeed The Tube Map then the first job would be to indicate stations with step free access . Something that unless you continue to only show stations with full step free access which could be further complicated by the variety of trains that use some stations .
One may also need to consider ticket availability on some services as some passengers might assume they could use all services shown that stop at these stations something that sometimes no doubt already happens !
Of course expansion of Overground and introduction of Crossrail will add more lines but to date TFL have refused to add some useful links like Thameslink (E.g Elephant and Castle/ London Bridge to Kentish Town) and Great Northern route from Moorgate to Finsbury Park despite it being a former Tube line and having cross platform link at Highbury and Islington which remains under used while passengers crowd onto Victoria Line to Kings Cross then change to overloaded Northern Line to Old Street/Moorgate all because they don’t know where service from H&I goes to !
We talk about Peak Tube but forget about under used lines which used to include the North London Line mainly because of non ticket validity and not being on tube maps …
@Melvyn
“One may also need to consider ticket availability on some services as some passengers might assume they could use all services shown that stop at these stations something that sometimes no doubt already happens !”
But that assumption is correct – for instance you can use any train between Charing Cross and Waterloo East, whether it is ultimately going to Hayes or to Hastings.
The only exceptions I can think of are Heathrow Express and HS1, (which are sufficiently exceptional and rare instances to merit showing in a special way e.g a dotted line, or not at all). Indeed, both HS1 stations in London, and the three HEx stations at Heathrow, are separate from the stations served by other trains, so there are no services from those stations on which TfL/Oyster fares are valid.
Or are you suggesting that, although the Oysterdom map runs out at Orpington, people would assume they can carry on to Hastings? Why would they do that? Do they expect to be able to go to Amersham with a tube ticket from Baker Street to Wembley Park?
Another inaccuracy in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” paper is that the data is stated to be taken from the period 14/2/11 to 9/2/12. The map they show includes five stations that were not served by TfL in the period under review, and three stretches of line that, for all or (in one case) part of that period, had no passenger service at all!
I think the issue with the Tube map is actually its simplicity. Eleven underground lines are displayed along with the North, South, East, West London lines and the Goblin and the DLR. The advent of LOROL control of the lines out of Liverpool Street plus Crossrail add some complexity as can be seen via this link to a new map on Wikipedia.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/London_Underground_Overground_DLR_Crossrail_map.svg
It is the simplicity of the image of the Tube map which gives the clarity that attracts the praise from designers but it is increasingly a false image as it omits the suburban lines especially south of the river where the Tube rarely penetrates. In contrast the London Rail and Tube services map as championed by Graham Feakins provides a full diagram and yes it is busy as it has all the additional commuter railway lines but it reflects the real world far more accurately.
The growing ambition of TfL to take control of all the suburban lines in Greater London means the Tube map will continue to morph to ultimately reflect the world as viewed in the London Rail and Tube services map.
I see Mr Hendy has been his forthright self again!
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/23/london-transport-chief-tfl-sir-peter-hendy-capital-trains-shit
Full article
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1343914/sir-peter-hendy-man-keeps-london-move/
It is interesting to speculate on what TfL would do if it got hold of services south of the river.
Would it provide more segregation on the SE lines, with some branches only served by Cannon Street and others by Charing Cross? – a process that has already started with the demise of direct Charing Cross- Greenwich line trains.
Would an attempt be made to somehow simplify Southern’s network, to provide fewer direct connections, but more frequency on the remaining ones and better interchange between them? And if so, how? (e.g Victoria locals routed via Tulse Hill (reverse) to interchange with London Bridge via Peckham services?, replacement of Tulse Hill/West Norwood by a two-level interchange station where the Tulse Hill-Streatham and Streatham Hill-West Norwood lines cross?).
In comparison SWT is a relatively simple structure – everything goes to Waterloo – but that will change if Crossrail 2 comes to pass.
@RichardB
“I think the issue with the Tube map is actually its simplicity.”
Partly because it tries to do too much – the Paris metro map covers an area smaller than London’s Zones 1 and 2. The longer distance RER lines are largely represented by arrows pointing off the map.
A “journey planner” map covereing a similar area to the metro map, showing ALL lines, regardless of operator, but only in Zones 1 and 2, would be much easier to comprehend. Stations further out can display “quadrant” maps showing local lines – but omitting extraneous detail of far away boroughs of which they know little – it is rare for someone in Croydon to need to know the intricacies of the rail network around Ealing, or indeed vice versa, and the central map, with big friendly arrows pointing to both your start point and destination, would be enough to put you on the right lines.
Given that the Tube and Connections maps are displayed on stations I don’t see the problem.
With leaflet racks both maps are available and people tend to vote with their hands and take the Tube map. You can take a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.
The use of smart phones and the TfL Journey Planner has also changed what people want/need.
@Chris Patrick – 24 April 2015 at 10:32
“With leaflet racks both maps are available and people tend to vote with their hands and take the Tube map”
Not on any station leaflet racks I’ve seen have there been copies of the London Rail & Tube Services Map
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/static/documents/content/routemaps/London_Rail_Tube_Map.pdf
I’ve always had to ask .. and copies are not always available. How many casual visitors/tourists are even aware of existence?
Hence my comment here
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/crossrail-overlooked-surface-sections/#comment-245380
about the need to make it widely available.
The challenge for any cartographer is to clarify the Network Rail lines.
For me a detailed map and a timetable work so much better than a modern journey planner. I used to always buy the paper all lines timetable and I was a big fan of the Thomas Cook European Tietable book with maps.
I am in a minority though. Croydon Tramlink is a very simple system but my partner doesn’t the map of the system helpful – shecdoesntvreally understand it. For her what she needs is a list of the stations the tram /train will stop at – like the scrolling display you get on modern NR trains and a journey planner which has told her where to change.
When it comes to which map or information resource I think the transport-savy LR readership as about the worst possible judge of what works well for the majority of travellers.
@John UK
That is why I included the smart phone option – maps are available on line and for download.
This backs up the maps available at stations.
@Theban -How I – and I suspect, my blood and custard colleagues – agree with you, mainly perhaps for three reasons:
– being able to examine the whole timetable enables one to look at alternatives that the journey planner doesn’t offer (especially the any reasonable route options)
– for bus services, especially, so often one has to know the precise stop name or post code to which one is travelling, and even if you do, nearby stops on alternative services are ignored. For rural services which are infrequent, this is a show stopper, particularly when combined with point 1.
– and three (this is the Monty Python sketch…), so often the journey planner is plain wrong, or has built in assumptions about such things as cross-London journey times which are, frankly, stupid.
{And purely from a historian’s point of view, digitally-presented data is transient, and in a few years’time it becomes impossible to say what services were offered and where.]
@ Theban
When it comes to which map or information resource I think the transport-savy LR readership as about the worst possible judge of what works well for the majority of travellers.
I broadly agree with this in a London context where the readership here clearly has a phenomenal level of knowledge. However the real test is where people end up away from their “comfort zone” and what they rely on there. I will try to dig out a map if I can but I’m as reliant on electronic signs, posters, fixed signage, on vehicle displays etc as the next person. I certainly don’t ignore any of these elements out of some misplaced “I’m more savvy than other people” self belief. The only thing where I think there is a genuine difference between people is in being able to read a map and relate it to where you are or are going. I think there’s a reasonable body of research that shows differences in appitude in map reading and in spatial awareness.
Do I really need to pay much attention when using the tube? – no as I know the system very well. Do I pay more attention when using suburban rail in London? – definitely with the exception of the Chingford Line which I know well and was the first main line suburban route in London that I ever used. Buses vary – many routes it’s not an issue because I know where they go. However some bits of London are relatively unexplored so I pay more attention there although there is a lot of helpful info on the TfL bus network which reduces the learning curve effect. I still get lost in Kingston though – my personal “bermuda triangle”. One day I’ll crack it. 😉
How much income does TfL derive from licensing the tube map? I’ve heard an apocryphal tale stating it’s ‘more profit than from x million tube journeys’, though as the margin on tube journeys must be pretty slim that seems a rather ambiguous way to describe it. Given the prices listed on the TfL website for map licensing I can well believe that the income runs into seven figures at least.
Clearly that income isn’t the only reason for keeping the tube map alive when it’s not always the best choice for travellers, but I can’t imagine the ‘London’s Rail & Tube services’ map would sell so many postcards and bedsheets, and the money would probably have to be split with ATOC too!
@WW
“TfL bus network . I still get lost in Kingston though – my personal “bermuda triangle”.”
Even though I have lived in Kingston for a quarter of a century, I still get confused by its buses. There are two bus stations: some buses serve one, some the other, some neither, some both, and some in one direction but not the other. It is even possible to see two buses on the same route follow one behind the other, whilst supposedly going in opposite directions – and one of them will reappear five minutes later, calling at the same stop as before, having completed a lap of the town centre.
@ WW if you should wish to venture to Kingston I would be honoured to give you a tour. You are not alone many of my former colleagues who are transient visitors to Kingston find it confusing but it can be cracked! I have given them a number of personalised tours to make it explicable.
@ Timbeau – given your vast knowledge and the fact you’re a long time resident I feel reassured that it’s not just me that finds the place confusing. I’m slowly trying to tick off London’s bus routes and I will undoubtedly be whizzing around and through Kingston a fair amount given the number of routes there yet to be ridden on.
@ RichardB – thanks for the kind offer.
This isn’t directly related to the thread subject matter [and such posts are not encouraged. This is not a general transport forum. Mod] other than being an “oops..” incident but I thought there might be some interest…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/01/london_rail_station_exposes_signal_system_passwords/
Damn wrong signal box! Why couldn’t they have visited London Bridge instead?
I would hope the reason the password was on the whiteboard is because it gets changed frequently so people need to be told what the current one is. In which case, knowing what the password was whenever that film was made would be of little assistance to a hacker.
Note that I said “hope”, not “expect”!
Usually “El Reg” (The Register) contains good articles, but occasionally misses. Indeed I am surprised that this wasn’t penned by Lewis Paige.
The screenshot shows CCF, which is a readback of train position. It is not a control system. At my local station I can stand outside the little booth used by the platform staff and see in clear view the same sort of display.
Oh, and the interior of London Bridge signal box is quite dull…
Passwords should never be written down!
@Theban – you mean to say that you remember several hundred of them?
@Team London Bridge’ is currently carrying NR’s ‘May Works’ Monthly Update of London Bridge Station Redevelopment
Amongst other things this states that:-
– Demolition of platforms 5 and 6 will continue.
Am I right to see this as the Bermondsey Diveunder having moved on to Stage 2-Part 1 with the station works still being at Central Core stage? Are the station works due to ‘catch up’ at the end of May or some later date?
The next point is intriguing.
– Removal of the old tracks within platform 5 will commence along with hoarding installation.
This could just be sloppy description. Or is it a reference to the existence of some old track actually within platform 5? Does this make sense to anybody?
PS
I know the plan is to remove the western end of track 5 and join it to track 6 so that tracks 6 and 7 can be taken out of use through the station.
Ray
I believe there is another track slew to put the Charing Cross lines onto a different alignment on the late May BH weekend, then on June 1st the main demiloition phase starts for both the viaducts through the diveunder site.
Having said that I wonder if this work ought to be discussed in the London Bridge approaches section?
Paul
Passed through yesterday, most of that track is already in place….
A large chunk of platforms 5&6 at the country end has already gone as well…
@Paul
‘I wonder if this work ought to be discussed in the London Bridge approaches section?’ Agreed for Diveunder work. I was mostly enquiring the station work.
@Paul and Southern Heights
Thanks for the updates. Much appreciated.
Draft SE timetable consultation for August 2016 to 2018 is now open
i.e. changes when Charing Cross services stop at London Bridge and Cannon Street don’t
See:
http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/your-journey/timetables/august-2016/
The proposed changes in brief (big changes in bold, my emphasis):
@ngh
Some very confusing text here. “There will be a diversion of some trains to and from Cannon Street via Greenwich into Charing Cross, via Lewisham in order to serve London Bridge. ” It looks at if the Greenwich line is to get its Charing Cross service back, until you realise that if they are to call at Lewisham they will not be calling at Greenwich. So rather than Greenwich gaining a Charing Cross service, it is losing some of its Cannon Street services!
Meanwhile, I discovered today that some genius at LU has decided that it is a good time to take the only down escalator from Waterloo East to the Jubilee line at Southwark out of service for routine maintenance for the next six weeks, resulting in all the passengers wanting to transfer from Waterloo to London Bridge being kettled in the infamous no-mans-land because the stairs can’t cope
ngh: thank you for summarising the changes.proposed; they are of interest.
However, if you, or anyone else, does something like this in the future, it should really be even briefer. As a general guideline, for any kind of comment here, about a screenful should be considered the (rather flexible) limit.
The difficulty of the length of your piece is further compounded by the fact that the bolding does not seem to show up, although it doubtless did on the preview (and the bold tag is supposed to be an acceptable one. I am looking into this.
Rather curious is the opening paragraph of the press release:
The Thameslink Programme and London Bridge station rebuild mean that at the end of August 2016 platforms 7, 8 and 9 at London Bridge will re-open, allowing trains to and from Charing Cross to call at London Bridge.
Does this mean platform 6 will not open then? How will this work? Will trains pass platform 6 without stopping? If so the number of trains out of London Bridge in the evening will be very limited. Or are they going to make do with just three platforms for trains in and out of Charing Cross? Or have SouthEastern just got it wrong?
Re Malcolm,
Noted, I was going to leave it to the bold only bits originally but thought some might complain (you can never please everyone)
The entire comment is only 1.25 of my screen heights! Browser, screen resolution, screen size size and browser text size make big differences!
The bold is showing at the moment in front of me in the as published comment so not sure what is happening there…
@ngh Yes, it will depend on screen size, and all the other things! You are absolutely right that one cannot please everyone.
Whether the bolding shows must depend on the user’s browser, as you imply. I can see it fine from my moderator context, but not from another window which I am using to try (evidently not fully effectively!) to see what normal people see.
Re PoP,
That has always been the plan for years – Charing Cross services has to make do with 3 tracks for quite a while.
Post Xmas- NY blockade this year (stage 2a) the Charing cross services are diverted through P7,8,9 but don’t stop there as there is no passenger access to the platform till the new ground level concourse is ready in Aug’16.
(P6-7 & P8-9 islands complete by Christmas ’15 but track can’t be laid along the new P6 till after all services have been diverted over the new Western approach viaduct and Borough Market Bridge/Viaduct and P7,8,9 allowing more demolition to take place.
P4-5 island will be completed by August 16 and track laid along side P5 and P6 for temporary use of Down (4) and Up (5) Cannon street services respectively.
Charing Cross Services only get the 4 platform in (August?) ’17 when the dive under opens fully.
The track layout suggest Cannon Street style tidal flow arrangement for the operation of P7,8,9 so
AM 2up 1 down
PM 1up 2 down
Interesting to see 4tph Hayes to Charing Cross off-peak Monday-Saturday. I suspect these will stay after 2018 as the Greenwich trains have to go to Cannon St as a permanent arrangement. I think 4tph to CX will generally be regarded as a good thing on that line as it is where the off-peak traffic tends to want to go.
This does not mean you have a consistent 4tph though. 2tph will call at Lewisham and 2 will not. I am sure, if they could, they would have 4 tph calling at Lewisham.
I wonder if this will be the best off-peak service direct to Charing Cross on the Hayes Line ever.
@PoP: Or SouthEastern saying: “Don’t pinch the Hayes line”?
