| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Reply | |
| Posted by: | Mark Evans | |
| Date/Time: | 21/08/25 12:13:00 |
| The facts are indeed straightforward, Chiswick does seem to be a black hole in terms of accessibility. While you can describe the idea that this is down to political consideration speculative, your own view that station priority for upgrade is driven solely by usage stats doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. Kew Bridge would be step free by now if this was the case based on the numbers you supplied earlier. On Turnham Green the off-peak schedule for the Piccadilly line starts to operate on the western stretch of the line at 8:30pm and continues to aim to deliver around 21 trains an hour until 11pm. (Overall network data suggests it is probably 18 or 19 in practice). That means that there are the same amount of trains going through Turnham Green for two hours before they start stopping and it is not accurate to say that the commencement of stopping at 10:30pm is because there are fewer trains on the line at that time. I was on a Piccadilly line train after 10:30pm earlier this week and timed it at just over 5 minutes from Hammersmith departure to Turnham Green departure. As I understand it there are two signalling blocks between Hammersmith and Turnham Green where trains can be held, so more than one train could depart from Hammersmith before the train in front had left Turnham Green. If the gap in the service is three minutes, then under normal circumstances there would be only one train needing to leave Hammersmith before the front train departed TG. Although we have to accept that a full service won't be possible until the signal upgrade takes place (which may never happen), there will be new rail stock arriving sometime in the next few years. This brings both extra capacity and improved braking and acceleration. These are only very marginal improvements compared to what signalling will deliver but that should allow marginal improvements to services to Turnham Green. I'm well aware that generations of politicians from all parties have tried and failed to make progress on this issue. As with step free access this may be, not that improvement of the service is an impossible dream, but rather because they lobby less hard for stations which are on the edge of their constituencies. |