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Post by A60stock on Nov 23, 2023 15:07:25 GMT
Re-opening an age old question here but but would TFL consider bringing back off peak fasts or at least semi fasts?
I understood that the fasts were almost empty off peak but surely the semi fasts between Harrow and Finchley Road would justify some sort of demand and by making the Amersham/Chesham trains Semi fast, you would only lose 4tph on the slows and still have 12tph serving Northwick Park, Preston Road and Wembley Park (Southbound only at Wembley, Northbound still call all day), which already has a sufficient Jubilee service?
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londoner
thinking on '73 stock
Posts: 478 
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Post by londoner on Nov 23, 2023 15:40:04 GMT
There has been a lot of development in and around Wembley Park that even off-peak probably gets a lot of demand. Northwick Park is also used for the hospital, so I am not sure I'd want services to that station to be reduced.
I think the Chiltern services are adequate off-peak.
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Post by notverydeep on Nov 23, 2023 17:13:41 GMT
Only 4.3% of Metropolitan line weekday off peak journeys are between origin destination pairs where fast or semi fast trains would be of benefit.
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Post by burkitt on Nov 23, 2023 17:17:30 GMT
That's the case at the moment, but the question is whether providing fast services would grow that market?
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Post by brigham on Nov 24, 2023 8:28:57 GMT
Ideally, the MET needs to be in a position to COMPETE with the Chilterns. At the moment, it lags behind in both timings and on-train facilities.
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Post by 35b on Nov 24, 2023 10:43:09 GMT
Only 4.3% of Metropolitan line weekday off peak journeys are between origin destination pairs where fast or semi fast trains would be of benefit. How does that correlate to train mileage? I’d expect the impact to be concentrated at relatively few stations, but then be particularly important to those travellers and therefore have more impact on demand. At the same time, I would then question the demand sensitivity for those fast trains. When timetables changed, what demand was lost? |
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Post by d7666 on Nov 24, 2023 13:28:08 GMT
Ideally, the MET needs to be in a position to COMPETE with the Chilterns. At the moment, it lags behind in both timings and on-train facilities. w.r.t. timings (and hence speed and in turn paths) I dis-agree with that. On a congested railway every path counts. Optimised capacity requires all trains to run as far as practical at similar speeds, with similar point to point timings, with similar station start to stop times, similar station dwell times, and similar acceleration and braking profiles. Do anything else and you get "white space" in the train graph and that helps neither operators or customers. The common Met + Chiltern set up we have now already eats into capacity, it reduces it, not increases it, and this won't change much with CBTC; indeed while a Met train under in ATO might do A to B in less time, a Chiltern train will stay the same, the white space gap gets bigger, that is all. Even the low number of Chiltern trains c.f. Met trains and Chilterns not running the full same length of infrastructure as Met trains does impose maximum headway capacity constraints and conflicts on the Met, locally and knock on effect elsewhere. If one needs an (not quite the same) example of this, research why Thameslink is all 700s with exactly consistent profiles be they 12 or 8 car sets, and why nothing else is allowed through the core. It won't work the moment you have differing profiles introducing white space. I am pretty sure the good burghers of Buckingshire would prefer to have an even interval pattern of consistent trains irrespective of operator rather than a hotch potch. Far from competing, they need to cooperate. On train facilities are a different issue that I am not going into. |
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Post by andypurk on Nov 25, 2023 2:04:40 GMT
In addition as there are common fares, there is no financial reason for the Met line services to run fast as the Chiltern revenue is shared. The time savings for a semi-fast service would be pretty minimal if serving Wembley Park and people do change to/from the Jubilee throughout the day which is more difficult from the fast platforms at Wembley. Not all journeys are to/from Central London.
CBTC will probably improve the running times south of Harrow once it reaches that far, meaning less case for semi-fast off-peak trains.
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Post by A60stock on Nov 26, 2023 23:14:05 GMT
A train every 5 minutes seems sufficient off peak for stations between Harrow And Finchley Road?
Perhaps omit Wembley as a stop entirely off peak asides from all stations trains? If you miss your train to Wembley from either the northern section or central london, the next one is 5 mins away. Or when CBTC comes in, increase the total tph across the line from the current 16 as there will be more capacity and you can add extra semi fasts or even fasts.