Remember it also serves as a diversionary route for CHX/CST to ORP trains during engineering works…
Re ngh: ‘P4-5 island will be completed by August 16 and track laid along side P5 and P6 for temporary use of Down (4) and Up (5) Cannon street services respectively.’
AFAIKT the Western end of P4 & 5 will be taken up by the slewed tracks to/from Cannon Street (Stage 3) until March 2017 when they are due to be transferred to the tracks through P1 & 2. (Stage 3A Pt.1)
The other odd comment from South Eastern is the reference to extending trains out into Kent from the Greenwich Line so they serve Abbey Wood for Crossrail. Given the SE timetable will undoubtedly change out of all recognition in Dec 2018, when Crossrail itself starts, I am not sure I see much merit in recognising Crossrail at Abbey Wood when there will be no service from 2016 to 2018 – unless SE know something we don’t!! Most odd.
Re Ray K,
I omitted lots of the detail the reality is indeed more complicated as you point out, Central and Eastern parts completed by August 16.
slight typo, the original comment should have said
‘P4-5 island will be completed by August 16 and track laid along side P5 and P6 for temporary use of Down (
45) and Up (56) Cannon street services respectively.’.The Western part of P4/5 will be completed and in use Aug 17.
Re WW & PoP,
I think there are certainly elements of long term changes in the August’16 timetable. Hayes to Charing Cross off peak and swapping of longer distance (e.g. Gravesend) to via Greenwich for Crossrail is part of this, far easier to do the changes little by little so there is less shock in the end.
Depending on when the ramp up of TL services through the core happens and which ones happen first might it be the case that all the changes to either TL (via Elephant&C.) or SE services to Blackfriars don’t all happen till the December 2018 timetable change???
If the Passengers are already familiar with the new station at Abbey Wood having gone through it every day for a year it might ensure the desired shift to CR if there are other big changes happening at the same time?
Re Ray K,
Cannon Street slew via future P4,5.
Had another thought there are 2 ways of doing the slew and temporary alignment.
1. A reverse of the kind of arrangement from 1st June onwards for the Charing Cross tracks at the west of the platforms.
2. At Borough Market Junction where it wouldn’t be too dissimilar to the pre 1976 arrangement where the higher numbered through platforms (4+) could access Cannon Street.
The second would allow the new P4/5 to be finished in one go and all makes sense in terms of how a few other area are being staged.
Re ngh
Will your 2. obstruct work on the old viaduct modifications (whatever they are) or will they be completed by then?
Re Ray K,
Work on the more westerly section including Metropolitan Jn and Ewer St Jn isn’t effected by 2. it starts in December this year and goes on almost 2 years till operational so they have plenty of time to do that then move onto the more easterly bit there is an 8+ months gap to do works that need the southern pairs of lines from Metropolitan Jn to the platforms also less new track laid for the short term during a stage or 2 of the works. The slide indicate 2 seperate stages of work areas so it fits in with that.
Thanks ngh.
Does this mean that ‘old viaduct modifications’ is somewhat misleading in that at least most of the work will be track work. (albeit atop the viaduct)
As I understand the London Bridge works will be by and large complete by early 2018. The remainder of the year will be spent on testing the ATO/ATP and Thameslink driver training – bear in mind you will need a really, REALLY large number of drivers to be trained on the new infrastructure.
straphan,
Well sort of. I can’t remember the exact details but through services return via London Bridge in January 18. The rest of the year will be spent on further driver training and ramping up the service in two stages (May and December) to go from 16tph through the core to 24tph (16tph via London Bridge). The advantage of this is that as the ATO/ATP is an overlay you can then (at the start of the year at any rate you) run the scheduled service in degraded state without ATO working. Once you are confident it reliably works you can increase the frequency and then do that again when you are confident you can run 24tph.
Just like buses strikes come in threes:
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2015-05-20/southern-train-drivers-vote-to-strike-over-pay-row/
“Members of Aslef at Southern backed walkouts by 91% and other forms of industrial action by 95%. The turnout was 85.3%.”
91%*85.3%=77.6% so almost double the proposed Cameron strike threshold (40%)!
95%*85.3%=81.0% for work to rule etc. (i.e. no overtime).
No overtime has hit Southern and T
SGN quite badly in the past year including cancelled services at London Bridge due to no drivers available.NR Video of the works at London Bridge over the (late May) Bank Holiday weekend (showing removal of the Up loop and the line adjacent to the former P5 becoming the Up Charing Cross line.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbzsN5TbSY&sns=em
Unfortunately it’s no longer possible to see what’s going on from the train to Charing Cross post the works over the bank holiday…. 🙁
@ngh Thanks for the heads up.
@Southern Heights
‘Unfortunately it’s no longer possible to see what’s going on from the train to Charing Cross’
Perhaps someone complained about the vertiginous view from the loop. Perhaps there is another reason.
We can see from the video that the old P5 and 6 have now been completely removed and that the new P8 and 9 are well advanced at the Eastern end. Unravelled’s 21st May pictures show the same and also that the supports for tracks 7,8 and 9 over the new concourse are well advanced.
Perhaps someone wishes to avoid people jumping to conclusions and indulging in wishful thinking from what they can see. Things often look finished from a superficial viewpoint long before they are really ready for use.
Re Ray K,
I would assume straight forward safety as hoarding prevents train drivers being blinded by the lights on construction equipment, site lights or demolition dust and also means the workers behind the hoarding don’t have to have railway safety training which makes things easier. It also provides a very obvious site boundary as equipment will be working fairly close to it.
The arches in the future concourse area will need demolishing to very close to the current P5/6 stairs to enable the supports for the beams for the future tracks 5 & 6 to be built as it look like they would need to be largely complete before the end of the year too.
Some very recent photos taken from the shard here (not mine):
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=320395&page=33
In parts of the video there are what appear to be a flights of stairs at the end of one of the terminating platforms.
Are these permanant and if so where will they lead?
@Chris C – To me, those stairs look like an extravagant version of what would have been in past times a simple, fixed rung ladder to access the signal heads.
If I understand it correctly, Chris C is talking about a few steps that lead to a platform surrounding the signal that give full access to it. Given the consequence of a signal fault at London Bridge I think it is very wise to go apparently over the top with this and provide a much more satisfactory working environment. It can’t cost much to provide the metal decking if designed for at the outset. Apart from making it easier to work on the signal it also means that two engineers can work there together if necessary.
One can try a little experiment. Sit down on a fold-up chair and try and wire up a ceiling light rose. Now that you have found that it is really easy try doing the same thing standing on a ladder with the ceiling rose in place on the ceiling. It is an order of magnitude harder to do.
I would not use the word extravagant in this context. “More appropriate” is how I would describe it.
Re ngh,
I hadn’t thought of the problems the lighting could present to the drivers. Perhaps that is indeed the reason for the hoardings being so tall. They appear to be the same height as those around the old P5 and 6 of which they are a continuation.
In addition there is no comfortingly solid wall between line five and the next area for demolition as there was beside the loop line in the previous stage.
Re Stairs to nowhere.
These are on top of the emergency escape stairs at the East end of each platform. They do seem rather OTT for equipment access. Perhaps they are intended to facilitate the safe handling of equipment larger than can be carried up a ladder by one person. Said equipment appears to be mounted on top of the stairs. Can someone confirm this with mark one eyeball?
Re stairs – emergency stairs at the east /country end of ALL the new platforms not just the terminating ones. Unravelled has excellent photos of the construction of the P8/9 ones.
The through platforms will also have emergency escape stairs at the West / Charing Cross /Cannon Street end of the platforms.
Signals are mounted on the stairs structure.
@NGH – thanks for the link to those photos and the video. Helped me better understand the scale of the work in the station despite having seen other photos over the months. And just to show I’d not really understood what they were doing at the station it has only just dawned on me, from looking at the photos from the Shard, that many of the old brick arches are being demolished in order to allow the new tracks and supports to be built. Doh! Am I correct in thinking that large polystyrene blocks [1] are being used under some of the track alignment?
[1] the big white blocks visible in some photos.
Yes Walthamstow Writer.
There has been earlier discussion on this but the polystyrene blocks are there to reduce the track forces that potentially cause problems to the underlying Victorian brick structure. It might look like a crude solution done to save money but in fact it is the best way of doing it.
@ngh,
I failed to thank you for the link to the ‘from the shard’ photos in my last post. They show things that are difficult to envisage from ground and viaduct level shots.
I had also seen but not registered the significance of the stairs when looking at Unravelled’s photos.
Re WW & PoP,
I had previously thought of the polystyrene as being a huge shock absorber. Now I can see that it spreads the forces rather than absorbing them. It has to be doing something very useful to be allowed to displace potential retail space.
I thought in construction polystyrene was used as a void filler, as rubble is harder to manage and imposes extra loads. See http://www.universalconstructionfoam.com/products/geofoam/earthwork-void-eps.php
John B,
Normally that is one of its uses but I understand that its use at London Bridge was specifically to reduce track forces being transmitted to the existing station structure. If it had not have been used then there would have had to have been substantially more demolition and reconstruction. I suspect it is not “any old polystyrene” as trains will run on top of it.
@ PoP – thanks for the explanation. I knew polystyrene was being used elsewhere at LOB but not that it stretched into the main body of the station. Given the enormous spread of discussions on LR it’s almost impossible to track down past comments even if your memory tells you that they’ve been written.
Re Ray K, WW, PoP et al.
Foam – The area behind the hoardings bounded by the escalators, temporary ticket office and the new ground level concourse is being raised by circa 3m from the current level it is difficult to build a new structure on top of the
victorianWilliam IV era arches* that deals with the shear forces in the horizontal plane parallel to the track direction.As I understand it the idea is that the old arches will the take the load in the vertical direction (i.e. the weight) without modification and that the concrete deck on top of the foam will be anchored (near the ends where the new bridge decks are i.e. immediately adjacent to the new concourse or western approach viaduct) with new columns that are contiguous from the new concrete deck on top of the foam to the bottom of the piles and massive new end wall structures (i.e. at either side of new concourse etc).
I think this is photo of one of the new anchor columns passing through the old arches:
https://twitter.com/TLProgramme/status/591500763806859264/photo/1
https://twitter.com/TLProgramme/status/562660715173933056/photo/1
also see NR’s London Bridge station Twitter feed (plenty of photos from the NR archives too):
https://twitter.com/NetworkRailLBG/media
* The oldest part of the station is in that area!
What the twitter pictures linked by ngh show are a trial moulding of the quad-arches that will be used on the extension of the passageway from the tube entrance to the new concourse. These are being designed to match the existing quad-arches.
The trial was done last month, and if you walk down Tooley Street and look carefully through one of the hoarded up arches, opposite Hays Galleria, you might see it.
The trial was done in a vacant arch that will eventually become a retail unit; depending what tenant is installed, it might stay.
Demolition work has (now visibly) started on the two track viaduct carrying the Charing Cross lines in South Bermondsey….
@Southern Heights,
Thanks for that info. I really appreciate being kept posted.
Note to Moderators,
It seems to me that this thread would be best reserved for Station works and that Bermondsey Diveunder comments would be better made on
‘A Study in Sussex Part 6: The Approaches to London Bridge’.
Would moving comments to their most appropriate thread be regarded as a step too far in moderation?
[I agree with this recommendation, as far as future comments go. We have no ideological objection to moving existing comments, merely a practical one, that with the WordPress software it is fiddly and error-prone, so we will not normally do it. Malcolm]
@ngh,
Your reference to ‘Foam’ has led me to take a further look at the’Thameslink-KO2-London Bridge-Presentation.pdf’.
As Expanded Polystyrene(EPS) is not a foam I take it that both are being used at LBG on the Western Approach. I can see that I was assuming that the EPS was being used for the job of transmitting the horizontal forces and that a foam would be much more appropriate particularly as it could be formulated to give the specific qualities required.
Earlier documents show that the rebuilding of Joiner St Bridge was planned for the Christmas 2015 possession. Steve McCormick’s KO2-London Bridge presentation of October 2014 states on page 58 :-
‘Joiner Street Bridge 54. Originally a new bridge but value engineered to strengthening of existing bridge with 2 new longitudinal beams.’
Am I correct in seeing the work done earlier this year on that bridge as completing this work?
@Malcolm
[I agree with this recommendation, as far as future comments go. We have no ideological objection to moving existing comments, merely a practical one, that with the WordPress software it is fiddly and error-prone, so we will not normally do it. Malcolm]
I was wanting to re-read the comments re Clapham Junction history about mid-May, which were obviously not really on the correct thread. I can no longer find them. Were they just deleted, or have been moved?? Trust you can assist.
[This comment of mine was at the end of the sequence of comments about Clapham Junction history. You should be able to work back in time from this to find the interesting ones. Malcolm]
@Malcolm
Many thanks for response. I was looking at the wrong topic. Apologies.
NR’s ‘London Bridge Station Redevelopment – Monthly update’ for June states that ‘Over the weekend of 27th/28th June we will be dismantling the tower crane situated in the Station Approach area of the site.’
Can somebody confirm that that happened as planned? Has anybody noticed anything else of note happening at LBG?
Re Ray K,
The crane was relocated to the site of the former stairs down from the overbridge to former P5/6 platform (Charing Cross side stairs). The temporary (crash) deck structure adjacent to the new concrete viaduct above the Concourse – Colechurch House footbridge walking route has been removed so the route is more open. The new positioning of the crane shouldn’t get in the way of the construction of the columns etc for the track bed of the new P5/6
Several spans of beams over the new ground floor concourse for track/platform 9 have been lifted in by a mobile crane.
It looks like demolition of the old P5/6 platform including material removal is virtually complete.
Dive under:
Staff out on scissors platforms cleaning up the brickwork on the lower levels of the piers (former CHX lines) which it looks like they are going to reuse (cut down lower as you go from the ELL tracks to Bolina road and at the same gradient as the almost finished new viaduct).
@ngh
Thanks for the update. The Monthly Update said nothing about relocating the crane. It sounds as though they have put it between the bottom of the country end new escalators/stairs and the lift for the new P4/5. If that is so then it may well stay there until well into 2017.
I had wondered about beams for Track 9 etc..
ngh @ 09:15
This particular photo on David Harvey’s flickr tends to confirm the re-use you mention, the piers have various red and blue lines painted on the end face that appear to gradually reduce in height from east to west:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/unravelled/19218809921/
@ngh Technically (and pedantically) the beams weren’t lifted in by mobile crane. They are lifted in by a large scissor lift transporter from below. The mobile crane simply pops them on the scissor lift transporter. You might see pictures later in the week if you ask nicely.
@Sad Fat Dad
Oh! Please!
I see the first signs of the new viaduct for Thameslink trains are now visible at the western end.
@Quinlet
I am mildly puzzled by your comment. AIUI, it is the Charing Cross trains that will use the new viaduct and the Thameslink trains will use the old lines they used to share with CHX trains. Again AIUI, the CHX trains are due to run through on tracks 7,8 & 9 and over the new viaduct from next January. They still won’t be stopping at LBG until p7 to 9 and the Southern end of the new concourse open in Sept. 2016.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13300616
The viaduct over Borough High Street was actually installed four years ago, but is awaiting tracks
Or is Quintet referring to the West Approach Viaduct (for Charing Cross services by the bus station) which has been well hidden by hoardings and crane? but has actually been mostly there for a quite a while…
I had taken it that Quinlet was referring to the Station Approach Viaduct (both East and West parts) which, from what he says, is now revealed to view from ground level. And yes, the same tracks will pass over the (by now part of the scenery) Borough Viaduct.
