London Overground station improvements
Friday's premature adulation of Homerton station has become not one but five near-identical press releases, covering:
- Homerton
- Hatch
HillEnd - Canonbury, Upper Holloway and Caledonian Road & Barnsbury
- Brondesbury Park and Kensal Rise
- Kentish Town West, Finchley Road & Frognal and Kilburn High Road
stations have been thoroughly cleaned and re-painted. The existing equipment including the public announcement and CCTV systems, information screens and lights have also been checked and repaired where necessary.So no upgrades yet, just cleaning and repairs. Exactly what I found at Homerton.
(If, like me, you're wondering why they're announcing this now rather than waiting until all the stations are finished - most are coming along nicely - it seems this was an incoherent attempt to mark the 6 month anniversary of Overground, which was a week ago. Well done TfL press office)
8 comments:
You know, as well as with the improvements to the tube, I've found the improvements that TfL is making to be subtle, but noticeable. Trains are a little bit smoother, the stations are at least safe, and the service is steadier (though not up to standard yet). That, at least, is worthy of some adulation, though, I still believe they should have gone with a hard launch in 2010.
"TfL is investing £1.4bn in London Overground including the extension and conversion of the former East London Underground line to national rail."
Seems a bit sly. How much are they spending on London Overground not including the massive East London Extension project?
As someone who lives south of the river it is great to think that maybe our local trains could be improved too. It shows that national rail is not a good runner of inner London railways. The former North London Line is clearly much improved by being taken over by tfl.
Secretlondon raises a very good point. As a Watford-Euston DC line user, I'm less than impressed at the small proportion of the much-trumpeted £1.4 billion being spent on the DC line bit of London Overground.
The lick of paint along the DC line is long overdue, and the new trains will be lovely, but there are still only going to be three an hour Mondays to Saturdays daytime, decreasing to two an hour in the evenings and all day Sundays.
For DC line users, repeated blurbery about 'massive investment' is something of an over-statement...
I think Ken has an election promise to increase the service on the DC line, and the Bakerloo re-extension might still happen.
The ELL is £800m and the core NLL rebuild is something like £400m, which doesn't leave much for general improvements.
It doesn't help that the DC line stations which transferred to LUL haven't had much done to them yet, when compared to Lorol operated stations.
DC line frequency increases to 3 trains per hour all day Mon-Sat when the May-Dec timetable is introduced next month. Still not enough in my view, but an improvement nonetheless. There was a Lorol application for this service increase on Network Rail's website a few months ago, but it seems to have disappeared. However details of this increase do appear in the May 2008 timetables: http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/4178.aspx
Details on next month's Watford-Euston DC service increase are now available from the ORR: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1258
"DC line frequency increases to 3 trains per hour all day Mon-Sat when the May-Dec timetable is introduced next month."
Er, Al - it's been three trains an hour Mon-Sat for the past thirty years. Even the timings are identical in the forthcoming May timetable.
From the May timetable change, the twenty-minute frequency (Euston - Watford) will continue to the end of service on Monday to Saturdays instead of reducing to thirty-minute frequency at around 21.00 hours.
JJBone
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