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December 20, 2006
Living with the Tube
The Tube is an interesting beast. When it works it works beautifully but when it doesn't work it's really infuriating. I'm not trying to be yet another Londoner who complains and moans about the Tube all the time, but sometime it's really hard not to have the Tube Rage. I have the same view with millions other Londoners, as the life blood of London, the Tube must work at all time. Having seen the complexity of the network, the amount of people it moves everyday, and the amount of people it doesn't move everyday, I have grown to respect and at the same time detest the people who are running it.
Yesterday morning everything worked perfectly. At Limehouse DLR and in less than 1 minute the DLR to Bank arrived. In Bank, the change over took less than 1 minute. From home to work, door to door was less than 25 minute. Fantastic.
In the evening it was totally different. The plan was to go home before ice skating to change into a more comfortable clothes and thicker socks. At London Bridge station I jumped into the train that after a few minutes the driver announced on the tannoy that the train had a "defect" and he was going to "reboot" the train (his word not mine). Shouldn't be more than 2 minutes he hoped. Well 5 minutes later another announcement came, sorry ladies and gents train is not moving please take alternative mode of transport. Of course after wasting 20 minutes I didn't have any chance of going into the Jubilee line and change at Canary Wharf. In the end I went back to work and went straight there rather than home first. On the District line, there was a severe delay and the tube was moving really slow. If I didn't have my newspaper with me I would have gone mad. The irony is, after all that, everyone was late.
On the way home we jumped back into the dreaded District line. We waited for quite a long time (10 minutes+) at South Kensington and after jumping into yet another overcrowded train, believe it or not, the train stopped at Sloan Square and simply ... died. Fortunately there were plenty of buses at Sloan Square, we took one that goes straight to Bank.
This morning at Limehouse DLR, the first train that called was to Tower Gateway. It's alright, I don't understand why we need the Tower Gateway station that is not on the Bank line, but that's cool I don't mind. However, when I looked at the board the next train to Bank is 4 minute away. Four minute! You may think I'm impatient but four minute wait during peak hour on the DLR line to Bank is more or less an eternity. You're wouldn't believe the rate of people piling into the station. Just 1 minute delay means the next train will be overloaded. As expected when the DLR arrived it was jam packed with people on top of each other like sardines. Fine I'll wait for the next one, it's only 1 minute away. Of course the next train arrived was for Tower Gateway. Arghhh ....... by this time, I've reached the point of no line change. Although I could have taken that Tower Gateway train, it would not made any difference, I would have been late anyway. Fortunately the next train was for Bank. I had a slim hope that the changeover at Bank will take less than 1 minute, but I was once again crushed by reality, although this one was only for 3 minute. The only consolation was that by this time it was past 9AM and the usually overcrowded Northern Line was half empty. I arrived at work 15 minutes late, had I taken that first Tower Gateway DLR and walked to work I would have been on time.
Update: I found out that the timetable for Limehouse - Bank does include several 4 minutes gap between trains. Doh' well my bad for slagging off the DLR for having 4 minutes gap between trains. It's actually in the schedule. I still think that 3 minutes gap between two train on this line during peak hour is too long.
Posted by vhadiant at December 20, 2006 07:41 PM
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