I thought he was referring to the Bermondsey dive-under. There are definite signs now of the trackbed for the Thameslink trains, even though parts of the viaduct still need to be demolished.
Given the limited amount of space for the dive-under I wonder how much clearance there will be for any possible future OHLE equipment. Something tells me it is going to be very little!
I was, indeed, referring to the Bermondsey dive under. As others have pointed out, the viaduct for the Thameslink route takes a different alignment from that of previous viaducts in the area and hence a completely new link is needed from where it departs from the line of what are currently tracks 4 and 5 over to the northern approaches to New Cross Gate. I had presumed that the carefully retained bases to the recently demolished viaduct were to support the Charing Cross lines where they come out from the dive-under and go over the East/South London line’s Clapham Junction branch.
Full OLE clearance.
Team London Bridge have published NR’s London Bridge Station Redevelopment August 2015 update – http://www.teamlondonbridge.co.uk/newsdetails.aspx?ref=3470
It’s mostly ‘works will continue’ as was July’s.
The three exceptions are :-
– Installation of precast platform and train decks will commence for the next phase of platform works.
– Works will commence to remove cladding from the remaining overbridge sections.
– Between 7th and 10th August a hoarding will be installed along a section of the eastern footway of Bermondsey Street, within the tunnel area. This is to facilitate the emergency escape stairs works in Holyrood Street.
I went up the Shard yesterday. I was quite impressed by the amount of platforms 6 to 9 that are in existence already and how close the up London Bridge is to platform 6 although I will have to look a little more closely at the photos as I can’t think how they will get the rest in the space so I may be remembering slightly wrongly.
There’s a picture here that shows the western emergency escape from P6/7 roughly in the middle. That is roughly in line with the London end of the future platforms 1-5, which are all to the right of that (rough) position. Also bear in mind that the new platform 1 is a side platform, so I think there’s plenty of room for two additional islands of a similar width to those that are now appearing.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/125871357@N02/18655210929/
Thanks Paul. It’s funny how one can look at something without seeing it. I now see that same picture shows the escape stairs for P8 and 9 taking shape closer and further West.
ORR have fined NR for poor performance with the main reason cited being London Bridge…
http://orr.gov.uk/news-and-media/press-releases/2015/orr-investigation-finds-network-rail-in-breach-of-licence-in-2014-15
and
And ORR London Bridge safety report:
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/18685/london-bridge-station-disruption-report-august-2015.pdf
Selected parts of the report:
The interesting bit of the report (Note virtually 100% was covered in the article or comments!)
On the last point some of the BIG future LBG blockades may hand back earlier if possible to allow Sunday running for example possibly Aug ’16
The 3rd March issues:
ngh
All very detailed & informative – thanks.
However.
The upshot of this is that …
ORR & statutory body, in effect an “arm” of government has “fined” NR, itself a totally nationalised government-owned body a sum of money, which will then, presumably be wooden-dollared” across, to .. (?) a n other arm of government.
Is it me, or has someone, somewhere lost the plot completely, because this certainly appears to be the economics of the madhouse.
What’s the point?
What is this excercise supposed to achieve?
@ Ngh – how nice to see the government [1] effectively fining the government! It was daft enough when NR was pretending it was in the private sector but now it definitely isn’t I don’t see the point of these financial penalties. It’s yet more “money go round” for no good purpose.
It is far too easy to be “wise after the event” but it is interesting how events that could have been reasonably predicted, even if not in combination, did manifest themselves and cause a real mess. It seems, and I’ve not read the report, that good things were done but not well enough or with too little time margin to allow a pause or a rework. Let’s hope the lessons have been well learnt for future major switchovers at LB. I wonder if the parties involved are willing to “flex” things slightly to allow the softer, more gradual start to new layouts that is suggested.
The other side of all of this is that TSGN have apparently been in breach of their franchise at least twice and yet the silence from the DfT, as the financial risk sits with them, has been defeaning. Interesting how things work when the responsibilities are shifted around a bit. 😉
[1] I know ORR are the regulator but even so they’re still a public sector body subject to ultimate control by the state.
Re WW,
The fine may get revised (presumably downwards?) as both then parts of TSGN shortage of drivers also contributed to making the problems worse but they haven’t worked out how to calculate that contribution yet.
i.e. lack of drivers increased the cancellations and delay due to any given NR cause.
Multiple sources are suggesting that the opening of the southern half of the new ground floor concourse could happen on the Sunday so that some station staff have time to get acquainted with the new arrangements with a small number of real passengers using it and the first day issues arise on a quiet day. On the drivers side they will have already been driving through the new platforms, signals points etc. for 8 months just not stopping at them so that shouldn’t be as big an issue January was. The Cannon Street services not stopping should be fairly simple as Jan ’15 proved for Charing Cross services. If the southern half of the concourse is ready several weeks early there could always be careful trial or staged opening of access from the terminating platforms to see how things work with real passengers.
The changes from now on actually look to have lower potential impact as there is less happening in one go (and not capacity reductions).
The BBC story; Network Rail fined £2m for delays, contains this little gem:
The fine either has to be paid to the Treasury, or instead, the £2m will have to be used to improve customer services beyond what is normally expected, a spokeswoman for the ORR said.
So, there is a chance that the money will still be spent on what it should be spent on; improving service levels for passengers. Just with the proviso that if it is, it cannot be spent in a manner that has been previously identified as the timeliest and most productive.
@WW – Quite so. In the bad old days of BR, we in DTp sometimes used to debate whether to impose penalties on the Board for non-delivery of the requirements of the PSO but – as everyone here points out – what is the point of taking money off the gareed budget: it simply gives the industry every excuse to say “We was robbed” when they fail to deliver the next time. It’s not as if you are hitting shareholders’ dividends or management perks. So we simply reduced Board member bonuses instead.
A short while after privatisation, I discussed the point with the former colleague who became ORR policy manager responsible for Railtrack performance. The only – limp – sanction he could suggest was “shaming” them by greater publicity. Talk about threatening them with the comfy chair….
Hopefully a simple question for one of our resident LB experts. I’ve been perusing the NR presentation given to the ICE showing the work phasing. I note that tracks A & B (to the north of the site) come back into service (Easter 2017) for through working relatively quickly compared to the other Cannon St tracks. Is some element of the existing station being reused or is it just an easier job to build a new alignment for those two tracks compared to the ones slightly to the south? Am I also right in assuming that new tracks E &F are used by Cannon St services during their “non stop” phase ?
Re WW,
Also worth looking at the infrarail 14 presentation:
http://www.infrarail.com/_downloads/presentations/IF14_Thameslink.pdf
p83 onwards as it shows what is happening either side of the station (track bridge viaduct renewals which is often the limiting factor also it depends how long there is between suitable blockades which give 4, 8, 12 month blocks so a 12 month block will have a bigger scope than then others.
Not quite a simple answer:
A & B are the last to be finished but not the last to be brought into use.
E & F are used initially during the Cannon Street non stop stage.
Taking out of service to reinstatement is typically an 8-12 month cycle but there are site and phasing issues.
Tracks D-Q (new 4-15) will be constructed from the South where as A-C (new 1-3) will be from the North so construction actively from the south has to wind down to allow the completion of the southern half of the new concourse.
The current G, H, J (7,8,9) are probably slightly more time consuming because of the pedestrian route to the underground to the west and the extra escalators etc. and the original station was where these tracks were and was raised by building a second set of smaller arches above the first to create the high level station later when they went further west to Cannon Street and later Charing Cross which created the need to get a bridge across Borough High Street. see: https://twitter.com/TLProgramme/status/628230169321435136/photo/1
A&B are on the newest part of the viaduct (platforms and eastern approaches) which was added 1899-1902 by SECR (at the same time as the single track Charing Cross Bridge to the west) and was built to the the current height with 1 set of arches so will need less work (clearly visible from Tooley Street)
G, H, J, will take 12 months (Dec 14 – Jan 16) E & F will take 16 Months (May 15- Aug 16) but a lot to this will be due to not being able work on the eastern or western approaches till after Christmas ’15 when the CHX lines shift allowing the existing viaduct to be worked on). (The piling for the columns for E&F are being done at the moment.)
A&B will take 8 months which was typical of some of the simpler terminating tracks and platforms.
D (&E) are less critical because they are only needed when the Thameslink services start running again.
@ngh: That seems to imply that Tooley Street will either be closed or severely sonstricted for the final construction period. Which is something I’ve not heard mention…
Re Southern Heights
Tooley Street – it will be to some extent!
Demolition of the SER office on Tooley Street starts when the staff and equipment have been transferred to the new offices around the southern half of the new Concourse area in May ’16 that then gives a reasonable sized work site / laydown area adjacent to Tooley Street for the main works from August ’16 onwards. St Thomas Street will be reopened which will be a shock for the pedestrian newcomers to the area.
The May transfer means that staff will have several months to get used to the new concourse and systems before they open so fewer potential “day 1” issues after the big August ’16 blockade.
Re ngh
Easter is early next year (end of March) so that leaves only seven months from access to finishing of lines A and B. If the time it took to demolish the arches under the old lines any guide that could be finished by the end of April leaving six months. As most of the work will involve iems which are identical to the rest of the station the is little if any learning curve. It sounds do-able.
Oops! I meant to say ‘If the time it took to demolish the arches under the old lines 6 and 7 to ground level is any guide they could be finished demolishing for A and B by the end of April.’
Re Ray K,
Err, but Easter 2017 is mid April… which gives just over 8 months equivalent in terms of working weeks.
From Jan 2016 the canopy on P3/4 will be demolished as will some of P4 so there won’t be much left just one overbridge span (1/2 to 3/4 span left) tracks 1-3 and 1.5 platform islands.
The “D” and “E” columns already have the beams on them for tracks 7+8 (D) and 9 (E) respectively. The piling for the “C” columns is under way at the moment (tracks 5+6).
The piling and construction of the “B” columns can start post January ’16 demolition (so Feb ’16 ish) which just leaves the “A” columns for track 1/2 (or a/b) to do after August ’16 (The new Platform 2/3 island is supported by Columns “A” and “B” above the concourse with No TL services running etc there is access to construct the platform quite easily ((with P3,4,5 no in use till Jan ’18 and P6 till Aug ’17) and P1 is adjacent to Tooley Street so access is easier there and there aren’t any old bits with trains still running on them in awkward alignments either at that point.
Re ngh 11 August at 01:48
Page 87 of the IF 14 presentation that you refer to includes a text box which says ‘Reconstruct Joiner Street Bridge at Christmas 2015.’
Thameslink-KO2-London-Bridge-Presentation.pdf (Of which I have a digital copy but can no longer find it on the web) states on page 54 ‘Joiner Street Bridge 54. Originally a new bridge but value engineered to strengthening of existing bridge with 2 new longitudinal beams’
Did the work done earlier this year cover all that strengthening or is there further work to be done?
@ngh, Yes! It would have been a good idea for me to look at the calender for the correct year. That extra two weeks will make a lot of difference. I expect also that being able to remove spoil directly to Tooley Street rather than needing to thread carefully through already completed construction will speed the demolition a little.
Re RayK 11 August 2015 at 14:06
As they start demolition in late August ’16 it should all be demolished by October ’16 using P6 and the up loop as a guide.
It think you might have got confused with the demolition post Jan’16 which will allow the “B” columns (for new tracks 3/4 or c/d) to be constructed.
The “C” columns (piling currently in progress) will be needed to run the Cannon Street services on tracks 5,6 from Aug ’16 till Easter ’17.
@ngh
I’ve just cottoned on to the designation of platforms using lower case and UPPER CASE for Columns etc.. I have been using upper case for platforms. I expect my comments looked most peculiar as a result.
@ngh
It’s worse than I thought. The supposed lower case designations are figments of my imagination masquerading as memories. Wherever I have checked both platforms and tracks are Upper Case. I have nothing with Column designations at all.
The outcome is the same. I have been referring to tracks. you have been referring to columns.
Looking back at WW’s original question (11 August at 00:59) it seems that he was asking about tracks A and B. I wonder if he too is feeling bemused by your responses.
@ Ngh – thank you. I guess my unfamiliarity with all of the history and nuances at London Bridge is what is prompting my questions. Although I’d seen that NR Twitterpic before I’d not noticed the double stack of viaducts! You look but you don’t see. So, in short, there will be demolition at the north side of the site but it’s a simpler job overall allowing two tracks on new viaduct (over the new concourse area) to be reopened faster than tracks further south where the site work is more involved with more interfaces and a more complex end deliverable is required.
Once you start to better understand some of the complexities you can appreciate that, operating difficulties aside, it’s a pretty spectacular piece of work at London Bridge and on the approaches. If it takes us this long with modern technology I am left marvelling at what the 19th century builders achieved with much less and how amazingly robust the end result has been.
As a matter of interest, where, amongst all this sprawling complexity layout, is the site of the original 1836 L&G terminus?
Re Ray K,
I have been referring to both in the 1422 (and afterwards) comments which contain both column and track letter references the ones before 1422 only track letters. The tracks and platforms are lettered till to prevent old vs new confusion during construction. I & O is not used to prevent confusion with 1 & 0
A Columns = Tracks 1+2 (or A+B) – demolition starts in late Aug ’16
B Columns = Tracks 3+4 (or C+D) – demolition starts in Jan ’16
C Columns = Tracks 5+6 (or E+F) – Piling at the moment
D Columns = Tracks 7+8 (or G+H) – beams in place
E Columns = Tracks 9 (OR J) – beams in place
A Columns = Tracks 10+11 (or K+L) – in service
B Columns = Tracks 12+13 (or M+N) – in service
C Columns = Tracks 14+15 (or P+Q) – in service
The new platform 2+3 are supported on either side by the track beams and deck on the A&B Columns above the concourse, P4&5 on columns B&C etc.
The new platforms 1 & 15 are part supported by the adjacent track beams and deck as well as the new outer wall of the station.
Re Timbeau (& WW),
Under the future P6-9 in the current work site area behind the temporary ticket office, escalators etc. extending eastwards just into the new concourse area and westward to Joiner Street so a corner of the bus station too. It then extended both North and South over the next 9 years (the northern extent was around P3). The original L&G site is the bit they have been working on the longest!
It was “low” level then raised up later by adding the 2nd level of viaduct and platforms moved further east to get the height clearance to go over Borough High Street later when the extensions to CST and CHX were built.
This time round the trackbed has been raised up using foam rather than another tier of viaduct. The area arround P1-3 doesn’t have this 2 tier issue so it is far easier and quicker to complete.
ngh
Just inside the entrance on Tooley St, there is a fine ex-SE&CR War Memorial plaque/display.
I wonder where it will go when the building is demolished?
@ngh
The L&G original station is “Under the future P6-9”
So the future Charing Cross platforms. Back to the future indeed, given that the original London & Croydon station was to the north of it (so roughly where P4/5 will be) , and they swapped buildings over when the viaduct was four-tracked. The Bermondsey diveunder will once again put Brighton trains in the original London & Croydon station (although Greenwich trains will only rarely use platforms 6-9, as most will go to Cannon Street)
@ngh,
Thank you for your column by column table. It is most helpful. I have been able to re-read your posts with clarity.
I have one outstanding puzzle. How will it be possible to start demolition for columns B during August 2016. Are there plans to change Cannon Street services from Old 1 to 3 on to tracks E and F before the Bank holiday?
If not then I can still only see trackbed clearance starting on the last weekend in August. This means that starting counting September 2016 as the first full month, then March 2017 is month seven. Add half of April makes seven and a half months. Whilst it is obvious that it is agreed that this is do-able, it is still a challenge. It would be less challenging if an earlier start could be made.
