turnham green

[Deleted]

Heres some interesting bit of news i read in the local.

An online petition calling for an extra piccadilly line stop has sparked outrage among ealing commuters. The plea on downing street's popular e-petition was posted by gareth thomas from chiswick.
it reads "allow the the piccadilly line to stop at turnham green tube station.
so far it has 2,432 signatures and will run until 9th of august when it will be sent to the goverment
tube users living in northfields are up in arms at the prospect od even more crowding on the already packed trains in the morning and say turnham green cummusters should just have to put upwith having to take the district line to hammersmith and changing.

Was'nt this proposed a few years ago?

[Deleted]

I can't see why Turnham Green commuters have a problem putting up with one more stop to Acton, or two more to Hammersmith via the District!? Its ridiculous. The Piccadilly has heavy traffic at peak hours between Hammersmith & Acton, and one more stop would make a difference. I certainly don't need to have my long journey extended everyday over 1 stop which is already served well by another line!

[sm]

As someone who has lived using Turnham Green as my local station, i feel that in the peaks, it should indeed non stop. The District frequency is adequate, and the Pic line trains are packed. Off peak though, say 9am-4pm and after 7pm, it is mighty frustrating sitting on the platform waiting for a train to hammersmith when you have 5 or 6 more or less empty pic trains go past before a green line train arrives

[Deleted]

I still don't think an off peak service like you describe would be a good idea. I pass through Turnham Green at around 9.20am and 7.40pm. On a weekday morning, the trains to Northfields/Heathrow AND into London are particuarly crowded at that time, not over-crowded, but still pretty packed. In the evening, the eastbound trains are usually empty until they hit Knightsbridge, but I've seen train after train still packed to the rim going through at 8pm on the west.

Which leaves the question, would it still be worth trains stopping? If the Picc has a problem, then stopping at Turnham Green is going to be one more station too many, in my opinion.

[Deleted]

Dear god no, I'd rather get rid of a few more Piccadilly stops, such as Barons Court.

[mindthegap]

The Piccadilly line always has a lot of stops and the journey between Heathrow and London is very long. Surely they cant really increase it anymore.

[Ben]

Why not stop it there in the opposite direction to the peak travel? That way at least some customers get a benefit?

[trc666]

One possibility is that Northfields reversers could call additionally at Turnham Green, possibly running via the local and calling additionally at other stations.

[cetacean]

Will there still be Northfields reversers after T5 opens?

How much journey time would be saved if some trains skipped Northfields and South Ealing (and Barons Court)? It seems a waste of those express tracks when so many journeys are long distance.

[Deleted]

You'd be looking at saving around 60 to 90 seconds by not calling at a station, it all depends on the specific location re: line speed etc, but normally you'd base it around 15-30 seconds dwell time (the busier the station, larger the dwell obviously), with an extra 20-30 seconds each to slow on approach then accelerate on departure.
Not an exact science but there or thereabouts.

[Deleted]

well to be honest i think they should lose south ealing it a pointless station not to mention about 2 seconds away from northfields.

[Deleted]

They tried that once - a passenger bridge was built to connect the South Ealing ticket hall with the eastern end of the Northfields platforms. After a lot of hollering from the locals it was demolished, and plans to close South Ealing were shelved.

[Deleted]

well to be honest its a ridiculous situation. they should join them together and call it something like ....northfields and ealing! its not like the few cutomers there are for south ealing have to walk to far its only like 5 minutes walking or a few bus stops.

[Deleted]

dstock18 said:

well to be honest its a ridiculous situation. they should join them together and call it something like ....northfields and ealing!

They tried that too - the original name for Northfields was Northfields and Little Ealing.

dstock18 said:

its not like the few cutomers there are for south ealing have to walk to far its only like 5 minutes walking or a few bus stops.

However, the 65 does call at South Ealing station, and it is a major 24-hour bus route that provides an orbital link from the many bus routes in Ealing to the many more bus routes in Kingston. Diverting the 65 would be very difficult to do IMHO.

[Deleted]

yeah so does the E3. which also stop at northfields. on the several occasions i have passed by most of the customers have came off of E3. so wouldnt really harm them to make the 3 extra stops to northfields

[Deleted]

If you look out of the train doors when it is at South Ealing you would all be surprised by how busy the station is.

