Docklands Light Railway

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by kerouac1848

That's ok if you want to get from Soho to Kilburn, Shoreditch to Deptford or Farringdon to Kennington, but getting to Richmond, Wembley or Crystal Palace can be a pain from Central London, never mind Harrow, Enfield, etc. Even Waterloo to West Hampstead (a route I did a few times) can take close to an hour; add in the waiting time and getting inside your door and it is an hour +. When I lived in Wembley and went out East of Liverpool st. I had to get 3 buses back home (if I couldn't find a place to crash), and that is hardly living on the edge of the city.

Just a couple of trains on some routes would be fine, even just to, say, a key zone 4 location from which a bus service could then run towards the fringe boroughs. People go on about NYC, but from what I can remember the last time I went was that only certain lines were operating after 1am with about 2 trains an hour ran. That's all that would be needed and only really on Friday and Saturday night.

Odd that nobody's suggested the obvious option of—wait for it!—driving. London doesn't suffer much from congestion by the time the clocks are striking midnight. With some minor tweaks to parking rules and regulations, you could easily have door-to-door night-time city travel.

Cars aren't evil. They're just machines. Tools. When used correctly, they can become a perfectly valid solution to a problem.

[MattN]

Driving on a night out isn't exactly an ideal suggestion though is it?

[Bob]

..and how have you got your car there in the first place? I suppose some kind of car hire where revellers (love that word!) drive centre to suburbs (12-3 ish) and then early morning workers (3-5) drive them back in?

[potto]

Originally Posted by stimarco

Odd that nobody's suggested the obvious option of—wait for it!—driving. London doesn't suffer much from congestion by the time the clocks are striking midnight. With some minor tweaks to parking rules and regulations, you could easily have door-to-door night-time city travel.

Cars aren't evil. They're just machines. Tools. When used correctly, they can become a perfectly valid solution to a problem.

The night time leisure economy is the same as the day time leisure and work economy, lots of people going to destinations en masse. The limitations of cars in the day time do not magically disappear at night. The majority of people, especially females, from Zone 2 and onwards would far rather faster rail journey than buses. It definitely impacts the night time economy of London and therefore Londons global image.

What is the obsession with avoiding the DLR running 24hr? It is a relatively new automatic system that should be running 24 hours in a city like London. It isnt the decrepit Union controlled Underground. We have already seen a direct problem with a lack of mass transit for the O2 arena, a new symbol for London's entertainment, damaging its image and hurting its knock on economy such as the night club Matter. If I were the boroughs of East London I would be busy hatching a medium term plan to use the DLR as a method of grabbing the night time leisure economy from the West End!

[kleinhond]

Originally Posted by potto

We have already seen a direct problem with a lack of mass transit for the O2 arena, a new symbol for London's entertainment, damaging its image and hurting its knock on economy such as the night club Matter. If I were the boroughs of East London I would be busy hatching a medium term plan to use the DLR as a method of grabbing the night time leisure economy from the West End!

Which is exactly why, a couple of pages back, I suggested extending the DLR from the bottom of the Isle Of Dogs to North Greenwich and on into SE London.

[sweek]

Originally Posted by flare

I'm pretty sure I have seen some hourly frequency night buses, certainly half hourly are very common. I am a big fan of night buses btw!

TfL has said that every night bus has to run at least half hourly for safety reasons, which pretty much means they don't want people to have to wait at bus stops at night for too long.

And Stimarco, night buses have improved a lot over the last few years. In fact I think London probably has the best night bus network in the world... I can't think of any other city with so many buses at such frequencies?

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by potto

The night time leisure economy is the same as the day time leisure and work economy, lots of people going to destinations en masse. The limitations of cars in the day time do not magically disappear at night.

What limitations? HGVs and white vans will be few and far between at that time of night. All cars would have to cope with is the mysterious buses of the night. Parking can be had on any side street.

Granted, the driver will have to refrain from drinking, but teetotallers aren't that hard to come by. I'm one myself. (Which probably makes me biased. So sue me!)

The majority of people, especially females, from Zone 2 and onwards would far rather faster rail journey than buses. It definitely impacts the night time economy of London and therefore Londons global image.

Then you need a fully-integrated, 24-hour solution. The DLR can only ever be a single component of that.

What is the obsession with avoiding the DLR running 24hr?

What "obsession"? It's just pragmatism. All a 24hr. DLR will do is make some parts of East London easier to get to from, er, some parts of East London. The DLR doesn't go any further west than Bank, or any further south than Lewisham (which is on the Zone 2/boundary). If you want people from west, north and a small part of south-west London to get to your 24hr. East London venues, you have to get the other transport networks running 24hr. services too.