@timbeau – Greenwich line trains will never again be able to run to/from Charing Cross
RE Chris L,
They could if very little else is running (i.e. Sundays with Engineering work) just not Mon-Sat.
@ngh – not with the new track layout – not allowed for in the new design
Re Ray K,
Demolition work for Column B starts in Jan ’16 or probably more likely late December.
I thought the Aug ’16 blockade is a 1 week one??? (the week being before the bank Holiday weekend? so is it a 10 day blockade) Remember the terminating side was shut in Aug ’14 for 9 days to do a similar scale of work.
Column A my definition of demolition starts with removing signalling, lifting track, ballast and breaking up the platform, they have a fairly narrow window to do any removal of material by rail in the first 2-3 days of the blockade.
Turning the April ’14 blockade the service level was reduced on the day before the weekend after the am peak and they lifted lots of the track before the evening peak.
PS a slight copy ‘n’ paste typo in the last post on the subject the last 3 columns should be F,G,H
Re Chris L,
It is – it was a design change requested by the TOC.
Up direction was already possible but down direction needed some extra work including 2 extra points (7330 and 7331 unfortunately only the 30mph variety) and some additional bi-directional signalling on track 3 east of Surrey Canal Junction)
Re Chris L,
PS It is single line working on the Southwark Reversible between Blue Anchor and Surrey Canal Jn so very few tph possible so it is definitely Sunday engineering work only!
@ngh – this conflicts with the information handed out to passengers before the work started and press releases at the same time.
The problem comes when there is a breakdown on the route. They have to divert via Lewisham from Charlton.
Chris L
When Thameslink opens in 2018 the plan is to have three railways running parallel through London Bridge – from north to south those going to Cannon Street, Thameslink and Charing Cross. I remember being told recently that these were going to be controlled independently and at peak times probably by three different people. After 2018 at peak times there will be 16 trains per hour running on the Thameslink lines through London Bridge, and more on the Cannon Street and Charing Cross lines. There will be (low speed) junctions connecting the lines (see page 93 of the IF14 presentation), but the time taken for a 12 coach train to cross over the two running lines is too long when running trains at these frequencies.
There will probably be a need to run “rusty rail” services over these junctions so perhaps there would be (say) an early Sunday morning service to/from Charing Cross to Greenwich and beyond. However, it does not have to be advertised, and switching the London terminus could create confusion for passengers.
Really don’t know what the plans would be in 2018 if the line was blocked at Greenwich, and at peak times there will be not be the capacity to run additional trains via Lewisham.
Edgepedia,
Really don’t know what the plans would be in 2018 if the line was blocked at Greenwich, and at peak times there will be not be the capacity to run additional trains via Lewisham.
But how would that be any different from the situation prior to the Thameslink Programme?
It was interesting to note this morning that the hoardings at the country end of the current work site at LBG have moved westwards. Given what’s happening along the rest of the stretch to the dive-under I expect track laying to start here after the weekend…
@ngh
You appear to have spotted my typo. when I said Columns B and intended Columns A.
My only information on possessions is page 15 of
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse%20documents/network%20code/network%20change/current%20proposals/thameslink/cppn%20for%20london%20bridge/complex%20projects%20procedure%20notice%20-%20london%20bridge.pdf
This displays only possessions of 54 hrs or more. I half expect this to be out of date, especially for later work, as the document is dated May 2012. If you can point me to something more recent and more detailed I would appreciate it.
@Chris L
From some of your references I wonder if you are using pages 40 and 41 of the IF14 presentation. The originals of these two pages are dated Dec. 2010. A more recent version of the layout (May 2012) can be found at pages 24 and 25 of the Complex Projects Procedure Notice that I have referred to above. This may also have been superseded in the last three years. The Stage diagrams at the end of the IF14 Presentation are dated May 3013 but their purpose is different and they omit any indication of directionality.
@Chris L/ngh et al
“never again be able to” is too strong – they could if the need arises:
This diagram (which I think is up to date, but if not can someone point at one which is)
http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/03/07/a-look-at-bermondseys-railway-dive-under-construction-site/
appears to show that it will still be possible to run parallel moves from Charing Cross to Greenwich and vice versa, by way of the Thameslink platforms at London Bridge, and the crossovers at Spa Road Junction
But page 93 of http://www.infrarail.com/_downloads/presentations/IF14_Thameslink.pdf shows fewer connections at Spa Road, so that pararrel moves would only be possible if the up move uses the diveunder. So possible, but unlikely in normal operation. Greenwich line trains will have to go somewhere if platforms 1-3 at LB are closed for any reason though!
@Timbeau Presumably the purpose of that long single lead to Charing Cross reversible will be to deal with the odd Sunday when 1 to 3 are closed so Greenwich can still get a service (along with New Cross). There will never be a time when it could be used for any other reason. There does seem to be a grade separated connection from the Cannon Street lines to Thameslink here that could be used at some time in the dim and distant future.
Re timbeau,
From what I understand they plan to avoid what you propose if at all possible as it risks massively spreading and escalating the delays to Thameslink services which then risk spreading delays even further.
For disruption during the week Crossrail will provides a high capacity alternative link to the Greenwich line. The “Sunday engineering type works” moves in both directions would use the diveunder (Southwark Reversible line) and the ladder east of the diveunder.
The additional crossovers at Spa Road increases the ability to use P1-3 for turnback.
Re Chris L,
Why advertise a service if it would only run when the Cannon Street platforms are closed at London Bridge. P1-3 should cope with terminating a 2018 a Sunday service so it might only happen a couple of Sundays a year when they might be closed.
@ngh
“For disruption during the week Crossrail will provide a high capacity alternative link to the Greenwich line.”
No it won’t, unless you propose travelling out to Woolwich first, and than back to Greenwich (on what, if there are no trains to/from Cannon Street?).
Or are you suggesting DLR to Canary Wharf ?
And from Woolwich itself, you will have direct trains to Charing Cross via lewisham anyway.
Re Timbeau,
I was, shuttle service, and the trains from Charing Cross via Lewisham would be rammed anyway if it was in the evening peak
Re Ray K,
You can see the columns lettered up in this recent photo from the programme twitter feed:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMC0zpRWoAAAAzc.jpg:large
with respect I did read the Network Rail publicity correctly as outlined here
http://853blog.com/2015/01/09/southeastern-shambles-greenwichs-farewell-to-charing-cross/
@ngh
Thanks for the reference to the photo. Another case of looking but not seeing on my part. I had fun with the numbering system after the E and – whilst I have provided a satisfactory explanation – it really is little more than a guess.
Re Ray K
The reference for the spans supported by that column i.e. 12 = spans 1&2
Re. Greenwich & Charing Cross:
It should be noted that only Deptford, Greenwich, and Maze Hill stations are affected by this decision. Every other station further east has access to the original North Kent Railway route via Blackheath and Lewisham, which diverges at Charlton junction.
As Greenwich is also served by the DLR, offering an alternative (albeit rather longer) route to the City via Canary Wharf, I’m not convinced that the decision to run all services via Greenwich to Cannon Street deserves so much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Anomnibus,
Whilst I agree with your general sentiment I think you have got slightly confused. Greenwich does indeed offer an alternative route to the City via the DLR but that doesn’t really help because it is not the route to the City (Cannon St) that is being abandoned. It is the route to Charing Cross that people have lost.
@Pedantic of Purley:
I was merely pointing out that Charing Cross can be reached easily by just taking a train 2-3 stops (at most) to the east if Charing Cross is your specific destination: just change at Charlton. The DLR at Greenwich also terminates at Lewisham. If you just need to get to the West End, or onto the Tube, there’s always the Jubilee Line at Canary Wharf, from North Greenwich, and the East London Line is not that far away, at Surrey Quays.
This is not area that is poorly served by rail transport.
Anomnibus,
Or you could (after 2018) simply change at London Bridge.
You’re forgetting Westcombe Park as well, though I agree it doesn’t seem the biggest problem.
Before getting so flippant about London Bridge interchanging between platforms after 2018 it should be noted that this will involve descending to the ticket hall/retail area by escalator and then up another escalator to platform level. Not as easy as the wide staircases on the footbridge.
Also if you’re at Greenwich the choice is now between 2 choices of destination within a short walk of each other.
Travelling via Lewisham is not very helpful when the trains are rammed.
It would be interesting to know how many people travelled to/from the Greenwich line on the infrequent Charing Cross trains.
The CX trains offer a lot more connections than Cannon Street
As a frequent traveller between Maze Hill and the SWML, I used to use the Greenwich line from Charing Cross a lot.
Moreover, Charing Cross and Waterloo are more likely to be attractive for tourists visiting Greenwich than Cannon Street is (although, given that most tourists rely on the Tube Map, most of them go the long way round via Canary Wharf!)
I think we must accept that adapting a crowded and investment starved network designed for traffic from another age can’t be done without the odd casualty. It is a fact that it is not possible to make the complex south London network more robust without sometimes putting operational requirements first. The alternative is continuing and consistent delays or a less frequent service, since the cash and will needed for a clean sheet rebuild isn’t likely to be in the offing.
Chris L @ 11:10
No-one is making the escalators compulsory, every platform has stairs alongside the escalators, on the four main islands they are fitted in two parallel sets of three (escalator/double width stairs/escalator). Platform 1 has two single escalators alongside stairs, and the three terminating platforms only have single escalators assumed to operate in a tidal flow manner.
Also, they don’t descend to the ‘ticket hall/retail area’ as such, but to a ‘paid side’ interchange concourse that is divided from the public concourse on a north/south axis by a massive gateline.
Re Paul,
There are five retail units shown on the planning app’n drawing on the paid side. They are shown wrapped round the bases of columns. Just hope they stock things likely to be of use to platform changers who probably won’t have much time to spare.
I think those small retail units are just the equivalent of those you’d normally find on platforms, which in this case are being kept downstairs to keep the platform islands mostly clear of obstructions.
What I thought wrong about Chris L’s point was the implication that interchanging passengers would have to fight there way through the main (non-paid side) retail and ticket hall area – and via escalators only, as though they were the only routes.
@GTR Driver: Hear, hear. Now if someone could tell that to the self-important Wimbledon Loop fan club…
My point was the level down/up not the retail outlets.
The present stairs allow two and a half up and two and half down flows and to/from wide bridge.
Fitting new escalators and stairs in the space available must restrict flows.
@Chris L. The escalators alone, 4 per island on platforms 2-9, will provide plenty of vertical capacity. Then there’s the wide stairs, and the lifts.
Would I be correct in assuming that if a passenger, using super dooper new London Bridge in 2018, travelling from the Greenwich Line to the local lines via South Bermondsey would actually need to exit one gateline and enter a new one at London Bridge? I don’t think the massive gateline fully stretches to cover every escalator and stair combination given the terminal platforms have less escalator provision than the through platforms. Let’s say the arriving train is on P3 and the departing train is from P14 by way of an example.
Walthamstow Writer,
I am almost certain not. I have forgotten quite how many football pitches the size of the concourse below is measured in but it will be massive and the paid area will be pretty big.
Just to confirm that the response to the consultation on the draft Southeastern August 2016 timetable confirms that there will be no more Charing Cross services from the Greenwich line or New Cross and St Johns.
Sorry if you choose not to believe this.
@WW – no, not correct, all interchange on national rail at London Bridge will be possible on the ‘paid’ side.
@Chris L – indeed, and this is a continuation of the position of the last 7 months.
@PoP. The media SI unit for area is, of course, Wales.
By which measure, the new concourse at London Bridge comes in a little less than one millionth of a Cyrmu.
SFD
Sorry, but I thought the standard unit was a “Belgium” ??
@WW – “….given the terminal platforms have less escalator provision than the through platforms Let’s say the arriving train is on P3 and the departing train is from P14 by way of an example.”
The problem I foresee on the terminating side with those single escalators on the island platforms and Platform 15 and consequent tidal flow is that there are times, especially in the p.m. peaks, when alighting passengers can seem to match those boarding the trains – they obviously cannot all use the escalators at the same time and I am fairly sure that the lifts won’t be able to cope satisfactorily, so the remaining choice will be to use the stairs to change trains between through and terminating platforms and enter/leave the station at concourse level. Platform 15 will not have its own lift, so one of the others will have to be used between platform and concourse levels.
With the old footbridge, at least flows in both directions were coped with – and with far fewer steps up and down.
As PoP suggests, the gatelines (2) will cover all platforms and the paid side will be a free circulating area. The two gatelines proposed are: facing Platforms 1-9 and a separate one onto St. Thomas Street. There will also be another gateline leading onto the bus station level on the terminating side, so the problem is really the flows between terminating and through platforms. Of course, we are told that the through Thameslink services will reduce the number of passengers who will need to change between terminating and through platforms. I would add ‘by not that much’.
SFD: I think football pitches, concert halls or pocket handkerchiefs are more suitable units. Quite flexible too, especially if you don’t specify the brand of football or the gender of the handkerchief.
Thanks to all those who have confirmed the layout / gateline arrangements for the future London Bridge. It’s difficult to get a sense of scale from the artists impressions and relatively poor resolution images / plans in the published presentations. I did go back and check the latter before asking the question as station stuff is not covered very well or for some reason is missing in the published presentations. It’ll be interesting to see how the gates are set to function in terms of whether they allow exit and re-entry (as an OSI) on the NR side of the station (as there is at Victoria between SC and SE sides). There has to be an OSI with LU for interchange but I can foresee circumstances where routing people up and through the “terminal” gateline near the Shard may be more effective than allowing just open low level interchange (e.g. escalator maintenance or if there are severe operational issues). Easier to corall people at the terminal side than trying to manage multiple entry points to those platforms.
@WW – Perish the thought that there would be escalator maintenance!
The gates already mis-function. A return ticket from Dartford to Croydon Stations (or East Croydon) will not open gates on the gateline from P1-3 to the bus station area, in either direction. Works fine in the high-level gateline. I told the ticket office. No-one cares.
MikeP,
I am not sure I am clear exactly which gates you are referring to but a ticket from Dartford to Croydon stations would not be valid for break of journey so it wouldn’t surprise me if it was only valid at the temporary entrance to platforms 1-3 near the station ticket office leading directly to the low level platforms and the low-level platforms (10-15) themselves. This would be the only reasonable route (well signposted) for a through journey.
@PoP – That’s exactly the route I take. So maybe those gates are actually already programmed for 2018 🙂 (must confess, hadn’t thought about the break of journey question – I’m not a routing expert. Yet….)
Mike P, don’t be too hard on the ticket office. Going by my experience, they care when they start in the job but gradually (or quickly if they are more perceptive than I) realise that no one higher up who could actually do something about it does, so they end up the same way. Yours cynically.
POP I was under the impression that all walk on tickets allowed break of journey. Oyster changed that within London. The logic programmed into the pay as you go option for The Key allows for this too. If you get on at Brighton, off at Hove for a meeting and back on to Worthing later it will only charge Brighton to Worthing.
Whether or not break of journey is allowed, the normal gateline software for magstripe tickets cannot determine route validity on the fly, so unless a particular origin and destination pair has been manually added (I think there’s a simple look up table), a random barrier (lets call it at location B) will not allow a point to point from A to C to pass by default – it basically just checks “is this ticket valid to exit or enter here at this time”.
So at London Bridge, ‘London Terminals’ is easy, travel cards are easy, ‘London Thameslink’ is probably easy, ‘Cross London marker’ is easy.
Random place in SE London to S London? Possible but unlikely.
