TfL Metronisation

[ashsha1]

Hi All,

Another video I found on youTube about the metronisation of the railways in South and South East London. Looks rather interesting but I doubt anything will get done sadly! Worth a watch though! (ps. hope this is the right page to post!)

Enjoy!

 

[ComUtoR]

Boris never truly understood it. Sadiq Khan doesn't either. TBH its a power grab and nothing more. Hopefully it never happens.

 

[markymark2000]

Boris never truly understood it. Sadiq Khan doesn't either. TBH its a power grab and nothing more. Hopefully it never happens.

100% agree. Same with most of the mayors wanting rail control. It ends up becoming a political football with service enhancements and quality. Don't get me wrong, the pre 2018 Overground works really well and I couldn't imagine it being ran any other way. The Anglia lines (and Romford-Upminster shuttle) expansion made no sense though and should have been kept by GA.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

100% agree. Same with most of the mayors wanting rail control. It ends up becoming a political football with service enhancements and quality. Don't get me wrong, the pre 2018 Overground works really well and I couldn't imagine it being ran any other way. The Anglia lines (and Romford-Upminster shuttle) expansion made no sense though and should have been kept by GA.

I agree.

 

[tetudo boy]

Boris never truly understood it. Sadiq Khan doesn't either. TBH its a power grab and nothing more. Hopefully it never happens.

Yeah, but what if it did happen? Passengers would benefit from this and get quite a good service, especially those in the southeast area.

 

[swt_passenger]

Yeah, but what if it did happen? Passengers would benefit from this and get quite a good service, especially those in the southeast area.

No they wouldn’t automatically “get a good service”. The tracks are already completely full of trains running at maximum possible length. One of TfL’s preferred options was to rationalise service patterns, removing choice of London terminal for many origins. Passengers saw this as a massive downgrade.

They took all the low hanging fruit with the NLL, WLL, ELL and DC. Similar improvements elsewhere are not anything like so straightforward.

 

[tetudo boy]

No they wouldn’t automatically “get a good service”. The tracks are already completely full of trains running at maximum possible length. One of TfL’s preferred options was to rationalise service patterns, removing choice of London terminal for many origins. Passengers saw this as a massive downgrade.

They took all the low hanging fruit with the NLL, WLL, ELL and DC. Similar improvements elsewhere are not anything like so straightforward.

Um, then... what if they replaced the services with whatever operator TfL were going to use? That would be pretty handy in my view.

 

[D365]

Um, then... what if they replaced the services with whatever operator TfL were going to use? That would be pretty handy in my view.

I don't understand what your proposal here is.

 

[pdeaves]

Um, then... what if they replaced the services with whatever operator TfL were going to use? That would be pretty handy in my view.

Remember that much of the SE London service interworks with Kent. Separating them will be a massive headache and create exactly the type of inefficiency the rest of the industry and DfT want to remove.

 

[tetudo boy]

I don't understand what your proposal here is.

You see, if a line or service was going to be metronised, it would have a lack of paths to introduce new services running on existing services, so replacing the services with more reliable metronised services would be the solution!

 

[telstarbox]

100 years ago:

TfL to take over most, if not all London suburban services

Embattled commuters should finally get more frequent and reliable train services after Transport for London confirmed today it would take control of the capital's suburban rail network. The long-running campaign to persuade ministers to devolve powers over services should increase capacity...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[swt_passenger]

You see, if a line or service was going to be metronised, it would have a lack of paths to introduce new services running on existing services, so replacing the services with more reliable metronised services would be the solution!

Metronised and metronisation (thread title) must be completely made up words, surely?

 

[causton]

You see, if a line or service was going to be metronised, it would have a lack of paths to introduce new services running on existing services, so replacing the services with more reliable metronised services would be the solution!

What do you mean by "metronised"? Just because you come up with a nice-sounding word doesn't change the laws of physics, the tracks are full up as it is as any improvements that could have been made have already happened.

What specifically would you want to see from TfL taking over these lines in terms of train service improvements? More frequency, longer trains?

 

[NorthKent1989]

It looks good on paper but in practice it probably wouldn’t work.

For starters TfL has no money and what with everything going on in terms of Covid-19 and Lockdown I can’t see the Overground expanding for the foreseeable future - if ever at this rate! A lot of things will be delayed if not postponed.

A lot of the metro routes intersect with outer surburban services in SE London as well, hence why the Gillingham via Woolwich service was binned off to Thameslink because it was partly to separate the outer suburban routes from the metro inners in the event of a TfL takeover however according this proposal it would involve an awful lot of services terminating at Dartford, which will still leave the Gravesend service with SouthEastern by the looks of things.

Another thing is that large parts of South and South East London stations have access to at least two London terminals, usually a West End terminal and a City terminal, and it’s three terminals if your on the Bexleyheath and Woolwich lines, the only exceptions to this is the Penge East line which only has Victoria (with peaks to and from Blackfriars but that doesn’t count) TfL’s idea was to have “one line one terminal” and this did not go down too well with commuters who have been used to having two or three options.

A part of me wishes TfL could takeover suburban services but I don’t think slapping the TfL roundel on trains is going to solve anything, in fact by the looks of the plans it looks downright confusing.

Thanks for posting the videos though.