The infrastructure of the met was built FOR fast and semi fasts and should be used for that purpose all day, at least for semi fasts, instead of having it lie unused most of the time. The met ran this way for decades and decades until Dec 2011 and it worked fine?
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Post by spsmiler on Nov 26, 2023 23:50:55 GMT
Indeed, with all off-peak Met trains being all-stations and line speed limits lower than they used to be the present-day timetable almost negates the cost : benefit value of the funds spent four tracking Harrow - Moor Park.
It does not help that BR services no longer run beyond Aylesbury Park, but that is a different story.
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Post by jimbo on Nov 26, 2023 23:58:05 GMT
Wasn't the four-tracking intended to separate the electric and steam services with their different performance characteristics? Wouldn't have been necessary today.
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Post by andypurk on Nov 27, 2023 11:26:21 GMT
A train every 5 minutes seems sufficient off peak for stations between Harrow And Finchley Road? Perhaps omit Wembley as a stop entirely off peak asides from all stations trains? If you miss your train to Wembley from either the northern section or central london, the next one is 5 mins away. Or when CBTC comes in, increase the total tph across the line from the current 16 as there will be more capacity and you can add extra semi fasts or even fasts. The infrastructure of the met was built FOR fast and semi fasts and should be used for that purpose all day, at least for semi fasts, instead of having it lie unused most of the time. The met ran this way for decades and decades until Dec 2011 and it worked fine? The infrastructure may have been (re)built for fast services, but when used off-peak there were mostly only the two Met trains to Amersham and two Chiltern trains per hour using it. The fast lines are still used by the Chiltern services and there have always been many more peak services using it for which capacity wouldn't exist otherwise. Any Fast services would only really be for the benefit of passengers outside London and to the detriment of those inside. Passengers to/from Chesham and stations south to Moor Park have already got a better off-peak service than they used to have. As has already been said, Wembley is much busier now than it was in the past; skipping the stop there means passengers may need to make two changes. Even retaining the stop on Fast/Semi-Fast means using the bridge for interchange to the Jubilee at Wembley Park which is likely to lose a chunk of the time gained on a semi-fast train. |
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Post by goldenarrow on Nov 27, 2023 15:31:08 GMT
Ironically, in the short term, there is a prospect of semi-fast running returning in the northbound direction due to the Harrow ‘hot weather’ plan. Due to a lowering of the critical rail temperature threshold for the points with movable angles, it is now in operation for up to 4-5 months. It’s proving increasingly difficult to run the entire service without cancellations or a degree of planned disruption because of the ad-hoc nature of interventions to make the best use of northbound platforms at Harrow.
As articulated above, the very existence of the fast, local and main lines on the Met are largely the product of historical factors, most of which do not apply to today’s railway. The current use of meeting the lines’ intensely concentrated demand in the peaks, during Wembley events and aiding service recovery reflects the current demands of the line, off-peak at least, well enough.
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Post by greggygreggygreg on Nov 27, 2023 17:08:10 GMT
Ideally, the MET needs to be in a position to COMPETE with the Chilterns. At the moment, it lags behind in both timings and on-train facilities. Why does it need to compete? It doesn't make sense for taxpayer-funded services to compete with taxpayer funded services to compete with each other, where tickets are all interavailable, especially when it will result in a worse service for the passenger and taxpayer |
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Post by notverydeep on Nov 27, 2023 18:01:59 GMT
Only 4.3% of Metropolitan line weekday off peak journeys are between origin destination pairs where fast or semi fast trains would be of benefit. How does that correlate to train mileage? I’d expect the impact to be concentrated at relatively few stations, but then be particularly important to those travellers and therefore have more impact on demand. At the same time, I would then question the demand sensitivity for those fast trains. When timetables changed, what demand was lost? Looking at off peak passenger numbers from 2011 and 2022 shows that for journeys where a fast train would be useful, demand increased by 13%. For journeys where the frequency increased as a consequence of the removal of fast trains (Wembley Park, Preston Road, Northwick Park, West Harrow to Uxbridge inclusive and North Harrow to Northwood) demand increased by 24% (bear in mind this group was already ten times larger than the first group). Across the rest of the line demand increased by 26%. The removal of fast trains did not have a large impact on train kilometrage as what was previously a 16 trains per hour (tph) service north Baker Street consisting of 6 tph to Uxbridge, 6 tph to Watford and 4 tph to Amersham (2 tph were diverted to Chesham the year before off peak trains ceased to run 'fast') became 8 tph to Uxbridge, 4 tph Watford, 2 tph Amersham and 2 tph Chesham. It appears that the change has led to lower growth for journeys where fast trains would be useful, but it is also likely that other factors have also influenced these passenger numbers, not least the wider population, the economy and the pandemic, but also other changes to the service. The former off peak fast service terminated at Baker Street, but the replacement all stations services extend to Aldgate. The number of through off peak trains to Aldgate has also increased. In 2011, Chesham had only just gained an all day through service. All stations services are now faster than they were in 2011 following increased speeds from signalling changes, use of the 'D Stock' acceleration profile on non-CBTC sections and the speed increase to 60 mph - though of course fast trains would have been accelerated also. Off peak demand on the Metropolitan line overall remains around 11% below the pre-pandemic level in 2019, but is higher than pre-pandemic levels at weekends... |
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Post by spsmiler on Nov 28, 2023 12:42:53 GMT
Had Beeching not closed the GC route there would probably have been more BR (Chiltern etc) trains using the London Underground fast tracks, even if only for semi-fast services to Nottingham (etc) whilst the crack expresses would have continued to travel via the New North Main Line.