Random place in Hampshire to random place in Kent? They probably don’t even think about it at all.
Purley Dweller,
It seems that your are correct and the Conditions of Carriage (last updated 19 July 2015) state that break of journey is allowed.
@Paul – I’d live with that explanation IF the return leg didn’t let me out at the high-level barriers at LBG either. But it does.
I can also see permitting entry being more, errr, permissive than permitting exit, but again this isn’t the issue here. Does seem like a programming error to me.
If you present your ticket to a machine when breaking a journey, is there any danger it will eat it rather than rejecting it? I’ve always be cautious in finding a staff member to let me out rather than risk it.
@John B
As far as my experience is concerned, I have never known a machine eat a ticket except at the station named as the destination.
@John B
AAUI there is also a requirement for a member of staff to be present at any operating gate line. If no staff members are available, the gate line must be left open.
@quinlet
“member of staff to be present at any operating gate line.”
For a suitable definition of “line” – certainly I have been at stations where two close, but physically separate, gate lines have been monitored by one member of staff
They use CCTV and help points for the back exits at Purley and other stations on that line.
@Purley Dweller
……and yet at my local station they claim such an arrangement would be out of the question.
On ‘Making the Grade’ Paul pointed us to :-
‘A Network Rail time-lapse has appeared here: https://youtu.be/hyjlVTrnhgk
Includes shots of the Ewer St crossovers mentioned in earlier posts.’
The Ewer Street shots that Paul refers to also show the single Blackfriars track, to the left of the picture, which is to be doubled for Thameslink during 2016.
@timbeau
Ashford International also uses CCTV and help points for the exit from the domestic station into the international terminal.
Can anybody verify whether or not the old crossover just to the west of the new Ewer Street crossovers was removed at the same time that the new ones were installed? It is shown on slide 86 of the IF14 presentation :-
http://www.infrarail.com/_downloads/presentations/IF14_Thameslink.pdf
but has gone by slide 87.
Unravelled has treated us yet again. This time to a video of the London Bridge works from a train passing on the current Charing Cross Up Line.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/unravelled/20759987209/in/photostream/
There are also a couple of stills taken from (I think) the bus station.
The adjoining video in the photostream of the diveunder works is an excellent and valuable historical record – the stately progress of the train makes for great clarity on the video, even though fellow passengers probably huff and puff over the slow speed.
Talking of track layouts, Carto Metro has just added a ‘London Lines‘ overlay which gives a London-wide key to fast/slow up/down and reversible lines along with the traditional names for the loops and spurs, such as the ‘Ludgate’ curve at Clapham, and much more.
@RayK 5 Sep 20:16 – There was a 20mph TSR through there when I went up last week, so it had the feel about it that there was still some work to do. I have a feeling that crossover is still there – have a vague memory of noticing it. There’s still work to do out there anyway – there’s a link between the up & down slows to go in, seems to appear along with the removal of the crossing you refer to, at the time the new flyover is brought into use.
Re Mike P,
Usually they clamp some of the rail joins till the track has settled down for a fortnight, then return to weld the joins. The CHX tracks are closed both Saturday and Sunday this weekend however whole weekend also suggests maybe starting some other work as well as they have a whole weekend closure a fortnight later (26/27th Sept).
While looking on another forum I fell across this interesting “defence” from Network Rail about why performance was so poor on the TSGN / Southern networks following London Bridge. One of their arguments related to patronage growth being ahead of forecast and having a particularly adverse effect on dwell times for trains in the peak. There is a brief article that sets out the position. Of more interest is the report that was obtained via FOI that sets out some of the detail behind Network Rail’s argument. The report looks at different routes and shows the impact of one year’s growth on dwell times and PPM. It looks like there is a very significant challenge for the TOCs and Network Rail in better understanding dwell times and managing them and developing timetables that are closer to the reality.
Re WW,
Wow – very interesting reading. Plenty of good stats and some big costs in the pipeline if anything is going to be done.
CP5 modelling for London and Southeast (LSE) uses 3% growth rate (16% compound over 5 years*) but Southern’s growth rate was 4% in the first 9 month of CP5 (equivalent to 5.3% annualised). The London and Southeast (LSE) growth rate was 8.0%.
*The LSE growth rate in CP4 was 35% (6.2% annual)
@ WW/ngh
Great find thanks WW, certainly some good points by NR but I have to agree with the ORR, it doesn’t seem to account for the majority of the poor performance during the period. For future planning however, those saturation points will be worth watching.
As ngh points out growth already exceeding that anticipated must be a real headache for planners. I’m surprised NR had to undertake this, I would have thought work on dwell times had been modelled extensively before. In particular I expected TfL to be a leader in this area as surely dwell times will be crucial to their peak operations to maximise tph for the Victoria/Jubilee upgrades.
Any idea why it took a FOI for this to be released, I can’t see any obvious commercial sensitivity which would have precluded this?
Carto Metro’s map doesn’t include my favourite “old” line description, which was the spur from the Great Western Relief lines (and Acton Yard) to the North London line which was (and maybe still is) designated up and down Poplar.
@ Snowy – I was going to mention TfL but wasn’t 100% sure what specific work they have done on dwell times. It’s clear they are aware of its importance given the work needed to move to very high tph timetables and the emphasis on the actions of platform staff in getting trains away within the stipulated dwell time. LU has the relative advantage of more doors per car on its trains plus wider doors on 09 and S stocks which are a help. Network Rail isn’t in charge of rolling stock procurement nor does it run most stations so two crucial elements of dwell time performance are outwith its control. As Graham H has pointed out many times the national network organisational structure is dysfunctional when it comes to key items that cross the split of responsibilities. I’m not suggesting a change of responsibilities btw – that’s for others to contemplate the best way of achieving a more cohesive approach to tackling performance issues. Another one for Mr Hendy’s “to do” list.
I suspect NR haven’t yet gone through a cultural change to be more transparent on the release of reports like this following FOI being applicable to the business. To be fair it will take time for that to happen. There may also have been an element of thinking this report was “commercial” in that it was trying to point to !external” factors affecting performance and avoid a fine being imposed. Obviously I’m speculating as to the corporate mindset.
Re Snowy,
Commercial sensitivity – Southern’s growth rate of 4% in 9 months would normally be sensitive?
Victoria and Jubilee line don’t have branches so there might not be that much recent work on complex networks, indeed the report is almost a request to do more detailed work.
I think the issues raised are a bit more significant.
Imagine the scenario: 1 train into London Bridge is cancelled due to a train fault as it fails before leaving the depot and doesn’t effect any other train leaving. All the passengers then squeeze on to other services usually the first, delaying it and leaving some passengers later in the journey unable to board.
The dwell times at the stations on the first (and subsequent) trains will be extended and those trains delayed missing the slots at Junctions as there is no ability to recover* resulting in every later train now being delayed till at least the end of the morning.
*The longer dwell times have tipped things from the ability to recover to not recover due to the exponential nature of loading time as passenger numbers increase.
Inrigued by the bit about the contra-peak giving a worse performance than the peak. Since London Bridge has settled down after the first few months of this year that certainly seems to be the case to me.
A classic, but not the only, example recently was being held at Purley on a train that, until then, was on time to allow priority to be given to late running empty coaching stock (ECS) to London Bridge. The driver apologised for the delay but made it quite clear he thought it was due to the incompetent actions of the signaller. To me it seemed absolutely the correct thing to do, operationally. The ECS was already late and was the priority. The slight delay of around 5 minutes to the train with passengers on was clearly undesirable but some of that could be made up – all of it if there was a change of driver at London Bridge.
LU has, for many years now, analysed the impact of dwell times on performance and the expected dwell time directly impacts on the design of the system – and not just the trains (door width etc) as already observed. This became forensic in planning the Victoria Line Upgrade because dwells at critical stations such as Victoria, NB, morning peak, determined the ultimate throughput. The provision of the staff on the platforms, the numbers and their location are not accidents and have been shown to work. Equally the VLU signalling (which is still basically a fixed block system) is optimised to allow a train’s departure from a platform to be progressively communicated to the system (eg there can be eight track circuits in about 300m of track length). This was all developed by a team of planners operators and engineers backed by robust engineering modelling.
That is so disappointing about the references above (RTM article, NR report, ORR response) is that it effectively ignores the system issue (eg the number/width of doors) ignoring whatever Thameslink with ERTMS on the approaches provides.
There is no doubt that growth will continue, the capacity being provided at LB will be crowded from day one and – as a team – everyone involved in operating trains through LB will have to focus on managing trains though the station which will inevitable need changes to how people work, processes used and the assets, trains, signalling and probably power supply. In particular, staff on platforms hustling the customers, getting doors opened and closed quicker (eg driver operation of doors?) and good comms between platform staff and signallers might all be needed.
As to the comment about a loaded train awaiting the passage of ECS, it would be interesting to understand what briefing NR signallers have in terms of priority when there is any late running – “run in order booked” or “first come first served”.
Re PoP,
The contra peak direction certainly seems to have a lower dwell time assumptions so with more local contra commuting or school traffic it many not be hard to exceed those. There may be an assumption that time could be made up on the contra direction to get things back on schedule and with higher contra peak usage that ability is being lost.
On Southern Metro services the down direction also has slightly shorter dwell time assumptions built in as more passenger leave than board.
Re 100andthirty,
I fear there won’t be much joined up thinking as the blame-go-round will always be pointed at other parties to enable the party concerned to do the least they can.
An interesting recent example (and on topic!) is provided by NR/ TL programme tweeting and press releasing the images of the finished upper station concourse:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMNIAB2UsAA-s9k.jpg:large
How on earth is a decent pedestrian flow to/from platform 10 going to be achieved? (And how long is going to be before they have to change the gate line round P10… e.g. some exit gates in the glass wall?)
ngh,
All probably true but the point I was trying to highlight was that, in order to keep departures from London Bridge as much to time as possible, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice performance indication measures affecting trains on their inward journey.
So as an obvious hypothetical example: a train is late on its inward journey and omits stops at Norwood Junction and New Cross Gate to get it back on time at London Bridge. There has been a delay but it does not show up on peak-direction statistics. What is also easily forgotten (but not by me as I am affected) is the service reduction on inward evening peak journeys in order to enable a better service leaving London Bridge in the evening peak. This is all very right and proper but the danger is one just looks at the figures for departing trains from London Bridge and sees that they are running to time and then assume that there isn’t a problem.
Whilst, of course, the peak flow is far more substantial than the contra-peak flow the latter is significant and important at London Bridge. It does not need to be given priority but should be allowed for – hence the cattle pen at platform 15.
@ Ngh – there is a certain irony about your comment about the proposed P10 gateline given the NR report blames “poor gateline design” as a factor for causing platform crowding and causing people to run for trains. That would be the “poor gateline design” created and / or approved by Network Rail would it? It also says platforms have been lengthened but not widened – again who specs, designs and builds platforms on the NR network? Oh yes Network Rail. You couldn’t make it up.
Re PoP,
Agreed on the points you make, plenty of alterations to the contra-peak services (skipped stops and short terminating short) being used to try to recover the service.
One solution that I was hinting at would be to start adding more “padding” to the contra-peak timings but even that won’t be easy.
Re WW,
Irony fully intended when writing…
I had all the new narrow (mimimum width) platform lengthening on Southern and SWT in recent years in mind too.
They complain about gateline design and still keep coming up with new ones and then approving them that you can tell aren’t going to work years in advance…
(But then with seperated NR Ops and infrastructure not really surprising)
It could easily take over 3 minutes to clear a train on P10 with that gateline arrangement before you even worry about boarding or passengers from other platforms cutting across as the shops under the Shard obscure the gates in front of P12-15 so there will be a overall diagonal flow of passengers.
Walthamstow Writer,
Which all makes the point that to do the job properly costs a lot more than doing the job badly. I think this really is a case in point with platform extensions. These are often as narrow as permitted which is not too bad but no effort is made to widen the platform elsewhere so that people can easily get to the extension. In some cases the bit of the platform next to the extension was the previously extended platform and that too was done to the minimum width permitted on the basis that few people walk to the end of the platform.
Any extension almost never has a shelter – something mentioned in the report. You may not want to attract people to go to the front of the train in the up direction but little is done to attract them to go to the rear. Sometimes there may even be a case for relocating station entrances or putting in an additional set of stairs as a result of platform lengthening but I don’t think we ever see this happening.
No doubt it was the right thing to do to extend the platforms as soon as possible. What we don’t see is any followup work to cater for the unsatisfactory features that the extended platforms causes – a more holistic approach to station improvements. I suspect the problem is that it becomes very hard to identify a robust business case for this. All the emphasis seems to be on “walk through” trains to help spread the load and none on spreading the load before passengers get on the train.
And at stations with a lot of churn, a single exit from the platform inevitably results in everyone congregating near that exit, as the most likely place for space to become available on the trains that call there – so the rear for Waterloo-bound trains at Wimbledon. No amount of cajoling will make people move down the platform if to do so would reduce their chances of boarding the train.
@RayK: The old single track crossover is still there…. The new points are only clamped into place…
I’d also add uneven distribution and inadequate amounts of PIS [passenger information systems] to the list of Network Rail decisions that can lead to passengers bunching on platforms and increased dwell times.
WW says “ That would be the “poor gateline design” created and / or approved by Network Rail would it? ”
This reminds us that getting all parts of the railway together singing off the same hymn sheet is not just about having them in the same organisation. The same lack of joined-up planning could have happened within British Railways, or under just about any conceivable way of managing things. We must assume that the designers of the gateline were working to the wrong parameters – keeping the cost down, making it look pretty, or some other criterion than permitting the necessary number of passengers through in a given time.
@ Malcolm – or they simply do not have the requisite knowledge in their organisations to be sufficiently challenging. I’ve lost count of the reams of comments I provided to clients and architects on station schemes for London Underground. This was specifically in the context of ticket offices, ticket machines and gatelines and their efficient, safe operation. I was perhaps a little “blunt” back then but if you’re dealing with architect’s egos who want things to “look nice” rather than “work” you need to defend your corner.
I am amazed at some of the appalling gating schemes I see on National Rail stations. They are inadequate, badly designed and in some cases unsafe. I’d never have allowed such nonsenses on LU but then it wasn’t all about money, money, money or keeping the DfT happy. It was about workable schemes.
Some LU stations are now distinctly borderline in terms of gateline capacity as a result of booming patronage growth. If nothing else it vindicates the generous approach that was taken to allow for growth and to cater for possible equipment breakdown when calculating equipment numbers. That has meant LU has avoided for 20+ years the need to routinely open gates due to overcrowding or repeatedly remodel stations. Some places have needed attention but that’s to be expected.
Like ngh I wonder if London Bridge will end up being remodelled or redesigned to better cater for the terminal platforms. As I can’t get a sense yet of the space / spatial relationships in the new lower concourse it is difficult to know whether NR have got things right or whether they will get horrible collisions between escalator / stair flows to / from gatelines and people dashing across those flows in order to change trains. I also wonder if they’ve modelled how things would work during times of perturbation or if escalators are out of service and hoarded off for planned works.
Timbeaue have you considered passengers might be following base instincts by refusing to walk any further than they have to? At London Bridge I’ve seen the platform blocked by people queuing four deep for the back two coaches rather than moving along. Net result, we could leave later because I literally get can’t to the front on time. Then extended dwell times wherever those coaches disgorge, not only caused by a seemingly endless stream of people leaving the train from just two or three doors but also because they quickly start backing up at the exit, blocking the platform and resulting in my view of the platform being obscured (no speed advantage of DOO there 130 as I have to be sure before I hit Close Doors) and preventing yet more still waiting to alight from doing so. As I sit watching and waiting and seeing my watch tick over into delay, it amazes me that no one ever realises that all this could be avoided if they just walked a little further. How do the planners take this sort of thing into account? Indeed are they aware of it? They could ask the train crew as every driver and the three guards that are left know exactly where everyone gets on and off at every stop, but that’s not generally in the spirit of the rail industry as far as I can see.
