Why are the frequencies so poor on the NLL?

[Harlesden]

London Vs. The Real World....

A "complete pain" would be missing the last train and having no reasonable/obvious/affordable alternative. Only in the short sighted world of London would 6tph off peak, 8tph peak and a reasonable late night alternative be considered a poor service!

London is not only the capital city of this great country of ours, but it also has a population of over eight million people. This mass of people have a right to expect a good reliable frequent transport service. London is very much a 24 hour city and whereas we don't expect a 24 hour train service, we do expect late night services to run a half hour or so after midnight.

 

[Aictos]

London has a pretty good service 24/7 with the London Underground and Night Buses offering alternatives to National Rail services so I really fail to understand why the LOROL services ain't considered good enough.

Londoners should be happy with what they do have as they could be worser off!

 

[AndyLandy]

Only someone in London could describe 6 tph as a poor service!

Quoted for Truth.

(Of course, I understand the metro nature of the service, but hey, some of us have to put up with 1tph or worse on regional services)

 

[SouthStand]

Only someone in London could describe 6 tph as a poor service!

Yup, try living on the Joint Line. No service at all here on a Sunday, last service from Lincoln southbound to Peterborough leaves 16:00!

 

[SWT_USER]

Yup, try living on the Joint Line. No service at all here on a Sunday, last service from Lincoln southbound to Peterborough leaves 16:00!

Are you really comparing rural Lincolnshire with London? Poor comparison.

 

[tbtc]

London is very much a 24 hour city and whereas we don't expect a 24 hour train service, we do expect late night services to run a half hour or so after midnight

When do you expect engineering to be done?

 

[swt_passenger]

When do you expect engineering to be done?

Probably anytime they like except when he's travelling. It's all me, me, me these days isn't it...

 

[87015]

When do you expect engineering to be done?

That looks like a red herring (as it often is on mainlines which are open all night for freight anyway) - depending upon the section of line, it won't make any difference to engineering hours;

Stratford - Camden Rd only has standard engineering access 0010 to 0910 SUN
Camden Rd - Kensal Green has basically an 'add on' to the above so is no more restrictive. Saturday nights are obviously 'the' engineering night on the NLL which is most sensible as there is no / minimal freight traffic.

Got bored before looking west of Kensal Green, its here if anyone is *that* interested...! http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse documents/Rules Of The Route/EASyearXX/40eaXX.pdf

 

[RJ]

The North London Line is useful because orbital bus routes are something of a novelty in London. Most of the hundreds of bus routes radiate into Central London or serve to link residental areas to the nearest pair of town centres/railheads. Only around a dozen or so operate as lengthy trunk orbital services. There are even less routes that parallel railway lines during the day. One exception is route 345 which near parallels the SLL between Clapham Junction and Denmark Hill and unsurprisingly is a 24 hour route. The NLL isn't well covered by parallel bus services.

Yes, you can get almost anywhere in London with ease at night, but options are limited. If you want to get from Stratford to Camden or Highbury when the NLL is finished, you have to take two buses and a long diversion via Central London.

The other problem is that when capacity increases, the trains just fill up! Have a look at the Wimbledon to Waterloo corridor. The dynamics of that line are interesting, it is virtually physically impossible for the trains to run on time in the morning peak as the trains are rammed. They can't officially amend the schedules to account for the ever increasing dwell times - even an extra 10 seconds at each stop might cause a breach of the ROTP headways, necessitating removal of some services, which in turn might not be compliant with the franchise service level commitment. So the trains run late every single morning, but have quite a bit of slack at Vauxhall.

I even ran a perfunctory Monte Carlo Simulation based on LDB data for all 50 arrivals between 07:00 and 10:00 and found that a commuter travelling on routes involving that stretch of line should expect to be delayed on average by 3 minutes and 48 seconds into Waterloo . Everything they've tried is being trumped by suppressed demand - refurbishing the 455s, improving flow by removing seats and widening the vestibule and increasing the frequency of service. They're introducing 10 carriage trains, but it won't take long for those to fill up either! The only thing that hasn't been tried is improving the time it takes for the doors to be released - sometimes the train rolls in and it takes 10 seconds for this to happen, whereas it's more instantaneous on DOO-P services.

 

[455driver]

Londoners should be happy

You are dreaming arent you!

 

[Clip]

London is not only the capital city of this great country of ours, but it also has a population of over eight million people. This mass of people have a right to expect a good reliable frequent transport service. London is very much a 24 hour city and whereas we don't expect a 24 hour train service, we do expect late night services to run a half hour or so after midnight.

Well if your are just mentioning country then it is the only capital city of ours.


RJ you sure about having to central London from Stratford to Camden or such? Is there not interchange at the sdtow or even worse go out further north to come back down?

I'll check when on a proper computer

 

[RJ]

Well if your are just mentioning country then it is the only capital city of ours.


RJ you sure about having to central London from Stratford to Camden or such? Is there not interchange at the sdtow or even worse go out further north to come back down?

I'll check when on a proper computer

It's tricky. The N253 is an odd type of orbital night route that starts and finishes in Central London, serving Camden. It can be intercepted by using a N8 to Bethnal Green or 25 to Whitechapel, which is still a fair way into London. No direct night buses from Stratford to Hackney, Dalston or Highbury & Islington though!

 

[Clip]

Aye it involves a few changes if you want to avoid goingin towards the centre of town.

 

[Aictos]

You are dreaming arent you!

Of course,

 

[bb21]

Is there really a need for everywhere to have a direct link to everywhere else between 11pm and 1am?

 

[jon0844]

I do think that given pubs generally close at 11 (say 1120 after drink up time) and people might be out for a meal after a show etc - trains are likely to be well used right up to midnight and beyond.

Certainly, my last train at 0136 is usually well loaded every day of the week.

As mentioned above, many night buses don't replicate LO routes and so you might need to zig zag in or out of London to get around - which is going to seriously add to your travel time (bearing in mind a bus will already be a lot slower).

Many night buses follow tube lines - so there could be a case for introducing new night bus routes that follow the routes of LO, thus solving the problem?

 

[tbtc]

many night buses don't replicate LO routes and so you might need to zig zag in or out of London to get around - which is going to seriously add to your travel time (bearing in mind a bus will already be a lot slower).

Many night buses follow tube lines - so there could be a case for introducing new night bus routes that follow the routes of LO, thus solving the problem?

Once upon a time many Night Bus routes were there to duplicate the Underground (during the hours that it was shut down overnight).

In recent years the move seems to have been away from separate Night Bus services and towards 24hr services on normal routes. A good way of keeping things simple for passengers who should be able to trust the route a lot better?

BUT, there also seems to have been a move away from bus routes that "compete" with train routes, so that each means of transport concentrates on its own corridors. That means fewer buses after midnight (whether they are called Night Buses or not) parallel rail services.

 

[aag2110]

I live next to this line and use it frequently between Brondesbury and Stratford, which is about half the route, maybe a bit more, now as nice as it would be to have a frequency similar to the jubilee line just up the road at Kilburn, outisde of the peaks I don't think the NNL trains are that bad. I can normally get a seat, and if not I can get one after one or two stops.

The busiest bit is probably between Highbury + Islington and Stratford, and even then when we arrive at Stratford there is I reckon on average 4-8 people standing around each pair of doors off peak. Which is inevitable as the 378's arent designed with a lot of seating, and bearing in mind most of these people have probably been on the train for 15mins or less. Peak hours however is a different story, pretty much every train is rammed for most of the route.

Trains could definately do with running later into the night however, as has already been said buses don't really mirror this route at all. During the Olympics they ran later and they were pretty well used throughout not just full of people from Stratford!