In the present era the planned reopening of the East - West (Oxford - Cambridge) service is just one aspect of a wider range of planned enhancements and whilst the Oxford - Cambridge services will not use any of the LUL tracks it might be that other services travel this way.
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gefw
Gone - but still interested
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Post by gefw on Jan 1, 2024 16:12:46 GMT
Ideally, the MET needs to be in a position to COMPETE with the Chilterns. At the moment, it lags behind in both timings and on-train facilities. Why does it need to compete? It doesn't make sense for taxpayer-funded services to compete with taxpayer funded services to compete with each other, where tickets are all interavailable, especially when it will result in a worse service for the passenger and taxpayer Will be interesting how the Oyster revenue is apportioned - I assume it depends if there is any evidence of journey via Chiltern only station (particularly Marylebone). Same issue with West Ruislip/ South Ruislip with Central vs Chiltern. + obviously the Elizabeth line. Timing difference depends very much on the final London destination. Chiltern wins if destination on Bak or Jub lines, but perhaps Met wins for "old City" destinations such as Moorgate and Liverpool St. These Met journeys should improve noticably as 4LM resignalling progresses (ie resolve existing design performance, Implement north of Finch Rd + timetable amendments to remove wait times (eg held to timeable) |
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Post by greggygreggygreg on Jan 11, 2024 12:56:28 GMT
Why does it need to compete? It doesn't make sense for taxpayer-funded services to compete with taxpayer funded services to compete with each other, where tickets are all interavailable, especially when it will result in a worse service for the passenger and taxpayer Will be interesting how the Oyster revenue is apportioned - I assume it depends if there is any evidence of journey via Chiltern only station (particularly Marylebone). Same issue with West Ruislip/ South Ruislip with Central vs Chiltern. + obviously the Elizabeth line. Timing difference depends very much on the final London destination. Chiltern wins if destination on Bak or Jub lines, but perhaps Met wins for "old City" destinations such as Moorgate and Liverpool St. These Met journeys should improve noticably as 4LM resignalling progresses (ie resolve existing design performance, Implement north of Finch Rd + timetable amendments to remove wait times (eg held to timeable) Revenue apportion will just be done on number of seats per hour, or on annual travel surveys or something. They're not going to try and guess which service each individual passenger has used |
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Post by alpinejohn on Jan 11, 2024 14:07:56 GMT
hmm I wonder if better revenue apportionment is one reason why TFL is happy to offer free wifi?
It is no secret that perhaps except when you are underground without any cell phone signal, currently folks in Langley Virginia could pretty precisely track the location of pretty much any online mobile device should they choose.
Like it or not this is not some TV fantasy, most of the necessary technology to track passenger flows is already in place, although doubtless some CCTV feeds may need upgrading. Hence for now at least it is probably only rarely used.
However facial image recognition technology has advanced massively, and indeed there are already some Airports planning trials to use facial recognition as an alternative to physically examining passports to identify travellers boarding flights. Add in mobile data confirmation of a device carried by the traveller and you effectively have 2 factor confirmation.
So back to revenue apportionment. Lets say a mobile device is spotted at Amersham at 07.10 and sometime later the same ISN device is picked up emerging at Farringdon. Then just using that raw mobile device data you could reasonably accurately apportion revenue between Chiltern and TFL.
