According to TfL statistics spring 2013 evidenced a sustained period of "good performance" (even record breaking!) on the Metropolitan Line, and although circumstantial evidence might align with this, the performance heading into summer has gone downhill again, with a number of very significant signal failures. There was a particularly bad failure on the evening of 12th June when the Harrow Signal box suffered a significant failure. It's shocking to know that the components that failed date back to the 1940s. London Underground had actually identified that these components were already "at risk" and were in a project to replace them, but unfortunately the project didn't replace the one that failed at Harrow quickly enough. Chiltern are following up on emergency operating practices with LUL as they believe that they could have run a limited service with manual signalling if necessary, which would have been better than no service that was offered from about 7.30pm to close of service that evening. The new S-Stock trains are generally performing well with less train faults, and the air conditioning on the trains has been very welcome and has generally worked well during the period of warn weather we have had in July. The Office of the Rail Regulator has concerned themselves of the larger gap that occurs between the train and the platform at stations on a tight curve, and there has been a publicity campaign to highlight this to passengers, and some additional warnings deployed. Timetable update:
And the following are expected, but not confirmed/guaranteed possible future changes and tweaks
Chesham Connection times: Much more of an issue for Chesham people, but when Chiltern changed their northbound train times to depart at :12 and :42 mins past the hour from Marylebone in December 2012 changing from the original and historic :27 and :57 departure times, this has the unfortunate consequence of completely messing up connection times for Chesham people. The Chiltern used to have a Chesham Met following it, so Chesham people could get a quick Chiltern up to Chalfont and then just wait a few minutes for a Chesham Met. But since Chiltern changed their times the Chesham met is a 20+ minute wait behind a Chiltern. We told Chiltern about this issue before they changed the timetable but refused to budge. And now both London Underground and Chiltern seem unwilling to assist. We continue to lobby both parties, most recently engaging the MD of Chiltern on Twitter about the issue. Croxley Link We reported earlier this week that after 20+ years of local campaigning, the Croxley Link scheme has been approved. We will continue to monitor developments, at the moment there seems to be a bun fight over the naming of the two new stations with the Watford Observer helping foster the debate. Track Renewals Although much work has already been done to replace tracks on the Metropolitan Line (how many weekend closures have we had over the past few years), there is still considerable work to do. And to a certain extent they have been tackling some of the 'low hanging fruit' by getting on with the track renewals on the outdoor sections of the line, some of the more difficult and troublesome bits are yet to come. Baker Street to Finchley Road.
Harrow Junctions - both North and south.
Baker Street
Neasden
Other works
It obvious that from the scale of the works listed above, that there is still significant investment required to deliver a reliable and fit for purpose Metropolitan Line railway. Residents will be aware of the frequent breakdowns and service failures that disrupt our journeys, and we are grateful to London Underground for sharing this information with us. We will continue to engage with them to try and ensure that where there is any possibility for disruption to be minimised and to ensure that adequate plans to mitigate and publicise changes to the scheduled service are planned well. Ticket Offices There's a possible plan whereby London Underground are again reviewing the use of ticket offices across the network and considering if staff could better serve customers if they weren't hidden away in the ticket office itself. Some research is currently ongoing and there might be a consultation on proposed changes in the Autumn. If you have any feedback on the article above, please get in touch. You can email us at transport@chorleywoodresidents.co.uk or use the form below. |
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