@GTR driver
I was thinking more about of passengers waiting for “up” trains at intermediate stations , but bunching near the barriers at termini is certainly an issue. One cause is late announcement of platforms – if you don’t announce the platform until the train is there (or even worse, its departure time is imminent), even the first arrivals will dive into the nearest door. Providing access to both ends of the platform would help at termini just as much as at through stations.
Why should there not be a second concourse at the Bermondsey Street end of London Bridge? The Westminster Bridge end of Waterloo? Near the coach station at Victoria? It works at Paddington!
@ GTR Driver – one small step would be a passenger education campaign about passing along platforms, not crowding them etc. I know there may be moans from passengers faced with crush loaded trains but LU actively manages passenger crowding by use of PA and other means. While some people will always want to get in their preferred carriage for a quick escape when they alight not everyone will. What Timbeau has said is also important but there needs to be a full use of all available means to deliver improvements and that includes talking to train crew and capturing their insights / feedback.
WW
And it doesn’t work, because it’s “just another announcement” – oops.
However, your point, earlier about unsafe gatelines – we had one here, didn’t we?
And I’m still not too hopeful as to what the final arrangement at WHC will be … I’ve a horrid suspicion that the “hole in the wall” on the up side won’t be re-opened & gates will be put in the passageway.
I do hope I’m wrong.
BBC SE local news clip from Thursday Lunchtime (available till Friday 2230)
showing current construction activities in London Bridge.
Skip to 4minutes in:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b069x6n6/south-east-today-17092015
Notably:
The first concrete column for the tracks 5&6 viaduct being cast (country end of the concourse)
The lifts and escalators pits for Platform 6&7 island being cast.
ngh. Thanks for the heads up on that clip. I wonder how up to date it is. The varying states of the track 5&6 column suggests that videos were taken on different days. They clearly used old archive material for the interviews. I’d rather rely on unravelled’s pictures as we know when they are taken. It’s a real frustration that those hoardings are so high.
Re Ray K,
Very up to date. The video had to have been taken this week* as the steel casing wasn’t on that column last weekend that was been poured in the BBC video.
You can see the rebar before the casing was fitted in this twitter pic from last weekend:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CO3-y1HWEAEWBve.jpg:large
So they would have had to fit the casing then pour the concrete so probably Wednesday this week?
*While sunny so that doesn’t leave long…
Thameslink have twittered a photo showing trackbed and platform 9 through the station.
twitter.com/TLProgramme/status/656134066471837696/photo/1
@RayK: There was even a train on it this morning… Not quite sure how they got it there, I thought that trackwork was still disconnected from the rest, but obviously not!
On the subject of finishing and bring those tracks into use which will happen soon:
The 9 day Christmas – New Year blockade on the SE side at London Bridge is from 1945 Friday 24th Dec to Sunday 3rd January inclusive.
No Services to/from Charing Cross or Cannon Street during the blockade.
Some diversion in place to Blackfriars and reversals at New Cross.
More info here:
https://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/your-journey/engineering-work/christmas-new-year/
The tracks will be used for through services till August when services start stopping.
Re Southern Heights
There has been a set of points just to the West of Tower Bridge Road which has been in place at least since Jan. 2015. (See Google Earth) It’s where the three tracks become four. This is the most likely connection for access to track 9. Given that there is a desire to do work once only I expect the final trackwork to be in place soon for tracks 7 to 9 through LBG (if it isn’t there already). Now will be their last opportunity to lay tracks clear of operational railway other than in the very busy Christmas blockade.
Hi RayK,
Yes, I spotted them going home last night, it’s quite hard to see at 50mph from track 1.
This morning I noticed that the far end of the works train is currently above borough market, by The Globe tavern. Sleepers are also appearing for track 8.
If, as you say, they only want to do work once, then I suspect they will be laying tracks 6 & 7 before Christmas as well.
Track 7 will be laid through the station as it comes into use after the block.
@SouthernHeight and RayK – reasonably recent photos shot from the Shard leave me to believe there is still a connection between lines 4 & 5 at Spa Road Junction
@dave cardboard: I think the rails there have actually been cut, ready for removal.
Last Saturday the closure of Waterloo East and Charing Cross meant that SouthEastern reduce the Greenwich Line service from every 10 minutes to every 15 minutes (also the half hourly Charing Cross trains were lost.
Today the same is happening because of leaves on the line at off peak times.
Money saving?
@Chris L
I doubt if it saves much money because both the rolling stock and the staff that would have run the missing services will still be on the books. At best it may save some overtime.
Whether it’s the right thing to do depends whether you consider failing to provide a 6tph service is better than succeeding in running a 4tph one. (Bearing in mind that a cancellation in a 6tph service results in an unscheduled 20 minute gap) .
I think the reduction is on the Greenwich line is also probably related to the closures through Abbey Wood and the capacity limitation on having to turn back every train at Plumstead sidings.
@Jon
If the line is closed at Abbey Wood, I would assume that trains to beyond Dratford are being diverted via Bexleyheath or Sidcup, reducing the number of trains on the normal route.
Yes that’s correct timbeau but there are normally 6tph plus the extra 2tph semi-fast trains.
@ timbeau
30 October 2015 at 14:38
‘Dratford’ is a perfect description.
On 13th Nov NR released a timelaps of their work at LBG and the Bermondsey Dive Under.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmWvn9WfbGI
Personally I find these timelapse videos mostly disappointing. This one has swathes of night views which show only sparks and patches of light. It is also clear that the camera lenses are inadequately protected from rain. I feel that they have wasted the advantage of good vantage points.
I much prefer the detail we can see in Unravelled’s videos and photo’s. Even though he has limited access he succeeds in making the best of what access he has.
RayK,
I don’t share your views although I would say that it complements Unravelled’s photos or vice versa.
I suspect Network Rail want to emphasise that a lot of work is done at night and in the rain. They don’t make these videos for your entertainment but for propaganda purposes and to get a message across as well as to highlight to the workforce what they are achieving.
I found it absolutely fascinating. I get quite annoyed that I can’t see behind the hoardings at what is going on, and having no trains to Charing Cross from London Bridge currently, I don’t actually get to see the other side. I may have to take a trip on the fabled Hayes line to go past the work on the other side.
Around 1m58: Is the big gap between the track for P9 and the Platform of 10 where the escalators to the new concourse in the unpaid section will be.
@Purley Dweller: Do the Hayes trains take a different through the station?
Incidentally, you can see of what’s going on by sitting facing backwards on the left side, when the train rumbles through…
Purley Dweller – yes the gap is for the escalators on the unpaid side.
I thought it was a superb video and continues to show the scale of the job – and that you “can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”.
With the video stopped at about 1m 58s the ‘triangular area you can see is part paid and part unpaid. The concrete box ‘sump’ visible is for the bottom of the single reversible escalator down from P10, and is in a paid area. Just to the right and slightly nearer there is a rectangular concrete pillar, on the planning drawings this is at the south end of a section of gateline dividing the paid and unpaid areas. My interpretation of the drawing makes me fairly certain that the escalators down from the mezzanine (terminating) concourse (unpaid) to the lower concourse (unpaid) will be vertically below the camera location.
@southern heights
“@Purley Dweller: Do the Hayes trains take a different through the station?”
What I assume Purleydweller meant is that, coming in to LBG from the Brighton side (“From Purley” – say no more*!) he can currently only continue to Cannon Street. If he wants to see things from the Charing Cross lines the first stop after Waterloo East is at least New Cross (and usually Lewisham). And if your planning a route to or from Purley via Lewisham your best bet is a Hayes train.
*Monty Python
Not New Cross any more… as far as I know that station (and St Johns) are served only from Cannon Street.
The first metro stations from Waterloo East would be Lewisham, Hither Green or Ladywell.
Tramlink from East Croydon Hayes train from Elmers End. Might be a trial to convince my wife that it’s a good route to Charing Cross though. Particularly when we’ll likely be sitting on a fast London Bridge train at East Croydon.
@jon “as far as I know [New Cross] is served only from Cannon Street.”
Not quite – Journey Planner shows three trains a day – or rather a night – from Charing Cross at 2352, 0022 and 0048. None of them call at St Johns, and none of them go to Hayes.
However, as all three go via Cannon Street (reverse) you won’t see anything more at London Bridge than from any other Cannon Street train.
Plus they don’t seem to be working that late, so the work site is largely dark (at least it seemed to be on Friday and Saturday night). I think that must mean they are pretty much on schedule…
The best view is in any case from an up train…
@PoP 22 Nov. @ 10:18
‘They don’t make these videos for your entertainment but for propaganda purposes . . .’
I confess that the idea of propaganda had not approached the edge of my mind never mind crossed it. It certainly explains why the quality is too poor for PR purposes. I guess the purpose justifies only the minimum of expenditure.
@PoP It seems to me now the my main mistake has been to try to watch these timelapse videos and the the trick is simply to play at freezing them often and viewing them as stills. (and also to fast forward through the non-informative bits)
@Paul, Southern Heights, et al.
Eyeballing what is happening is something that I can only dream of owing to geographic remoteness. I really appreciate hearing of anything that you notice has happened at LBG/.
The same goes for Bermondsey on https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/bermondsey-diveunder/
I have realised that even with Unravelled’s offerings other people notice different things from me.
Re Ray K,
A higher resolution 1080p version is also available (standard is 720p)
The video is taken from NR’s network of worksite monitoring cameras which provide a convenient “free” source of video footage to make propaganda videos however they aren’t ideal if you want high quality photos as they are a wide angle camera / lens combination for site monitoring.
Early in the construction programme (18 months + ago) there was a lot of criticism* along the lines of why wasn’t work being done at night / weekends hence the footage of night works showing it is 24/7.
* Several conflicting sources of criticism:
a) those that believed it could all be done at Evenings / Weekends only so their commutes shouldn’t be affected
b) those that believed it could all be done quicker if work was done at evenings / weekends as well (but never used the station at those times to notice it was happening any way!)
Re Ray K (16:05),
Quick update on what isn’t in the videos:
The track through platforms 7,8,9 that will be in use for CHX services from 4th Jan is nearly completed. The P6/7 platform canopy is complete at both ends but is only being constructed along P7 over the new concourse as there isn’t anything on the P6 side to put a platform on yet (the columns for tracks 5&6 over the concourse are complete but presumably aren’t getting the deck till after the current tracks 4&5 are demolished as they are so close that it would make demolition far harder).
Logistics wise there are now 3 arches on the Tooley Street side being used for deliveries etc. and just 1 arch on the St Thomas Street (adjacent to Shard) being used for deliveries.
@ngh Thanks for pointing out that ‘Logistics wise there are now 3 arches on the Tooley Street side being used for deliveries etc. and just 1 arch on the St Thomas Street ‘ side.
Now that you have said this it seems obvious that they can’t finish the southern concourse at the same time as using it for construction access.
Does this also limit the maximum size of what can be imported until the arches supporting the last four old platforms can be demolished or alternatively can they crane large items over the top?
Southern Heights,
On the question of out of hours working, I asked that question when we had the Bermondsey Diveunder site visit. We will take it for granted that when you have to close the railway for a short period the working is going to normally be around the clock.
The answer I got was they try and avoid out-of-hours working because it is more expensive but will do so if necessary. I suspect they could have added that it also means you tend to be working in the dark and that, sometimes, you need to get local authority approval and show that there is a good reason for it. You also sometimes have some circumstances (e.g. tunnelling, a concrete pour) when, once started, you just have to keep going.
Modern worksites, be they building, railways or practically anything else, are timetabled to an incredible degree. You would probably have the current week’s plan, the four week plan, the eight week plan and the sixteen week plan as well as a general project overview. All these plans rely on critical things happening on certain days (e.g use of a crane, arrival of cement). To ensure that this happens on time the work schedule is not onerous and if things are running late the contingency of late or night working (subject to local authority approval) can be involved. I believe there are times on some Crossrail sites where unplanned 24 hour working was invoked in order to keep to schedule.
In support of PoP’s comments, this is the sort of thing that was reported on “Team London Bridge” website in Sept. 2014:
“Network Rail has written to the community to keep us informed about their on-going work at London Bridge with some key milestones and a look ahead at some of our upcoming work.
September Works
– Reinforced concrete works will continue for the concourse in the Station Approach area.
– Work to construct the track bed in the Station Approach area will continue and will remain 24/7. This will include night time concrete pours.
– Large girders will be lifted into place into Station Approach using cranes and modular transporters at night during the bus station closures.
– Piling work will continue in the area between Stainer Street and Weston Street. Please note these works will be 24/7.
– Demolition works in the area of platforms 10 and 11 will take place.
– Construction of pile caps along with sheet piling will take place in St Thomas Street to facilitate the façade works.
– Restoration of the facade walls in St. Thomas Street will continue.
– During September the 500 tonne crane situated in Vinegar Yard will continue to facilitate the delivery of materials to the eastern end of the project.
Pedestrian access will be maintained whenever possible. The majority of work that has the potential to be noisy is scheduled to take place during normal working hours (Monday – Friday, 8am – 6pm and Saturday 8am – 1pm).”
Oddly, there seems to be nothing more recent than that but all of it can easily be translated to the ongoing work today. Having attended one of their meetings, it is clear that they were not the slightest interested in railway passenger movements but just concerned with the local community, which of course is important.
ReGF ‘Oddly, there seems to be nothing more recent than that . . .’
http://www.teamlondonbridge.co.uk/news-london-bridge-station-redevelopment-october-2015-updatezzznzzz.aspx?m=31&mi=261&pmi=&ms=
Is the most recent one on “Team London Bridge” website. It includes some 24 hr working :-
‘- The installation of scaffolding will commence around the platform 4 overbridge. This work will be 24/7.
– Trial holes on platform 4 have to be completed. This work will be 24/7.
– Works will commence to realign the road and pavement in Tooley Street junction with Bermondsey Street. This work is scheduled to take place over the following weekends and weekdays and may require 24hr working. ‘
There is no news since then on the “Team London Bridge” website.
NR seem to issue these updates half way through the preceding month. I don’t know whether NR issue them consistently every month but they only appear now and then on “Team London Bridge”. I have been unable to find them elsewhere.
There are other pressures on timing as well – for example the various campaigns to ban heavy lorries in rush hour in the interests of cyclist safety, or at night to let residents have some sleep, or during the working day to improve traffic flow to businesses……..
@RayK: You mentioned this:
The installation of scaffolding will commence around the platform 4 overbridge. This work will be 24/7.
Only a skeleton of that part of the footbridge now remains… I expect it to disappear entirely this weekend as both terminals (CST and CHX) will be closed…
Re Ray K, Southern H et al.
Certainly permitted lorry movements at evenings / night going on but the area isn’t particularly residential. (Lorries are a lot quieter than they used to be.)
Early in the cycle between blockades (not just this one) there seems to be more extended working* for example loading up demolition waste on to lorries for removal as well as delivery shuttle runs between the staging compounds and site (along with some evening tower crane operation) but later in cycle it seems to be largely normal working hours as there is lot less to get done (everything on schedule) and the final tasks in each cycle require comparatively less material overall.
