Busiest times

[Deleted]

Lately I'm starting to think that there is someone at TfL who intentionally tried to destroy all effectiveness of their service status information

Passengers (sorry, customers) are bombarded with information ranging from useless (asking people to stand away from the PEDs) to moronic (station announcements about which line the next train is on and what the next station will be when the station is served by the same line and the next station hasn’t changed for over a century).

But the latest example is truly outstanding: the busiest time information in electronic TfL data. A couple of months ago TfL started adding information about the busiest times at certain central stations to the list of station disruptions.

It was easy to ignore while it was only for the major stations - like King’s Cross or Bank. But from the last week that information was expanded rather dramatically - so now to check for genuine station disruptions people have to scroll through the massive list of stations vast majority of which are not disrupted at all, and real disruptions are effectively drowned in the vast sea of pointless information. And yes, pointless - as all regular commuters will know it already, tourists will ignore it, and business travellers will have to travel anyway…

Do people really need to see busiest times at Amersham, Swiss Cottage, Regent’s Park, or Roding Valley at all times? All of this dross is replaced by common sense - virtually all of the busiest periods listed are during peak hours!
And useful things like broken escalators, non functioning lifts, closed entrances - are all lost.

Who is the genius behind this madness?

[Chris M]

It also says "this journey has additional information" whenever you plan a journey - although quite what relevance the fact that commuter stations are busiest before 9am has to a journey happening in the early afternoon is beyond me.

[theblackferret]

I always found, and it's still the case now I'm retired, that if you want to be sure of reaching your destination on time, allow twice the time it says it should take & you won't go far wrong.

All the info you need on top of that is major problems ie scheduled bus replacement weekends or signal failure at station X, so severe delays are occurring on Y Line services, regardless of whether that affects your line, because of knock-on effects.

If they care to add something useful to the additional information, like the best curry house nearest to Embankment, a decent pub in the immediate environs of Turnpike lane, or Tfl's hot tips for the 3:45 at Uttoxeter, then, fine, go ahead.

Otherwise, butt out!

[John Tuthill]

Apr 19, 2016 13:41:13 GMT futurix said:

Lately I'm starting to think that there is someone at TfL who intentionally tried to destroy all effectiveness of their service status information

Passengers (sorry, customers) are bombarded with information ranging from useless (asking people to stand away from the PEDs) to moronic (station announcements about which line the next train is on and what the next station will be when the station is served by the same line and the next station hasn’t changed for over a century).

But the latest example is truly outstanding: the busiest time information in electronic TfL data. A couple of months ago TfL started adding information about the busiest times at certain central stations to the list of station disruptions.

It was easy to ignore while it was only for the major stations - like King’s Cross or Bank. But from the last week that information was expanded rather dramatically - so now to check for genuine station disruptions people have to scroll through the massive list of stations vast majority of which are not disrupted at all, and real disruptions are effectively drowned in the vast sea of pointless information. And yes, pointless - as all regular commuters will know it already, tourists will ignore it, and business travellers will have to travel anyway…

Do people really need to see busiest times at Amersham, Swiss Cottage, Regent’s Park, or Roding Valley at all times? All of this dross is replaced by common sense - virtually all of the busiest periods listed are during peak hours!
And useful things like broken escalators, non functioning lifts, closed entrances - are all lost.

Who is the genius behind this madness?

It's an electronic variation of Parkinson's Law to keep the knobheads at TFL gainfully employed

[Deleted]

The information given for Highbury & Islington is also wrong. It tells us that one of the two gatelines has been closed and that isn't true and it's confusing people.

[will]

The whole station information board is pointless as often a station is closed like London Bridge is closed and the information is buried under Chesham a station that almost has its own fare zone might be busy in the morning rather than it being at the top. They could also do with adding more features to the maps as you used to be able to turn off the line view of Minor/Severe and Suspended delays whereas now the maps only show Severe or worse. They also used to have the ability to show station disruptions like lifts and escalators out of service. It seems common sense was lost when the new website came in . It seems TFL is getting progressively worse information wise always now providing far too much.