Reducing train door closing time to 15 seconds

[hkstudent]

When you get on a Southeastern or Southwestern metro trains, they often utilise the full 30 seconds before departure to close the doors and often have lead to leaving the platform 15 seconds early. (If you look on RTT at Waterloo/London Bridge, often many of them are 1/4E departures)

Given the advance in door closing technology, there seems to be no need to have 30 seconds to close doors which at the end leads to waste of time in long dwelling at the next station early.

Of course, not to mention, seems the UK is the only county close the door before the scheduled departure time, at least not in EU, Japan, Taiwan or other east Asian countries. It is not a customer friendly approach.

 

[SynthD]

It’s useful padding, for those slower passengers. 15s is not enough for a family with a buggy.

 

[zwk500]

When you get on a Southeastern or Southwestern metro trains, they often utilise the full 30 seconds before departure to close the doors and often have lead to leaving the platform 15 seconds early. (If you look on RTT at Waterloo/London Bridge, often many of them are 1/4E departures)

Given the advance in door closing technology, there seems to be no need to have 30 seconds to close doors which at the end leads to waste of time in long dwelling at the next station early.

At the moment, the timetable is planned in 30 second blocks, so reductions by 15 seconds cannot be timetabled. Advertising for passengers to arrive in good time for their scheduled departures is a reasonable compromise.

Of course, not to mention, seems the UK is the only county close the door before the scheduled departure time, at least not in EU, Japan, Taiwan or other east Asian countries. It is not a customer friendly approach.

The GB network could put the public time back by 1 minute (and does in places) to remove this issue but it would take a vast amount of work for every single stop to be set and then checked whenever any alterations come up. You would also have issues with needing to advertise arrivals before they actually did arrive so that you could advertise the departures earlier.