The DLR alone won't cut it: it's no good dumping me in Woolwich when I then have to wait a few hours for the first train into Gravesend! It needs to be 24-hour all the way.

And that's the problem. The DLR is a relatively new automated people-mover with delusions of grandeur (and them some!), but it was never intended to replace the entire London Underground or south London urban metro services. Its primary purpose is to fill a gap in riverside East London.

If I were the boroughs of East London I would be busy hatching a medium term plan to use the DLR as a method of grabbing the night time leisure economy from the West End!

They already do. And, unlike, say, Kensington or Hammersmith, those East London boroughs don't have quite so many issues when it comes to road vehicles. Your entire argument essentially boils down to: "Lots of people prefer rail transport over road transport". Why is this? Can such attitudes be changed? (Here's a hint: Consider society's attitude to the automobile only two generations ago.)

Infrastructure costs money to build and run. It has to be maintained. The DLR doesn't have drivers, but it does have PSAs, so all their trains are still manned. Who's going to want to work the overnight shift, with all those vomiting, shouting, falling-down drunks? I sure as hell wouldn't. And those night trains will need to be clean and shiny ready for the morning peaks too. So you'll need a larger cleaning team as well.

And it's not just trains either: nobody wants to see puddles of vomit adorning their station's platform of a Monday morning. Commuting's bad enough as it is.

All those arguments apply to other modes too, but buses have the advantage of flexibility and redundancy, as well as being smaller and easier to clean and maintain than any train. The costs of 24-hour running are therefore lower for buses. If a bus breaks down, you can leave it by the side of the road until the morning shift comes into work and can go tow it away; the other buses can just go around the failed one.

If a train breaks down, nothing's going to move again until that train is cleared, so you have to keep a team of engineers sitting around all night, twiddling their thumbs, just in case. And if that train should be stuck for the duration, you also need to organise bustitution or some other mode of transport for the stranded passengers.

New York City has multiple, parallel routes and even four-track sections on many of those routes where they pass through busy areas, so its system is much more able to cope with a 24-hour culture. It has resilience and redundancy. You can lose a line without too much trouble as they're far more interconnected than those of London.

It's easy to forget that the Victoria and Jubilee Lines are the only two lines explicitly designed to interchange heavily with the older lines. Most of those older lines—especially the deep-level tubes—exist in almost splendid isolation from each other. If a train on the Central Line fails, what's the alternative? If a train on the Northern Line fails, how do passengers get home?

London lacks the redundancy and resilience needed for a 24-hour city. There's no magic bullet. The only way to fix this is to build more new infrastructure. Not just on the Tube, but also on the rail networks radiating out from the city—especially south of the river.

[Tubeman]

Originally Posted by stimarco

Odd that nobody's suggested the obvious option of—wait for it!—driving. London doesn't suffer much from congestion by the time the clocks are striking midnight. With some minor tweaks to parking rules and regulations, you could easily have door-to-door night-time city travel.

Cars aren't evil. They're just machines. Tools. When used correctly, they can become a perfectly valid solution to a problem.

You'd have to relax drink-drive laws too!

[Rational Plan]

With London's existing rail rail system, the tube is never going to run longer, the time closed is needed for maintenance. However London's commuter rail network could run longer. Some lines are better than others. Paddington has some trains after midnight so does Liverpool street. But Waterloo is useless. The last Windsor train is around 11,which is cutting it fine for getting back from a theatre or resturant. It would be better if they all ran a few all stopping trains on at least the main routes till at least 2/3am. Thereby giving people the option of a few drinks, otherwise most of the time I just drive into the West End and park on a single yellow it's only a half drive back to Slough.

If I use the train it's because we started partying early in the day so we could catch a train back. It's a pig trying to time the walking and interchange time to get to Paddington, It's often an hour an half between leaving the venue and walking through my front door.

It's all very well getting a night bus if you live in zone three, but if you live in the outer suburbs then it's a car or stay up all night for the first train in the morning. While my friends can don't mind traipsing around london to 6.30 am. I don't want to.

It's £60 illegal mini cab to my house, never mind black cab. driving is the only reasonable way for us Suburbanites who want to stay out later than 11pm.

[Jang0]

Does anyone know why the DLR does not have PEDs at its busiest stations?

For example, the Canary Wharf station would really benefit from them on cold/windy days as it would allow the whole station (both levels) to be heated without the "ventilation" removing all comfort as is currently the case.

