The Anonymous Widower

7/10 For Day Zero For The New Overground Lines

You might ask how I can give the 7/10 for the new Overground lines, when the service hasn’t officially started.

But I didn’t see anything wrong and there was a lot of positivity from staff and passengers. Here’s a few things I noticed.

1. Freedom Passes

Transport for London obviously know their passenger model and the Freedom Pass holder I spoke to who said she would use the line from Enfield at all times of the day, must mean that TfL know they can accommodate the extra passengers, who will turn up early in the morning and in the rush hour to go home.

Perhaps, the small modal shift say from vehicular transport to trains, will actually free up the roads.

I’ll just let the data do the talking, when passenger numbers are published in a few months.

2. The Deep Clean At Enfield Town

It looks like they’ve deep cleaned Enfield Town station for the launch and if this is indicative of the standard we’ll see at the piles of bricks, that double as stations, they’ve inherited from Abellio Greater Anglia, then the good burghers of East London will be pleasantly surprised.

To be hard on London Overground, choosing Enfield Town station for the launch was a bit of a cheat, as the station is naturally step-free and it was built in 1957, as opposed to the 1840s for most of the stations.

It is certainly built and cleaned to a standard, that few if any, would complain about.

3. Staff

The staff seemed positive in a lot of ways, just as they do in a typical Overground or Underground station.

4. Trains

The trains, I travelled in today were clean and one lady thought that Abellio Greater Anglia could have done more to keep them clean.

If London Overground follow the cleaning procedures they use on the North and East London Lines, where litter is regularly collected throughout the day, the passengers will be pleased.

5.Future Overcrowding

From experiences with the current Overground, I can see a small problem. And that is overcrowding.

But whereas on the North and East London Lines providing more capacity is a problem, on the Lea Valley Lines, all platforms can take eight car trains, as they do in the rush hour and you can always couple two Class 315 trains or Class 317 trains together. And as Class 345 trains are delivered for Crossrail, more of these will come available.

6. Future Investment

London Overground have acquired these routes from Abellio Greater Anglia, with all the skill of an East End trader who sold car aerials in Ridley Road Market.

They have similar costs to Abellio Greater Anglia in terms of trains, track charges and stations, but they get more of the revenue, as they are a not-for-profit organisation and don’t have external owners.

So they get the benefit of all the investment they make, provided of course it is sound! But Transport for London have said they are going to put £25million into the Lea Valley Lines.

But it won’t be just Transport for London putting money into the Overground. The proposed new station at Hackney Wick has a variety of sources of funding and I think we’ll see other stations built by external developers, so that their houses, offices or industrial units are more desirable.

In this section in Wikipedia, it says that the current trains will be replaced by thirty-nine new trains in 2017. New trains always attract more passengers, but unlike the current Overground lines, adding more capacity will not involve any expensive platform lengthening.

7. Everybody Will Want Overground

The only serious long term problem, they have is that if the Lea Valley Line takeover is as successful as the current Overground, then there will be a clamour for other lines to be taken over, or at least run on the same lines.

I have a feeling that there are going to be some very unhappy train operating companies, who lose some quite lucrative routes in the next few years.

May 30, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Lea Valley Lines, London Overground, Trains