However it would also be fairy easy to go a fair bit further. So correlating phone + CCTV + gate information data to see if that notional journey was matched by a bank card or oyster tap in entering at Amersham and leaving at Faringdon at broadly those timings. If however they don't then in the past it would take a huge amount of revenue protection resource to review masses of CCTV recordings and gate line swipes to try and identify what individuals entered/left those stations at those times and especially look for any matching (repeating) patterns.
However the arrival of AI means that mind numbingly painful cross checking process can now be largely automated and simply by adding in mobile device data (supplied by the free wifi service) as a cross check, it can almost instantly flag up suspect journeys along with CCTV images of the traveller and related card/oyster taps.
Like it or not AI could free up a huge amount of reveneue protection resource and allow them to be in the right place at the right time to catch anyone engaging in habitual fraud.
Sorry if people feel this is big brother is watching you. But like it or not if you choose to keep wifi enabled then your mobile device leaves a mile wide trail wherever you go, and it is only a matter of time before one or more revenue enforcement cases demonstrate that such tracking is already being used.
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Post by greggygreggygreg on Jan 11, 2024 21:52:17 GMT
The contracts about revenue apportionment would have been written over 30 years ago for the privatisation of British Rail.
These aren't private profit making companies we're talking about. They're all funded by the taxpayer.
If you take revenue away from one operator, you'll only increase the subsidy going to that operator, and vice versa for the other operator.
National Rail would be paying London Underground for using their track anyway, so if they're going to get less revenue, they would pay less track access charges. Or maybe reduce the service, which wouldn't benefit anyone
Don't Chiltern offer free wifi as well? Its normal for National Rail to do that as well as TfL. To be honest, TfL doesn't do WiFi on their trains, unlike National Rail
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Post by etr220 on Jan 12, 2024 22:31:35 GMT
While the schemes and details have changed over the years, revenue pooling goes back a very long way - I suspect the companies running the London Underground were involved from the 1860s. And one significant, and long running, pool was that for the London Passenger Transport Area, which pooled LPTB and main line railway revenues from 1933.
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Post by njr001 on Jan 19, 2024 23:11:07 GMT
As far as I could tell all Amersham and Chesham’s ran fast all day today northbound and southbound was this a cold weather plan due to a problem with the points on Croxley Moor?
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Tom
Administrator
Signalfel?
Posts: 4,100
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Post by Tom on Jan 20, 2024 14:36:32 GMT
Do you mean Moor Park or Croxley? (Not that there are points at either location.)
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Post by xtmw on Jan 20, 2024 15:12:19 GMT
TfL is advertising that there is currently a points failure at Moor Park!
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Post by goldenarrow on Jan 20, 2024 17:20:46 GMT
Which is the nearest identifiable passenger location to Watford South Junction where the points in question are located
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Post by wonderwaller on Jan 21, 2024 18:07:26 GMT
As far as I could tell all Amersham and Chesham’s ran fast all day today northbound and southbound was this a cold weather plan due to a problem with the points on Croxley Moor? Cracked rail on the diamond crossing at Watford south junction points secured out of use hence all Amersham and Chesham on fast Watford south junction is between Moor Park and Ricky where trains from Ricky can switch to the local line |
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Post by A60stock on Jan 21, 2024 21:35:24 GMT
Did they run fast south of harrow? Or was this a case of the "reverse" semi fast pattern. I do wonder why the S stock cannot have this built into the PIS rather then have to change the train to fast at harrow every time. Should call it a "fast-semi"
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Post by Dstock7080 on Jan 21, 2024 22:17:01 GMT
S Stock CIS does have the capability for:
fast, semi fast and all stations, southbound from Amersham, Watford and Chesham, not stopping at Wembley Park.
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Post by A60stock on Jan 21, 2024 22:23:43 GMT
But it does not have the capability to setup as Fast between Moor Park and Harrow but stopping as all stations south of Harrow (without the driver manually intervening at Harrow), and vice versa coming in the Northbound direction (all stations to harrow, fast from there on to Moor Park) - Which is what I meant in my original post.
Completely unrelated but this brings me onto another question:
At Harrow southbound - I have always found it strange that a train can still be semi fast or fast when its the same thing. Would have thought its easier for the system to just call everything which skips stations going south, Fast. It might confuse some customers!
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