*Probably indicates a combination how restricted the work site is space wise, an optimum use of lorries ( 1 lorry multiple drivers in a day) and using road space at quieter times.
@ngh
“Certainly permitted lorry movements at evenings / night going on but the area isn’t particularly residential. ”
No, but the point of a lorry is to move stuff from place A to place B, and even if neither of those places are residential, the route between them is likely to have to pass many homes.
Collected the 13 Dec 2015 to 14 May 2016 High Speed timetable from St Pancras last night. It says “January 2018, when the station is complete” referring to London Bridge.
Re Timbeau,
It is the loading and unloading that makes the worst noise (unless the route has speed bumps!). Lorries are a lot quieter than 40 years ago when the rules were brought in and there are agreed routes for LGVs at night etc.
@ngh
nevertheless, the lorry ban rules are still in place and put some restrictions, or at least make more circuitous journeys necessary, during the hours of operation
http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/london-lorry-control/about-llcs
The rules indicate that even with a permit you must approach the site using as little of the non-exempt road network as possible, even if that makes the total journey longer.
The map http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/node/25506
suggests that the closest point on the exempt network to London Bridge is Limehouse, which is a bit of a detour if you’re coming from the south.
@ngh
“Lorries are a lot quieter than 40 years ago when the rules were brought in ”
Actually 30 years ago next month
The Greater London (Restriction of Goods Vehicles) Traffic Order 1985
@timbeau/ngh
If LLCS routes are particulalrly circuitous, operators can agree special routing agreements which still keep vehicles out of residential streets as much as possible while reducing journey lengths. In any case the change in noise profiles is limited even for the newest vehicles while the fleet as a whole still includes enough older vehicles, especially in construction traffic, to make it impossible to rely on the newest specifications.
Agreed that noise from loading/unloading is the biggest nuisance but even moving traffic where there are particulalr loads (think of a load of scrap metal) or where there is on-board equipment, such as refrigeration, can also be very significant.
AG
So, printed tt’s are now out, or some of them, obviously, but not NR’s National tt on-line.
Grrr …..
@Alan Griffiths – Indeed, that’s been the long-planned opening date. Thameslink services through London Bridge restart on that date, with some services planned to go through the core still terminating at London Bridge as the core frequency ramps up.
Re Mike P and Alan G,
Platforms will be fully complete and available for Jan 2018 but there will be some final works to finish after that.
The aim is 20tph through the TL core from Jan ’18 increasing to 24tph at the May ’18 timetable change (if everything goes well with train and ATO introduction and driver training & route learning). The assumption would be that 8tph via E&C and 12tph via LBG rising to 16tph via LBG in May ’18.
The new peak only TL routes – Caterham, East Grinstead, Littlehampton (2 of 3 routes) would be sensible ones to think about leaving till May’18 transfer?
One doesn’t like to correct ngh, but the plan is for a limited Thameslink core service via London Bridge from January 18, 20tph from May 2018 (which is when the link with ECML is made) then 24tph from December 2018. The final 4tph are all off the ECML.
I note that the forecast final cost for Thameslink has increased by £400m according to Sir Peter Hendy’s review of the Network Rail CP5 investment programme. Wonder what has caused that scale of variance?
The Bowe review about the efficacy of the planning of NR’s Enhancement Programme has also been published.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/479560/bowe-review.pdf
Looks like ORR is being lined up for the firing squad. I expect anyone with a modicum of experience of projects and governance will not be astonished by the recommendations.
@WW – “Looks like ORR is being lined up for the firing squad. ” I tend to agree – my own contact with them has been generally, how shall we say, less than intellectually satisfying. It has become populated by regulatory geeks rather than people with industry knowledge (and yes, I’m aware of what is said about “regulatory capture”). This is a pity as many of my own team(s) have passed through its doors – and out again – and I did think I had taught them better… The problem is that, unlike NR, which can privatised and that presented as something different and progressive (he reaches for his irony pills), ORR has to have some sort of public sector successor that is a regulator. I would place a small bet on “solving” the NR issue and the ORR “issue” with a single shot – perhaps a “Rail trust” that allocates paths and supervises the corporate governance of NR , but sees investment planning grabbed back by DfT, and large projects undertaken by a special purpose vehicle in the Austrian fashion, leaving a privatised NR just to run the infrastructure. But then again I don’t really expect anything but a slightly different bugger’s muddle as now…
@ Graham H – Patrick McLoughlin has already responded to both the Hendy and Bowe reports. With your greater appreciation of the wiles of Whitehall I am sure you can read between the lines and see what is brewing for the future. I particularly like the “can’t happen again” line in the Hendy letter. The response to Bowe suggests to me that the screw is being tightened over Network Rail’s work programme “more flexibility for govt” “direct report to the DfT” and then the final outcome for ORR being co-ordinated with whatever nonsense Nicola Shaw comes up with. Looks like a recipe dreamt up by politicians, policy wonks and civil servants.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sir-peter-hendys-re-plan-on-resetting-network-rails-enhancements-programme-2014-to-2019-government-response
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bowe-review-into-the-planning-of-network-rails-enhancements-programme-2014-to-2019-government-response
All good fun. 🙂
@WW – thank you for the links (having been out and about for much of the day.I wasn’t expecting these various outputs – which have only a loose association with the Autumn Statement). You are right,ORR is the fall guy but,interestingly, nothing concrete is said about how it might be reformed .Note,however,the repeated themes in all the reports and paperwork about greater DfT involvement in investment planning. Although there are obvious implications for NR’s corporate government (see especially para 6.10 2nd and 3rd bullets in the Bowe report, where the DfT grab is plain to read*),there are are related weasel words about ORR getting caught up in the changed relationship now that NR is a nationalised industry.
I take this to mean (but it’s only speculation,of course) that at last the state has decided that an independent regulator interfering in the investment of a nationalised industry is unacceptable – something that has been looming ever since the Winsor coup. Note the implication that NR will continue as a nationalised industry. What will ORR be left to do? – there is a constant theme in all the paperwork that stakeholders need to be involved more in the investment planning process, so perhaps that’s what will be left for ORR. Plus,of course, some adjudicatory role in relation to competition.
* Note in particular, an interesting reference to DfT’s Director of Network Services,which is a multimodal unit,embracing motorways also. DfT Rail may also be losing out in this bureaucratic struggle.
Re SFD,
I’m always happy to be corrected!
Graham H,
What will ORR be left to do?
Well, for starters, there are still an awful lot of roads that they regulate in some way that I do not understand.
@PoP -indeed, with a skill set that still, presumably, requires some engagement with/knowledge of investment (ho ho),so perhaps the two very curious bedfellows will be pulled apart again. (Like you, I have never understood why Highways England, or whatever it calls itself this week) needed any sort of regulator at all. At the risk of sounding like Mr Growser, in my youth,we had dozens of agencies and quangos and nary a regulator in sight to look after any of them.*)
*There is a generic problem for Whitehall here – again, back in the day, there was a regular career path in which people were tried out on handling industries of increasing complexity and tameability, in my case starting with what is now English Nature and progressing to BR via the National Bus Company. Many contemporaries pursued a not dissimilar cursus honorum, and by the time we reached Assistant Secretary, we’d seen most of the tricks that a “client” could pull. With privatisation, that was lost and as a piece of sticking plaster, the job of sponsoring a (quasi-)nationalised industry (as with NR) was chucked at the regulator, which was staffed by regulatory theoreticians. I have been unamused as ORR has struggled over the last few years to discover that actually their role had less to do with applying regulatory economics a la mode de CMA, and more to do with getting the practicalities right. Goodbye Old ORR!
Re-reading the previous post, I realise that a crucial historical step was missed. At privatisation,sponsorship of many industries passed to newly created regulators, and many if not most of the staffing for these came initially either from Whitehall or the industry itself – so with OfTel/OfCom, ORR, OfWat and so on. But then we all retired or moved on and were replaced, frankly, with geeks… where else other than economic consultancies and academia could the staff be found any more?
Graham H
Note,however,the repeated themes in all the reports and paperwork about greater DfT involvement in investment planning.
Like the Hitachi HST replacements ( ? Class 800 ? ) you mean?
Oh dear
Meanwhile, according to “Private Eye” … it seems to be assumed that Railtrack will be re-invented under a n other name as a “Private Company” with yet more continuing fragmentation & consequent loss of communication & money.
What you so aptly referred to as a “buggers muddle” in fact.
@Greg: Private Eye… [SNIP. The notion of a possible reprivatisation of Network Rail is out of scope, and not to be discussed here. Malcolm and LBM]
Southeastern have produced a short video advising passengers about the forthcoming work over the Christmas period.
Although there seems to be something not quite right about their positioning of Cannon St.
Screen Grab: http://i.imgur.com/qATFfw1.png
Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyIR_Dqqn4I#t=16
@Del_tic: I like it! Drawing it that way looks slightly less daft on the video, but even so you do wonder about the meaning of words like “creative”. Youtube also (for me) had a rather anomalous “follow up” suggestion: the word “timetable” obviously occurs in a wide range of contexts.
Since it appears from that video that SouthEastern don’t even know the topology of the network they run their trains on, it’s little surprise that they can’t provide timely passenger information on a reliable basis…..
@MikeP
Certainly true on Saturday – the Greenwich line was closed on Saturday – not shown on the weekend engineering works page.
also on National Rail website yesterday – passengers from Woolwich Arsenal to Lewisham told to change to the DLR at Greenwich. Passengers for Blackheath told to travel to London Bridge and return via Lewisham.
Yes, plenty of artistic license applied. And all presented like it is one, big Christmas treat. For us, lucky commuters !
On Dec. 4th, under the caption ‘these stairs will take you from the concourse up on to the platforms’ Thameslink tweeted this photo..
pbs.twimg.com/media/CVYhyVPWoAATB9G.jpg
It looks decidedly discouraging to me. I’m glad that there will also be escalators.
Re Ray K,
On terminating platforms (including the P13/14 island shown in that photo) there will only be ONE escalator which will run in peak flow direction (down in the morning peak up in the evening peak) so in the morning “those stairs will take you up on to the platforms” unless you use the lift or use the bank of escalators to upper concourse between P9 and 10. The escalator in the photo won’t!
The stairs should look a bit more inviting when finished.
@ Ngh – being finished isn’t going to make them shorter or less steep! At least there’s one escalator unlike the nonsense when the new link from the tube to bus station at Walthamstow Central was built. Stairs only with three separate flights. Needless to say the lift gets extremely high use for a suburban location.
I know there are space issues at LOB but not making the most of “once in a generation” opportunities isn’t the best way forward for passengers.
Re WW,
Through platforms:
Through platforms 2-9 have 4 escalators so 2 in each direction (& 2 stairs +1 lift).
Through platform 1 has 2 escalators so 2 in each direction (& 2 stairs +1 lift).
Terminating Platforms:
In addition to the existing upper concourse with level access where presumably most passengers will entry / exit:
11/12 & 13/14 have 1 escalator, 1 staircase and 1 lift
10 & 15 1 escalator, 1 staircase.
I suspect the Borough High Street entrance to the tube station may become very popular with users of the terminating platforms.
@ngh – there’s also an new escalator located between the high level concourse and what is now the News International building, which exits into the new arcade whose construction split the Northern and Jubilee entrances at the upper level.
There’s the escalator down to the Shangri-La entrance that can be used to get from terminating platforms to the tube too.
Quite surprising this. It’s actually quite a lot of advance notice for the Thameslink Programme.
This really does start to show how advanced things must be on the south side of the station… Can’t really see much of it though through the holes in in the platforms as yet though.
Re Southern Heights,
That has been public for a few months already though not massively publicised.
There has been no vehicle access to the station site from St Thomas Street since mid January when the last replacement arch was fitted (the one by the P15 cattle pen). Vehicles can still unload in St Thomas Street but not access the site itself.
A lot of site vehicle access has been via Tooley Street since last September / October time.
The staff and systems currently housed in the former SER building on Tooley St. transfer to the new ops centre on the first floor of the new ticket office block in the new concourse below P11-15 around the same time as the Tooley Street partial closure to allow the former SER building to be demolished pre platforms 1-3 coming out and use and being demolished from August onwards.
ngh: That has been public for a few months already though not massively publicised.
Surely you mean: Not publicised at all?
I have been aware of the big truck leaving via Tooley street, they made me miss train once… I wasn’t aware that the back of the station was now unloading only, but it does make sense, given they have started on the fitting out…
Re SH,
Directed at local business and employers etc rather than the public as whole where the programme focus is always usually on the next big thing only to avoid “confusing” the public.
There was the one last bit of vehicle access from the St Thomas Street to the south (which was open as long as they could possibly keep it) along what will be the public access route at the west of the concourse which allowed them some access while still fitting out 3/4 of the width of the new concourse*.
The ticket office building / ops centre, stairs and escalators are in under the terminating platforms and the cladding on the underside of the concrete decks will go in shortly. A reasonable amount of the first part of concourse will have to be finished by April.
* the consequence of this is that the arch couldn’t be fitted and P15 has been narrower near the pen for very long time.
ngh
The staff and systems currently housed in the former SER building on Tooley St. transfer ….[snip] … to allow the former SER building to be demolished pre platforms 1-3 coming out and use and being demolished from August onwards.
There used to be, until quite recently, an SECR War Memorial plaque & board, just behind he ground-level entrance of that building.
It is to be hoped that it will be suitably re-homed.
@Greg Tingey – 19 February 2016 at 13:16
There used to be, until quite recently, an SECR War Memorial plaque & board, just behind he ground-level entrance of that building.
It is to be hoped that it will be suitably re-homed.
Worth your while getting in touch with the War Memorials Trust/War Memorials Online.
See http://www.warmemorials.org/
A little snake in the grass for those commuters hoping to use the train again from Waterloo East to London Bridge post August change-over:
Trains FROM Charing Cross and Waterloo East will NOT stop at London Bridge on Mondays to Fridays between 08:04 and 09:17.
Trains TO Waterloo East and Charing Cross will NOT stop at London Bridge on Mondays to Fridays between 16:37 and 18:03
Trains cannot stop at these times because only three of the four platforms are available. At peak times we will use two of the three platforms for the most popular direction (towards Charing Cross in the morning and away from Charing Cross in the evening), allowing one train to arrive as another departs. With only one platform available in the opposite direction we cannot stop all trains without major impacts on the whole service.
This hasn’t been mentioned before as far as I’m aware… It was only because of a little booklet left on every seat of my train in this morning, that I noticed…
I’ve been watching the progress as I trundle through to/from Charing Cross, Waterloo East or Cannon Street, and was wondering how they were planning to finish all of it in about five weeks.
@Alan: I think quite a bit of the stuff you can see is left unfinished until the very end deliberately, so it doesn’t get damaged… So they are probably a lot further along than you think…
The best cue to see if they have finished on time is to watch the amount of change. When this starts to slow down, you know they have basically finished…
Southern Heights 14:38
That little unwelcome news has been on the relevant page on SouthEastern’s website for some weeks.
It was certainly not part of the original plan. I understand that there would have been a period of non-stopping in the peaks but it was not intended to be for as long a duration as this. We gather that, for those affected, Network Rail has had to hurriedly negotiate continued free travel on the Jubilee line between Waterloo and London Bridge – and not from a strong negotiating position.
My guess is the problem is that they never originally intended to get up to a full 28tph in the peak hour on the Charing Cross side come late August 2016 – which is what you will have. My suspicion is that they were anticipating slightly fewer, but longer, trains.
I would imagine that when the news hits the people involved there are going to be quite a few unhappy London-Bridge-bound commuters arriving at Waterloo in the morning who were looking forward to this being over.
