This Big Belly On Islington Green Seems To Be Working
I took this picture by the bus stop on Islington Green.
This Big Belly On Islington Green Seems To Be Working
It would appear that there isn’t much rubbish not in the bin.
So is the Big Belly getting people to put their rubbish in the bin? Or had I just missed the guy with the broom and barrow?
Crossrail Works In Front Of Liverpool Street Station
The archaeologists at Liverpool Street station have departed and work is getting on with the Crossrail works.
I’m glad to see that Crossrail have left the observation gallery.
The Southern Entrance To Tottenham Court Road Station Takes Shape
One of the consequences of the building of Crossrail has been the need to virtually completely rebuild Tottenham Court Road station. The rebuild is not small as the station is future-proofed for the building of Crossrail 2, which will also call at the station. Wikipedia says this about future developments at the station.
If the proposed Chelsea-Hackney line, now known as Crossrail 2 when built, it will have a station at Tottenham Court Road, and the development plans include facilities to take account of this. This would be the only planned interchange between Crossrail 1 and Crossrail 2. A massive boost in capacity to the existing station will be needed to host both lines. The station was safeguarded as part of the route in 1991 and 2007. Redevelopment of the station will include space for platforms on the line.
The station is being rebuilt with a large ticket hall under the forecourt of Centre Point, which has a new northern exit on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. These pictures show the new southern exit for the station taking shape.
It certainly looks like it will be dramatic. This page on the Stanton Williams web site has a picture of new entrances in front of Centre Point.
It certainly isn’t ordinary! It also looks like London is getting a new plaza.
I think the entrances open later this year, together with the reopening of the Central Line platforms. I took some of the pictures from the top deck of a 38 bus, which gives good views into the site as you go towards Islington from Piccadilly Circus.
It does look that the grubby end of Oxford Street is getting a major improvement.
Working Around The Victoria Line Closure
Today, I wanted to go to IKEA and a decent B & Q, so as both are close to Tottenham Hale station, it required a trip to that station or thereabouts.
The problem is that the Victoria Line is closed past Seven Sisters in August, so they can remove the bottleneck at Walthamstow Central that was part of the cheapskate design of the 1960s. Click here for the full story.
So I couldn’t take my usual route of an Undrground train to Tottenham Hale and a 192 bus.
I decided to go to IKEA first, which is just an easy trip all the way on a 341 bus from perhaps a hundred metres from my house. But as I got to the stop, the 341 whizzed past. Luckily it was followed by a 476 bus, which joins up with the 341 at Northumberland Park and hopefully because of the route it takes will get there first.
So I got the 476 and sat upstairs. I was watching to see if the 341 was behind us as we turned off Tottenham High Road and saw the 341 appear behind.
At the next stop I got off the bus to get the 341, only to see that bus go straight past. Luckily, I was able to get back on the 476, so in the end, I went all the way to Northumberland Park, a couple of stops short of IKEA. The bus information saif I’d haveto wait twenty minutes for a 341, so I walked over the level crossing to the Marigold Road stop for the 192. Again my luck was in, as a 192 had just turned up and they were changing drivers.
Coming back, I was carrying a full IKEA bag, and wanted to get to B & Q at Tottenham Hale for a couple of small bits, so I needed a 192 bus. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a gap in the service, but after about twenty minutes, I’d done my hopping and needed to get home.
So I walked back to Tottenham Hale station, hoping that there was a Hackney Downs train due.
Remarkably there was one in a couple of minutes and I just had time to climb over the bridge to catch it.
At Hackney Downs, the train dropped me on Platform 1, so I could either go down into Hackney Downs station and get a 56 or 38 bus, or use the new walkway to Hackney Central, from where I could get a more numerous 38 bus.
As it was a warm day and there was a lift in the walkway, I decided to take the newly-opened route.
I’m glad I did, as it turned out that due to the wire mesh at the top of the sides of the walkway, it was remarkably cool.
I’d surmised it would have been good in wet weather, but I’d never thought I’d be pleased to use it because of the heat.
According to one of the staff to whom I spoke, the walkway is staring to be increasingly well-used as passengers discover it.
I think that we’ll see this type of walkway in other places on the UK rail network.
One thing that helped this morning to get around the Victoria Line closure, which removes a bit chunk of my usual routes to Tottenham and Walthamstow, was London’s superb text message-based bus information system, which like any good system is designed to work on any device that can send and receive text messages.
And it does it all without using any dreaded app.
The West Midlands Day Ranger Ticket
For my trip around Birmingham last week, I had decided to use a West Midlands Day Ranger Ticket.