 

[London Trains]

There is no way that it would work, for many reasons:

First, on the Southern and Southeastern networks, a lot of the Metro interworks with the longer distance services so TfL operating the metro would mess up all the stock allocations and timetables.

Any takeover of Thameslink services would not work since a mix of stock and operators through the Thameslink core would clearly not work.

There are also a lot of problems with the rerouting of some of the Southern services. It is better Beckenham Junction services go to London Bridge as they already have faster Victoria services. Sutton to London Bridge via Tulse Hill is also a tediously long route and Epsom to London Bridge via West Croydon (became all day in May 2018 - probably after the presentation was made so it is not shown) is the only good route for Sutton to London Bridge. Balham grade separation is nearly impossible and would be so expensive to implement and would cause so many Victoria blockades. The idea of terminating platforms at Wallington would not work either as there isn't any space as far as I can tell. Some of the frequency increases would also be near impossible to implement.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

Grade seperation at Balham gives me the chills, how the hell will they do that?

 

[Hadders]

TfL is as good as bust. No way is this going to happen.

 

[Antman]

Interesting videos but it all rather sounds like a money no object scheme an enthusiast with too much time on their hands has dreamed up.

 

[Antman]

There are also a lot of problems with the rerouting of some of the Southern services. It is better Beckenham Junction services go to London Bridge as they already have faster Victoria services.

I'd rather have a Victoria service giving a direct link between Beckenham Junction and Clapham Junction, useful for orbital journeys.

 

[30907]

I'd rather have a Victoria service giving a direct link between Beckenham Junction and Clapham Junction, useful for orbital journeys.

One problem is that Beckenham Jn can only handle 8-car trains and Victoria suburbans need 10.

 

[Energy]

Interesting videos but it all rather sounds like a money no object scheme an enthusiast with too much time on their hands has dreamed up.

I don't think TfL has enough money for this proposed taking over of services assuming they buy it of network rail (they have already done a lease back deal on the 345s to fund the new siemens tube trains). If they don't and just take over the branding of the services and contract the running out (London Overground) then they could probably do it.

 

[Metal_gee_man]

I think extentions of the Overground could be achievable because of some of the daft/impractical services run by Southern and SouthEastern

Bromley North to Grove Park is a contender
Beckenham Junction to London Bridge (Via Crystal Palace) as well.

But there are some crazy services that seemingly travel A to B via the rest of the alphabet that could be better served into a cohesive Overground network

 

[Railwaysceptic]

I think extentions of the Overground could be achievable because of some of the daft/impractical services run by Southern and SouthEastern

Bromley North to Grove Park is a contender
Beckenham Junction to London Bridge (Via Crystal Palace) as well.

But there are some crazy services that seemingly travel A to B via the rest of the alphabet that could be better served into a cohesive Overground network

What do you think that London Overground could do with the Bromley North to Grove Park service? The route from Grove Park towards central London has no spare capacity at peak periods.

 

[Metal_gee_man]

I propose they extend it to New Cross then into the existing OG network in the same way that some will branch off at New Cross down to Bromley North.
I know it'll be tough to find paths during rush hour but we are talking about a few miles in the Grove Park - New Cross corridor

 

[telstarbox]

Show us the paths then

 

[causton]

Surely doesn't matter if it's "a few miles" or a hundred metres, if there's no room there's no room!

 

[30907]

I propose they extend it to New Cross then into the existing OG network in the same way that some will branch off at New Cross down to Bromley North.
I know it'll be tough to find paths during rush hour but we are talking about a few miles in the Grove Park - New Cross corridor

Simple: the Bakerloo takes over the Hayes branch, you recast the SE timetable to match LO's 15min frequency, and build a new connection at New Cross (with a new LO platform on it). Not going to happen, sorry.
Two other minor issues: the ELL is already approaching capacity AIUI, so extra trains through Peckham Rye may not be possible; LO operate 5-car trains which are not a good use of capacity on busy main lines (just about tolerable on the Local lines through New Cross Gate but that's all).

 

[cle]

Lewisham is tricky, and half of the Hayes avoid it. If NX was extended, yes Bromley North looks good on the map - and it would be amazing in theory - but DLR studies have been there before though.

I'd say if anything, a short ELL extension through Lewisham to the disused platform at Blackheath might be squeezable with a recast - and nothing going from Blackheath to Charlton (and Victorias all via Sidcup/to Hayes as planned).

But New Cross is useful, it's a short turn back into the core (good for stock utilization and capacity) - 4tph relatively quiet trains rock at Surrey Quays, and give the escalators at Canada Water a breather! Not to be under-estimated

 

[matt_world2004]

Simple: the Bakerloo takes over the Hayes branch, you recast the SE timetable to match LO's 15min frequency, and build a new connection at New Cross (with a new LO platform on it). Not going to happen, sorry.
Two other minor issues: the ELL is already approaching capacity AIUI, so extra trains through Peckham Rye may not be possible; LO operate 5-car trains which are not a good use of capacity on busy main lines (just about tolerable on the Local lines through New Cross Gate but that's all).

Bakerloo not going to take over the Hayes branch anymore given tfls financial state

 

[30907]

Bakerloo not going to take over the Hayes branch anymore given tfls financial state

Do you have a source for that, or are you just speculating (appropriate for this forum of course!)