Comments on: Breaking News: rail stuff-up

By: dc

dc — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:33:07 +0000

The thing about the piccadilly line is, if you look at the map, it’s routes are pretty well covered by all the other lines. Through the central zones it’s just adding more capacity and convenience of no change for a few point to point links.

So covent garden to south kengsington for example ( 2 shopping districts i picked at random)it’s 6 stops on the piccadilly, or if that was closed a 200m walk to leister square and 7 stops on the northen and circle/district line with a change at embankment. Not the end of the world as, unlike auckland, you’ll only be waiting a couple of mins for the change maybe 10 mins extra overall ( 5 mins for the walk, 3 mins for the wait, 2 mins for the extra stop).

And rail replacement busses will work pretty well for the outer zones.

the advantage of having such a dense and overlappting PT network. Something auckland can only acheive with busses, bring back the trams i say!

By: admin

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:08:19 +0000

I have heard the Piccadilly Line being called London’s central artery on the weekends. It links a lot of shopping areas, a lot of football stadiums, and generally a lot of places that people travel to on the weekend.

There has actually been a lot of annoyance with the disruption to London’s underground as part of their upgrades (ha, they think they’ve got it bad, they should come here!) I think a formal inquiry looked into how things could be improved, and how Madrid managed to run normal services while doing similar improvements.

By: dan carter

dan carter — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:00:51 +0000

london is a good example, they are delivering a massive amount of change with minimal disruption on most lines. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/10127.aspx. On the victoria line they replaced the track and signalling in the central section by closing the line at 10pm on week days.

The east london line closure is for a long time, but they are changing it from an underground line to overground mainline standards, so you couldn’t run trains along it even if you did stop work during the day. The new line is also about 4 times bigger than the old line, so it’s a massive piece of work compared to just opening a new station. As for testing, they have been running test trains on completed sections for 6 months before it opens.

Also, why can’t they close down the piccadilly line at weekends? generally they’ll only close the sections they are working on each weekend, and lay on a replacement bus service. Worked OK when they closed the heathrow section to extend it to terminal 5.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:57:26 +0000

Yeah London’s going to have fun when they resignal the Piccadilly Line. They can’t really close that line down at weekends, like they’ve done with others such as the Jubilee Line.

By: obi

obi — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:23:01 +0000

It all depends on how much you want to spend. If you have a system that runs between, say, 5am and 1am then you only have 4 hours to shut down the system, work on it, then restart the system. That means 2 hours working time available in the middle of the night when you need to pay at least double time to get workers out of their beds. Projects can drag on for years and cost a fortune.
Depending on the amount of passengers using the line, it might be cheaper to shut it for a period and lay on replacement buses. And if it is cheaper, then it is easier to justify and therefore more likely to happen.
You couldn’t do this for the LU Central Line, but it probably isn’t a problem in Auckland. Especially in January when most normal people are at the beach.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:50:41 +0000

Ah yes perhaps London is not the best example. Madrid is an interesting one though, as they have managed to completely resignal Metro lines while keeping the trains running on normal timetables. Pretty impressive.

By: obi

obi — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:25:28 +0000

Admin: “Overseas cities such as London and Madrid completely rebuild lines and signalling systems without any closedown”

You’ve not ever heard of the East London Line then. All (or most?) of it was shut between 1995 and 1998, and since 2007 for upgrades.

By: Matt L

Matt L — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:39:04 +0000

Chris – I would have also been keen to see a longer period of shutdown but get all the work sorted approach but I think we are to far down the track (excuse the pun) now. This would have been something worthwhile when we started project dart, in a way it is the same analogy as taking off a sticking plaster, you can do if fast with a little bit of pain that quickly goes away or you can slowly tear it off and feel that pain for longer. I imagine the hardest thing with any infrastructure project is trying to do the work while also having to maintain existing services of some kind.

In NZ it seems all to common that we get concerned with creating a to big of an inconvenience some people for a few months but are happy to subject them to smaller inconveniences for years instead. In the case of the Western line, I wonder how many people we have scared off ever using the train again after all the faults and issues we have had related to duplication.

The only thing I can think is that any new rail lines in Auckland should be easier as we won’t have to work in with existing services apart from where they join the existing network.

By: sj

sj — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:59:58 +0000

There are often delays and disruptions on the roads. Remember Greenlane intersection? I think that project was finished about nine months later than it was supposed to be, and the cost exceeded the budget by millions.

The officials who run the roads are just as incompetent as those who run our public transport!

By: Chris R

Chris R — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:07:29 +0000

I have long been an advocate of a 3-6 month shutdown to get ALL the track/signalling issues resolved!