I know that at the moment mixed-length trains are running, and this may cause a problem. It's perhaps true also that the software may not support PEDs in the version that the DLR is using.

[cle]

Properly enclosed waiting rooms would be cheaper, and more futureproof/flexible in terms of fleets. But I agree, they are quite horrible.

[tg1980]

Three car trains have now launched on the Stratford to Lewisham route.

http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk:80/n...eeze_1_741819?

[hkskyline]

High Court blocks London DLR strike
19 January 2011

LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - London's High Court granted an injunction on Wednesday preventing a planned 48-hour strike on the capital's Docklands Light Railway after declaring there had been technical errors with the ballot.

Members of the RMT union were due to stage the walkout on the line which serves the financial district of Canary Wharf on Thursday in a dispute over pension arrangements, a new roster and a failure to consult on redundancies.

However, Justice Michael Tugendhat in London ruled the strike was not lawful as the ballot notices were not valid, the Press Association reported.

Lawyers for DLR operator Serco Docklands said the notices were defective because of the form of explanation given of job titles and categories.

The union had said it was dependent upon the information which its members chose to give.

"I find the defendant is not likely to succeed (at trial of the action) in establishing that the notices were valid in that the purported explanation is not that required by law," the judge said.

Serco said services would now run as normal.

"We are frustrated at the RMT union for bringing our employees to the brink of unnecessary industrial action," Managing Director David Stretch said.

"We are pleased the law is on our side in this yet we remain committed to working with employees and their representatives to address the outstanding issues."

[Tubeman]

Anyone know what's up with the Stratford International extension?

It was due to open 'Autumn 2010' for ages, which has now turned into a vague 'early 2011'.

It's very un-DLR like to be firstly late and secondly so vague with an opening date.

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by Tubeman

Anyone know what's up with the Stratford International extension?

It was due to open 'Autumn 2010' for ages, which has now turned into a vague 'early 2011'.

It's very un-DLR like to be firstly late and secondly so vague with an opening date.

I don't think there's much point opening that station until there's a reason for the DLR's trains to go there in the first place. The Olympic park and facilities aren't going to be open until next year, and I can't imagine there being enough demand for the HS1 Domestic services alone to justify opening the station just for those.

[cle]

It's good for the DLR though, and both local frequencies and West Ham/Stratford connectivity for the areas on the two branches east of Canning Town - just so happens to terminate somewhere which is unfinished! Isn't the Westfield almost ready?

Stratford to City Airport will I'm sure be a very popular and useful link for many in East London. Stratford to Woolwich is a good strategic river link too, although not that different from connecting to Greenwich and Lewisham, I guess.

[Tubeman]

Originally Posted by stimarco

I don't think there's much point opening that station until there's a reason for the DLR's trains to go there in the first place. The Olympic park and facilities aren't going to be open until next year, and I can't imagine there being enough demand for the HS1 Domestic services alone to justify opening the station just for those.

I mean the entire branch, not just the station... There's 3 other brand new stations besides.

[stimarco]

Originally Posted by Tubeman

I mean the entire branch, not just the station... There's 3 other brand new stations besides.

Ah. Most of that is just a conversion of existing rail infrastructure, so I assumed you were referring specifically to that one station. I sit corrected.

I am surprised it's not opened yet. Could it be affected by Crossrail works?

[ill tonkso]

Originally Posted by Tubeman

Anyone know what's up with the Stratford International extension?

It was due to open 'Autumn 2010' for ages, which has now turned into a vague 'early 2011'.

It's very un-DLR like to be firstly late and secondly so vague with an opening date.

A lot of it is probably to do with works in the park rather than the actual DLR I would imagine. Given the DLR's awesome track record and the scale of works around there.

[Tubeman]

Originally Posted by stimarco

Ah. Most of that is just a conversion of existing rail infrastructure, so I assumed you were referring specifically to that one station. I sit corrected.

I am surprised it's not opened yet. Could it be affected by Crossrail works?

I can't really see how there'd be an impact... The portals will be at Pudding Mill Lane, as far as I'm aware Stratford Regional itself won't need to be remodelled. The DLR just runs under the Regional station in the place of the ex-NR tracks.

I passed through West Ham the other day, and the DLR tracks looked ready, the platform edges were merely screened off with temporary wire mesh fencing... I just find it odd that extensions requiring far more engineering like Lewisham and Woolwich were delivered early, while this one is seemingly taking forever and has slipped back (last Silverlink trains ran over 4 years ago) when it requires very little engineering, certainly the flyovers at Canning Town have been in situ for ages.