[setttt]

dstock18 said:

well to be honest its a ridiculous situation. they should join them together and call it something like ....northfields and ealing! its not like the few cutomers there are for south ealing have to walk to far its only like 5 minutes walking or a few bus stops.

In my experience, I would say South Ealing easily receives the same level of custom as Northfields, and during the morning peak it is often busier. It is certainly not a five minute walk between the two, and there is no direct bus service either FWIW.

dstock18 said:

yeah so does the E3.

Not really - the nearest stop is about 400 metres from the station.

dstock18 said:

on the several occasions i have passed by most of the customers have came off of E3. so wouldnt really harm them to make the 3 extra stops to northfields

Wahhh? The E3 stops directly outside both Acton Town and Northfields (the stations either side of South Ealing). Why on earth would people choose to walk a quarter of a mile from the bus stop to South Ealing when they could simply alight directly outside either Northfields or Acton Town? The answer is, they wouldn't! South Ealing station was my local for about 14 years (not that I can remember all of them, admittedly ), and I can assure you that the majority of its customers do not arrive by E3.

South Ealing is needed just as much as Northfields is!!

[Oracle]

South Ealing serves a different catchment area from Norhfields, and is not a short walk by road from Northfields since the wartime concrete [emergency?] rear exit was disconnected. My mother used to use it when she lived in Alacross Road, near where Neil Kinnock moved to in fact decades later, and it was more convenient than South Ealing!

I really do query whether a regular Turnham Green stop would cause too much inconvenience? I always found it annoying that I had to change at Acton Town for a rarer District to get to TG to go down to Richmond from Hounslow. It might also make transfer to the Richmond branch easier for passengers who would not then need to change at Hammersmith.

[Deleted]

Any regular stop at Turnham Green would have to wait until after the Piccadilly Line is resignalled - although the existing signalling does allow trains to stop regularly without screwing up headways too badly, the endless jam of people stuffing themselves down the Heathrow branch in the peaks would put paid to the Picc stopping at TG.

Besides, if you think about it, TG already has 12tph - the combined service of the Richmond and Ealing branches, and bigger trains to boot.

Personally I feel that the only time it makes sense for Picc trains to call at TG is in the very very off-peak - anything else will simply screw up the Picc service and empty out the District, which already has more than enough capacity when both branches are operating normally (i.e. the Line Controller isn't constantly calling up trains on the west in the city and saying "Straight to Ealing driver"!)

[Deleted]

well i still think that south ealing should be taken out. but the turnham green situation should stay the same.

[rdejones]

This is one of those that when you look at a map it makes sense, but when you know the reality the situation changes. Sure South Ealing and Northfields are close but they serve very different areas. Proximity doesn't mean geography. I, from time to time, get off at South Ealing rather than Ealing Broadway. It's about a five mins longer walk to where I live. Northfields, however, is miles away! In practice Northfields and South Ealing are very seperate areas, with distinct centres which do not relate one with another.
As to Pic trains stopping at Turnham Green - nah, run the district non stop Ealing Broadway to Hammersmith and get rid of the rubbish inbetween - much better solution!

[trc666]

With the South Ealing situation, you could have Heathrow services run from Earls Court to Northfields calling at Hammersmith and Acton Town only, with Northfields reversers serving all stations.

[Oracle]

Didn't we have something similar whe the District ran the local line service, so South Ealing was missed by the Picc?

I remember years ago it was late evening and the Controller was reversing or sending trains into the depot at Northfields. The Heathrow punters were not at all happy as there had been no through train and basically sat in at Northfields. Station staff could do nothing to persuade the foreigners that there would be an airport train in due course. The inevitable happened and trains stacked back with one in South Ealing Fast Platform, and more behind. In the end the Contoller sent a Heathrow train via the Local and bypassed the logjam, whereupon the train in the Fast platform was emptied and all the passengers crossed the platform. I remember at the time that I thought that it was so handy that there was a Fast and Local WB available and a Northfields reversing 'local' service could be interespersed with an 'express' fast Heathrow one.