I had hoped to purchase one in the Booking Office at Lichfield Trent Valley station, but it was closed and only with difficulty was I able to purchase one on the train into Birmingham.
But I didn’t get a map with the ticket, as I have had in Lancashire before, where Northern Rail have a leaflet detailing all their Day Ranger tickets. There’s one here on the National Rail web site.
On the Thursday, I walked to New Street and bought a ticket, but the only map they had was a photocopy.
The area covered by a West Midlands Day Ranger is large and covers the area bounded by Crewe, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Worcester, Stratford-on-Avon, Leamington Spa, Northampton, Rugby, Nuneaton, Lichfield and Stoke.
As trains are generally frequent between all stations, it was an ideal ticket for my purposes and I got good value on both days in Birmingham. Coming back to London on the Thursday, I used my Day Ranger Ticket to get to Northampton, where I bought a ticket for Watford Junction and travelled back on a virtually-empty London Midland train.
The Overground from Watford Junction wasn’t empty, as I caught the aftermath of the rush hour on the day of the Tube stroke.
The two possible disadvantages of the West Midlands Day Ranger Ticket, is that it must be used after 9:30 and isn’t valid on the Midlands Metro.
Next time, I want to visit several places in the West Midlands, I’ll go to Leamington Spa or Northampton and then use a West Midlands Day Ranger.
Young People Increasingly Turning To Trains
This was the headline on an article on the RailNews web site. This short extract is typical of the article.
One ‘dramatic finding’ is ‘a more utilitarian attitude to car ownership’ with greater weight being placed on alternatives.
Younger people are also ‘particularly concerned’ about the high cost of using a car – including insurance, parking and learning to drive.
I wonder if the study is mirrored in countries like Germany and France!
Who Is CB?
If you use Anagram Genius to find an anagram of “Jeremy Corbyn”, you get the following result.
Enjoy Merry CB
So who is CB?
At least his anagram wasn’t rude, unlike some other politicians!
Would You Let Arthur Daley Manage Your Pension?
This week the much-loved actor, George Cole passed away at the age of 90.
Most of us loved his most famous character of Arthur Daley, who went from one disaster to another as not only was he accident prone, but totally incapable of organising his affairs, so he avoided trouble with people like the Revenue and small-time low-life.
It struck me that if Arthur ran a Financial Advice company, that was as well-managed as everything else he did, would you put a brass farthing of your money with his company to look after and grow.
Certainly not!
So why does anybody seriously think about voting for Labour candidates in an election, when they can’t come up with a foolproof and sound method for electing their next leader? The system is so full of holes, that allow interest groups to hi-jack the process, that the final result could be far from what real Labout members want!
To return to my pension example, when you are voting, you are voting to create a good future for yourself, your children and your grandchildren.
So can you be sure that the political party you favour has the capability to manage the economy, if they can’t manage something relatively simple, like electing a leader?
If you go back a few years, the Labour Party of Michael Foot and the Tory Party of Ian Duncan Smith were a shambles, as they drifted too far from the centre.
Only when both parties elected leaders with a bit of sense; Kinnock and Howard respectively, did the parties reorganise themselves sufficiently, so that they were able to regain power a few years later!
Manchester’s Ticketing In Disarray
According to this article on Global Rail News, Manchester’s plans for smart ticketing have gone down the pan.
Could the failure of this system be caused, by not using the same successful system as London?
After all the minimum requirements of any smart electronic ticketing must include :-
- A Smart card like Oyster
- The ability to use contactless bank cards from all over the world.
- The ability to use ApplePay and the future AndroidPay.
London isn’t quite there yet, but when AndroidPay arrives and they can accept any contactless bank card, they will have set the global standard, to which all transport ticketing systems must aspire.
Any city or region, that doesn’t have a system that matches London, will lose out on the independent visitors.
The biggest benefits of contactless ticketing on buses, trams and trains are.
- Cash money and its associated costs and problems are taken out of the system.
- Attacks on staff are reduced.
- Boarding is quicker, so services are faster.
- Ridership increases.
- I have a feeling that by analysing the enormous amounts of joirney data generated, prediction of where new and improved services should go is very much better.
- The book is open on fare evasion, but I think it has dropped.
So come on Manchester, join the twenty-first century!
All I Need In A Hotel
I’m only a man with simple tastes.
That’s all I need for a night.
These are my pet hates.
- Having to put your key into a holder to get electricity.
- Taps and showers that need glasses to work out how they work.
- Televisions without Freeview in the UK.
- Rooms that are too hot.
The Anonymous Widower 