Effective journey time

Serious title: serious post. This should be the concept by which public transport is assessed.

I've been to London twice this weekend to visit the London Film Festival (I can recommend "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" coming to a cinema near you shortly, by the way). The journeys on both Friday and Saturday were relatively smooth, with all the trains overcrowded but not to the point where no seats were available. I even found, after running to the station on Saturday morning, that there were no long queues to get tickets ahead of the 12:01, because there were 4, yes 4 (this must be a record!), ticket-sellers around in the station foyer, in addition to the ticket desks. I was pleased about that, particularly since, of course, the fast trains at xx:15 and xx:45 are not running at weekends for another couple of months. A 1/2 hour delay through missing the 12:01, on top of the extra journey time of nearly 1/2 hour would have screwed up the day. As it was we ate our sandwiches romantically on a bench in Green Park!

And the trains even seemed a little cleaner than last weekend, though not such that I'd repeat the mistake I made then of putting my jacket on the floor (it's still unseasonably mild). I'm still picking bits off it. I observed that if, as a teenager, I'd left my bedroom in the state the train was in last night, my mother would have given me a lecture on how to clean it properly. Makes you wonder what the so-called professionals are doing. (And why are the trains carpeted any way? - lino, anybody?).

This is not to say the service is even acceptable, though. This weekend an unacceptable service has been running relatively smoothly, which is something, I suppose. There are fundamental problems. I started thinking about some of these on Friday when I found myself leaving the house at 15:27, to meet my better half at Waterloo at 17:27. As I noted in my posting: "Death by 1000 cuts...", to meet this train means I have to catch the 15:45, since the 16:15 does not arrive at 17:05 sufficiently reliably (the service billed as 45 minutes is really 50, which doesn't help). As I was leaving precisely 2 hours before I had to get to Waterloo, I realised that I therefore faced an effective journey time of 2 hours, that is, 120 minutes, though I would only be travelling for about 80 minutes (10 minute walk to station, 50 on train, 15 on tube, 5 walking in Waterloo and King's Cross). What happened to the other 40 minutes?

Of course, the bulk of them (32 in this case) are because I arrive at Waterloo at 16:55 when I don't want to be there until 17:27. I repeat: this is partly because I can't trust wagn to be punctual on the 16:15. In the real world, if I can't trust the trains to run on time, I have to waste my own time on every journey, to be sure of making my own appointment. It's not just the 5 minutes lost on the days the train is late, the time lost every day in case the train is late is also important.

I also lose time because the services are 1/2 hourly. If they ran every 15 minutes, I would save 15 minutes straight away. Every 20 minutes and it would be 10 minutes saved. In the real world, the journey time is important, but, since most journeys involve either leaving somewhere or getting somewhere at a particular time, the effective journey time also depends on the frequency of services.

This becomes even more important in the evening, when trains from King's Cross to Cambridge are astonishingly infrequent. More on this another time, but one wonders what wagn's managers are thinking, as the lack of frequency of services back from London is a real disincentive to people going down for the evening. This must be costing them a lot of business.

The attentive reader will realise that there are another 8 minutes to account for. Why did I leave the house at 15:27, for a 10 minute walk for the 15:45 train (and this was cutting it fine). Well, the first point is that I walk. I could cycle, but I don't. (So actually I should add another 5 minutes wasted, making it 45 minutes in all). The reason I don't cycle is that there is no room to chain a bicycle at the station. The racks (many uncovered, too) are always full. Why is a mystery. I can only suppose they are poorly managed and procedures to remove abandoned bicycles are ineffective. A simple solution would be to turn some of the vast carpark over to bicycles. You could probably get 10 bikes in 1 carpark space. If even 1 in 10 drivers was encouraged to cycle as a result, this would add no more pressure on the carpark!

So, back to the 8 minutes. This is all simply because I cannot trust wagn (or whoever operates the station) to sell me a ticket promptly. Often there are queues, often the ticket-machines are out of action (more machines might be an idea). Again, this means I have to arrive early every time.

And this was still cutting it fine. I like having coffee on the train, but I can't be sure there'll be a coffee trolley (and don't even get any information as to whether or not there will be one). So I have to get to the station in time to buy one.

OK, a bit long-winded, but see how all these little problems add up to long effective journey times. And this is at a good time of day. Wait until I get on to the evening service! (I was going to say "late evening", but wagn's idea of late and mine are 2 different things). And I haven't even mentioned the stress all this causes!!