The Anonymous Widower

Thoughts on the East London Line

I’ve now had three trips on the East London Line and you can see how it is fitting into the fabric of society in East and South London.

Obviously, there are things still to be done, like the connection at Dalston to avoid the short walk between the two stations. Talking to a policeman at Norwood Junction after the Crystal Palace trip, he said that people aren’t sure yet which station to use for various places.  So perhaps, Transport for London need to put up similar route finders on the Overground, as they have on bus stops.  This would direct football fans going to Crystal Palace to Norwood Junction for example.

What happens too, if say people from say Liverpool or Manchester arriving at Euston station ask how they get to Crystal Palace for the football or somewhere else in the area served by the East London Line.  You could walk to Euston Square and take the Circle Line to Liverpool Street and walk to Shoreditch High Street, the Metropolitan LIne to Whitechapel, or the Northern to London Bridge and the Jubilee to Canada Water.  The choice is yours, but not easy for a non-expert.  I think this illustrates the problem outlined by the policeman at Norwood Junction; the East London Line needs time for people to get used to how and where it runs.

If I take my example to its logical conclusion, you could ask why people from the north don’t use Watford Junction and possibly Willesden Junction to change to the Overground. You wouldn’t have changed to the old North London Line, but now it’s a very much better and a lot more comfortable than it used to be. So I would feel that we’ll see some developments and changes to make this easier.  It would also effectively add capacity to Euston, by removing those, who perhaps wanted to go to Richmond, Islington or South East London from the station.

I’ll end this post by looking at the positives.  Everything is clean, the staff seem competent and happy in their work, the trains seem to run to time and as at present there are always staff on the trains, there seems no sign of any trouble.

Perhaps, though my journey back from Norwood Junction on Saturday summed up  the line. The train was fairly full, but there were still enough seats for those who wanted one and the train was cool and well-ventilated.  It was much better than doing a similar journey on the Underground.

It will be interesting to see how it performs during the Olympics.  But at least we know it will probably be there!

August 22, 2010 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | East London Line, London, London Overground, Trains