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| Re: Brighton line (Re: London's five-year plan) (15960) | |||
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Re: Brighton line (Re: London's five-year plan) |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Wed Nov 3 20:37:25 2004, in response to Brighton line (Re: London's five-year plan), posted by David Fairthorne on Wed Nov 3 13:26:00 2004. I can see your proposed routes as potentially attractive to Gatwick Airport passengers, as going via the West London line would offer the convenience of not carrying baggage across London.Not just Gatwick. It would mean that all points on the LBSC and LSW are only one change from the Midlands and North-West. I can see it being very popular. The other thing it solves is to give the Milton Keynes area onward InterCity connections without getting the InterCity trains to Euston packed with commuters. "In order to deliver better performance south of Clapham, and to make what is considered to be better use of the paths south of Clapham, the Watford � Brighton service will be curtailed, on current plans, to become a Watford � Clapham Junction service. Very low numbers of through passengers have precipitated the consideration of this option, and the capacity on the fast and slow lines can be used for longer and busier trains from Victoria. Connections to a wide variety of destinations are available at Clapham Junction." I'm afraid the SRA are engaging in some intellectual dishonesty. The low ridership South of Clapham Junction is largely due to the train operating Slow to Brighton and being overtaken. This will show on the NR journey planner as *requiring* a change, and even if you do notice that your train's going to Brighton, you don't want to sit on a train that stops at every village in Surrey and Sussex when there's a quicker alternative. This also flies in the face of the idea that Inter-City Cross Country services should be the fast trains ans the commuter trains to London should be the slow ones plus however many extra fasts are needed. Point two is that it's not much used from the Watford end because: 1) it's still two changes from Birmingham/Manchester/Liverpool to South London/Surrey/Sussex, just like the tube (although the changes are distinctly easier). 2) it's irregular and not very frequent. 3) the connections at Watford Junction are timed VERY badly. They tend either to be 3 minutes to leg it from one platform to another, or waiting around for three-quarters of an hour. It's as if Virgin Trains didn't look at which trains would connect with onward services when determining which ones should stop at Watford. It's a case of them having made the service as hard to use as possible, and then commenting that no-one rides it. They've now cancelled a load of southbound stops at Watford in rush hour, so it's only going to get worse. A perfectly successful cross-country service was run via this route in the 80s, and furthermore cross-country ridership has surged since then, so it would be a distinctly good idea to reintroduce such a service. There are definitely paths on the WCML. Remember that the speed was cut from 140mph to 125mph whilst the number of trainsets stayed constant. This has left Birmingham with only 2 of its promised 4tph and a similar pattern is repeated up the line. |
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