Re PoP,
The plan was 24tph with some stopping instead of 28tph…
Does that mean that anyone from Kent wanting to come into London on a weekday evening cannot alight at London Bridge at all, since Cannon Street trains will not stop at any time of day; and Charing Cross trains will not stop when heading up to London in the evening rush hour ? If so that is an issue that will quite a lot of travellers
“Does that mean that anyone from Kent wanting to come into London on a weekday evening cannot alight at London Bridge at all, since Cannon Street trains will not stop at any time of day; and Charing Cross trains will ”
It does, but they will be able to go back to London Bridge from Waterloo East (with a 50/50 chance of a cross platform connection). Likewise morning counterpeak travellers e.g London Bridge to Lewisham will be able to bounce back at Waterloo East.
Very convenient !
Please pardon my quibble, but the 50/50 chance is of an opportunity for a cross-platform connection (if you arrive at platform B); however the next train back to LBG may be from platform A, which would require running up and down the ramps. (Waiting on C may be best, though).
Oh dear. I know SE passenger benefit from more platforms in 2018, but there’s almost as many downsides, as not only short term. It seems Thameslink and Southern do so much better out of it. Maybe GN too.
Malcolm,
Whether the next arrival is at platform A or not is irrelevant in a way. If you arrive at platform B then cross platform interchange is possible. If you arrive at platform D it is not.
You could work out the chances of arriving at platform B and the next train departing from platform C but I suspect most people going to London Bridge would just wait for the next train from platform C if arriving at platform B.
timbeau,
Switched on people who are familiar with SouthEastern operations would realise straightaway that the chances of cross platform interchange would be less than 50%. This is because the shorter distance trains using platform B are more likely to be running out of service back to Charing Cross to pick up their next load of evening commuters. On longer distance trains generally using platform D there is considerably less benefit from doing this,
If you consider trains departing Waterloo East for Charing Cross after September between 16.30 and 18.00 then 15 use platform D and only 13 use platform B so, on that basis, you have a 46.4% chance of a cross-platform connection. In reality it will depend on your starting station so, for example, in practice it would be 100% from Hayes and 0% from Hastings.
Oh dear these are all very complicated calculations about nothing very important. The 50/50 figure may only apply, as PoP says, to someone who wishes to travel from somewhere in SE-land to London Bridge (at the relevant times) but intends to choose their starting station by drawing lots, and then proceeding to that station, which is not a practical proposition – apart from anything else they would be likely to miss rush hour if the wrong straw was drawn).
It would have been so much simpler if timbeau had said in his parentheses “(perhaps with a cross-platform connection)”. That might have kept the pedants (here I include myself) at bay, and allowed more interesting things to be discussed. Sometimes numbers are not helpful.
Malcolm,
Agree, but behind the figures is a bit of an insight as to how SouthEastern is operated. As far as I am aware, it is like no other for cleverly maximising capacity and effective use of rolling stock. At least, I can’t think of another complex network that employs so many little timetable and stock allocation tricks to maximise capacity.
By the way I think the point is missed about the contra-peak non-stopping at London Bridge. It is a mild inconvenience for someone coming up to town in the evening but it is quite likely they didn’t want to end up a London Bridge and an alternative route to their final destination is easily possible.
The people who are messed up by these non-stopping services are those coming in to Waterloo in the morning and continuing either to London Bridge as a destination or choosing to get to the city via London Bridge. They might not like the crowded Waterloo & City line or they could have a point-to-point season and it is valid to all south of London main line termini.
@pop
(100pc from Hayes, 0pc from Hastings)
And vice versa in the other direction, which evens things up a bit! As a Waterloo commuter who occasionally used the London Bridge/ Cannon Street (or City TL) route to avoid the rain, I would not appreciate a round trip to New Cross. There are also journeys like CX to Forest Hill which are very difficult without an interchange at LBG.
timbeau,
And vice versa in the other direction, which evens things up a bit!
But only if you are smart or knowledgeable enough to realise which train to catch at London Bridge to end up at platform B.
I do think the Forest Hill example is particularly bad. And, of course, it applies to all stations from New Cross Gate to Norwood Junction as well as some others. The problem is that you have a period of time in the morning when there are no trains to London Bridge from either Charing Cross or Cannon St. This might only affect relatively few people but I can understand people working in the Charing Cross area and finishing at night shift at around 8.00 a.m. being particularly peeved. You just want to go home to bed and you have to either face the Underground or a long walk (e.g. Monument to London Bridge). And then to add insult to injury, if you are on Pay as you go, they will charge you for the tube fare as you didn’t alight at Cannon Street and enter the main line station there!
@PoP
https://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/your-journey/about-thameslink-programme/ticket-acceptance/
Suggests you can travel on the tube to London Bridge from Charing Cross and then continue by NR without incurring a higher fare than NR all the way. Not sure how it works in practice.
(I wish I’d seen this yesterday, as it also suggests my point to point London terminals season would have been valid for the journey I made from Blackfriars to Charing Cross and back!)
It does work in practice. I have got on the district at embankment to blackfriars and changed to thameslink. I got charged as ifor I hadn’t used the tube. I have also had a refund on the rv1 when I used the train again within a week.
I have a Network Gold Card so I have been able to use the tube at Charing Cross to get to London Bridge for 18 months or however long it has been. But I have become rather bored of the roundabout journey, via Waterloo, and the long boring interchange to the Jubilee line. The other question has always been – “Will I make it to London Bridge in time to get up two flights of escalators and out to the concourse in time for my train to Brockley?” which has only been worsened by the new convoluted method of getting to the concourse! (However, the trains have been so often delayed or cancelled that the dash didn’t matter).
Unfortunately, it seems that I won’t be able to get a train from Charing Cross to London Bridge in the rush hour for another year then when I plan to get my haircut after work!
@Giovanni
“bored of the roundabout journey, via Waterloo,”
Could you not have gone via Cannon Street? Or, as the rules say you can enter or exit at any of those stations, there is probably little to stop you going from Embankment to London Bridge via Bank/Monument.
“it seems that I won’t be able to get a train from Charing Cross to London Bridge in the rush hour for another year…after work ”
As I understand it, after August it is only in the morning peaks (until 0917) that Charing Cross to London Bridge will still be impossible on South Eastern.
Tried Blackfriars/Embankment today. Annual paper ticket didn’t work the barriers at either end, but I was let through without even a raised eyebrow.
@timbeau
I didn’t think of going to Cannon Street but then, if I do that route, I have to wait for another departure to London Bridge. Somehow the Tube seems speedier plus if I know I will miss the NR train by the time I get to LB, I can just stay on the Jubilee to Canada Water and get the overground directly to my station. All those years of pondering alternatives have come in handy!
Eyebrows have never been raised at ticket gates when I’ve flashed the ticket. I presume Tube staff care not one jot if the person has a valid ticket once they’re in 🙂
@Giovanni
So does that mean the ticket gates have not been reprogrammed to take London terminals NR tickets, and you have to go through the manual process?
The gates do not need to be reprogrammed for Oyster/ bank card acceptance of course, as it’s a back office function – even if done in real time .
The small print about using bus/tube to get round these closuers on oyster PAYG says you get a refund of the excess bus/tube fares if you re-present your oyster card at London mainline station between 3 and 10 days after your journey. Fine for a commuter, but I bet many casual users won’t meet the exact terms. Another example of bad IT system design on oyster, they could have just charged you less to start with, or had the refund pending indefinitely.
http://www.southeasternrailway.co.uk/your-journey/about-thameslink-programme/ticket-acceptance/
@timbeau
There was a notice way back saying that you would have to take your gold card to a ticket office and it’ll be swapped for one that would work in ticket gates at the valid tube stations covering the London Bridge works programme, which I eventually did. Mine does indeed work at Charing Cross and Waterloo tube stations.
@John B
Note that the rules are quite strict – only certain routes and only between specific points. (How can they tell, as oyster doesn’t register where you get off a bus?)
Interestingly, the 17 is shown as usable between London Bridge and Blackfriars, but does not pass Blackfriars (It passes City TL).
Conversely, the map on Southern’s page shows the 15 and 521 serving Blackfriars but only lists the 15 as usable between London Bridge and Charing Cross, (despite the 15 not serving London Bridge station!) or between Cannon Street and Charing Cross, and the 521 between Cannon Street and Waterloo, and between Cannon Street and London Bridge. Again, neither the 15 nor the 521 normally serves Blackfriars anyway, but over the past month or so they have been diverted to do so, westbound only, because of roadworks elsewhere.
Once a month I go Orpington to Smithfield. Running the Hastings trains from CST has been handy as I can walk from there. Walking to WAE or LBG is a bit far, so I was hoping to get on a 521 from St Pauls for free, but I suspect the refund rules will defeat me.
Could you get on at City TL (Holborn Viaduct entrance, and valid on a London SR terminals ticket), get off at Blackfriars (south bank, you can walk through the train to save time if it’s not a 319 – especially easy if it’s a 700 – and walk down the road to Southwark for Waterloo East?
@ Giovanni – I would guess that the special replacement Gold Card magnetic ticket you received had a special “journey segment” encoded on it to allow operation at the defined LU stations. That works within the coding spec if my memory is working properly.
Mine was renewed in December. Would it have been a specially encoded one? Issued by SWT but, like all SWT seasons, valid to both Charing Cross and London Bridge (and Cannon Street, Blackfriars, City TL and Victoria). It works at all those NR stations, but didn’t work downstairs.
@ Timbeau – I have no way of knowing. I only paid scant attention to the ticketing tweaks for the London Bridge closure because I’m not really affected by it as I rarely use trains to / from / through London Bridge (thankfully!). I don’t know how widely the “tweak” would have been applied and whether it was only on request rather than “given to everyone” with a NR Terminals origin or destination on a season ticket.
@Timbeau
My friend got his first annual gold card from London Bridge NR in December and that one works just like mine on the specific tube stations permitted, without asking. So maybe SWT ticket staff didn’t do what Southern do automatically. Take it back!
AIUI all London terminals season tickets issued after about May last year were encoded to allow their use through the gates as allowed at the moment. There was no need to ask for it. Certainly my old gold card (issued by Abellio) worked and my monthly ticket (now issued by SouthEastern) works.
“get on at City TL, get off at Blackfriars (you can walk through the train to save time…. easy if it’s a 700”
having just conducted the experiment (well, it was there, I hadn’t been on a 700 before, but I didn’t really want to cross the river….) I can confirm that if the train isn’t busy it is possible to walk through at least eleven cars of a class 700 between “doors open” at City and “doors open” at Blackfriars.
As I was walking towards the back of the train, I actually alighted only about a train length from where I started!
Network Rail press release ahead of the opening of the first part of the lower concourse together with new platforms next Monday –
http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/sussex-one-week-countdown-at-london-bridge-as-the-thameslink-programme-prepares-to-open-first-section-of-new-concourse
Changes next week will see 3 new platforms opening and remaining platforms for rebuilding closing meaning no services to Cannon Street Station but re-instatement of services to Charing Cross .
With opening of a large part of the new lower concourse .
Interesting photo’s of the test event referred to in a post on the Diveunder thread. I’ve copied it here:-
https://imgur.com/a/m4DO0
I wonder if they had trouble getting enough people to give it a thorough test or if it really is so big that the people they had look lost in its vastness. I guess I’m not surprised that it looks only part finished with lots of missing panels. The more important immediate issue is that everything works as it should.
The platforms looked ordinary to me until I realised how wide they are. Of course they need to be wide to accommodate the twin escalators and stairs.
@ RayK – and presumably wide enough to cater for the vast hordes of people expected to either alight from long trains or be waiting to board them! The acid test will be how the new entry and egress arrangements to / from the through platforms are (a) configured [1] and (b) work with peak time crowds.
[1] in other words which escalators run up or down and whether the operators opt to have, say, three down in the AM peak and 1 up or do 2 and 2.
It seems to be working, a quick check this morning and my line at least is up and running without delays…
It now being nearly four years since I last caught a Charing Cross train in the rush hour, I’ll need to relearn the timetable!
Well I popped in this afternoon. Ended up walking round past the base of the Shard to reach the entrance. Yes it is impressively large inside and will clearly be vast when it’s all opened up in 2018. Obviously it was fairly quiet today so the few people milling around and catching trains were completely outnumbered by security personnel. I ended up feeling as if every security guard in London was in London Bridge station. Now either Network Rail have too much money or they had intelligence that the place was being targetted today. Quite unreal. As someone who rarely uses London Bridge tube or NR then I suspect my bearings were a little off kilter as I really couldn’t fathom how the “peak hour” arches are going to work or where they will end up (at the LU side).
Having seen a rather concerning report this morning about photography needing a “permit” I was pleasantly surprised to not be hassled and harrangued at concourse level. Regrettably I then decided to actually catch a train to Lewisham and see if I could get a snap at platform level. You guess what happened next – yep “you can’t take photos here” after I’d taken one. I won’t bore you all to death with the lengthy exchange that ensued. The security guard was perfectly polite but woefully misinformed.
Here are a few nuggets
1) the usual “you might be a terrorist doing reconnaissance”. Thanks for besmirching my character based on nothing whatsoever.
2) my camera could be confiscated by a security guard. No it cannot. That would be theft.
3) your photo might have locations of CCTV cameras on it. (Having checked there is not a single one in view).
4) he had no idea about Network Rail’s own guidelines about enthusiasts.
5) he had no idea about applicable legislation. The police no longer apply the dreaded Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. No one mentioned Section 43 nor “reasonable suspicion”. I should point out there were few, if any, police officers visible in the station.
6) and the classic line “this is what we were told in our training”. Sack the trainer!
Now I happen to know a wee bit about all this stuff having worked with BTP and others in the past so I’m not happy being spun “misinformation” (to put it politely). Why would a terrorist even wander round with a DSLR camera? They would collate their info in other ways so why target people who are obviously interested in the building for its architecture / design / transport purpose? I’d also add that if the relevant security people have done their job properly right throughout the design and later phases then there would be no gaps in security camera coverage nor opportunities to place devices or anything else. All this stuff is supposed to be designed out. So why worry about someone inadvertently snapping a CCTV camera lens?
Obviously it is for Network Rail to manage its properties but it is also for Network Rail to apply its own guidelines, to not operate double standards (seen other photos of the platforms today taken without any hassle from anyone) and to not put the back up of the general public. I’m sorry for this rant but if anyone senior from NR reads this I’d ask them to ask some questions about what the heck is going on. Let’s hope Crossrail don’t put us through anything like this when their new stations open! NR – your new station is duly impressive and you’re right to be proud of it and I hope it all beds down nicely for you but I’m not a happy bunny. I expect my photos of the new station area will be in the London Reconnections flickr group in a couple of days.
I don’t really want to drag out the photography issue yet again but in all probability the security guard is the one creating an offence by causing harassment, alarm or distress in a public place contrary to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. The definition of harassment is generally either pressurising you to do something that is not legal or (as in this case) pressurising you not to do something that is legal. If you get aggro just phone BT police (0800 40 50 40). Also if he is wearing his SIA badge on his arm (he should be) then take his number – he shouldn’t refuse. If he does that puts him even more in the wrong.
PoP
Thanks – to which, may I add, & quote – Andy Trotter, the ex-head of BTP who said, effectively that: “We welcome photographs & photographers – if anything does go wrong, we can ask them nicely for evidence …”
As a reminder, here is the Network Rail guidance for enthusiasts and presumably others when on stations, with especial reference to photography:
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/777.aspx