Will Farringdon Station Become A Destination In Itself?
Until Crossrail is opened, I don’t think we can know the effect that it will have on London’s transport systems. I put a few of my thoughts in this post about London’s airports, but at the time I hadn’t read read Crossrail’s description of the new Farringdon station on its web site. Here’s a key paragraph.
Situated at the intersection of a new east-west and north-south axis, it will be possible to directly connect with three of London’s five airports (with single interchange to the other two), providing a highly desirable railway connection between Heathrow and Gatwick. We believe this interchange will become so important to London that Farringdon will re-emerge as a destination in itself.
I couldn’t agree more.
There will need to be a new Airports Commission, as Crossrail will be the London’s biggest gamechanger since the Underground.
Londoners Are Wimps About Shopping!
This morning I needed a few things at Waitrose, so I did what C and I used to do in Suffolk. I went to the store at the Angel early about an hour after it opened. It was very uncrowded. In Suffolk, half the population would have been there, as they all generally getup early.
But obviously they don’t in London. Coming back, the bus had about five passengers.
London Shows Contactless Cards Work On Buses
This article on Finextra, shows that what the Dismal Jimmies predicted when you could use your contactless cards for bus travel didn’t happen. Here’s the two paragraphs.
Transport for London is celebrating a successful one-year anniversary of the use of contactless payments cards on the capital’s buses, as it prepares to extend the technology to the entire transit network in 2014.
Since it was launched on Thursday 13 December 2012 when 2,061 customers made 2,586 journeys, more than 6.5 million journeys have now been made using an American Express, MasterCard or Visa Europe contactless payment card.
So now we have another good thing, that the banks have done for us in addition to the cash machine.
I hope, I’m young enough to be able to use my contactkess bank card on public transport all over the world. It would certainly have helped in Bilbao and a lot of other places I’ve visited this year.
Cinderella Is My Friend
Most Sundays, I go South and East from where I live to Canary Wharf, the Thames or Greenwich. Today was no exception, as I wanted to see the new roof on Canary Wharf Crossrail station and get a bit of shopping in the excellent Waitrose at Canary Wharf.
Today, I picked up the Docklands Light Railway at Shadwell, as I often do.
I’ve referred to this line as Cinderella before, as in the current vogue for grand railways and other schemes, she seems to get forgotten, as she trundles passengers reliably around the East of London, giving superb views of the canals, docks and buildings, both old and new.
But then she is like me; a London mongrel, with an ancestry from all over the place. The railway was born out of the need for to create a transport system on the cheap. The trouble is, that the engineers and staff, felt that despite the budget, they could create something special.
And they did!
They’ve now even created audio guides to each line, as this poster advertises.
Advertising The DLR Audio Guides
I don’t think they’d work so well for the Underground.
Cinderella just has so much to show you!
And where else can kids of all ages, play at driving the trains? Copenhagen and Turin.
But why oh why, is there not another use of the technology in the UK or the wider world? I just think, Cinderella isn’t sexy enough for the great and good. But then she’ll still be here, when all of the current bunch of idiots are pushing up the daisies.
I Meet An Ipswich Town Cockney
On the 38 bus coming back from the Angel, I was approached by another Ipswich Town fan. As usual in this sort of weather, I was wearing an appropriate woolly hat.
He told me he’d been born in the Royal Free Hospital in the Liverpool Road, which probably makes him a genuine Cockney, according to this map.
His parents had then moved to Suffolk.
I’m not, but how many Town fans are genuine Cockneys? For various reasons like the closure of Central London maternity units, very few genuine Cockneys are born these days.
The Bus Station At Vauxhall
According to Wikipedia, the bus station by Vauxhall station is the second busiest in London after Victoria.
However, it is certainly more dramatic, than Victoria.
It also must be one of the few bus stations in London with a Waitrose about thirty metres or so away.
As the bus station has routes to a lot of South London, I think I’ll be looking to use this bus station more on my travels.
The Draining Of Camden Lock
This happens every twenty years or so, to clear out the shopping trolleys and other rubbish. Sometimes, like this year, they change the lock gates.
It has proven to be a popular event this year, as the pictures show. There’s more here on the BBC.
It just goes to show, how everybody loves an event, even if it is not in the mainstream. I had wanted to go down into the lock, but all the tours were full.
Samvo – A Betting Cafe
I’ve seen this type of outlet in Scandinavia, but I hadn’t realised we had them in the UK.
Samvo – A Betting Cafe
They could be an interesting addition to the High Street if they serve good coffee and snacks, as they’ll obviously have toilets. I do sometimes have the odd bet and it should be a much better environment, than the average betting shop, which tends to be where a lot of the local unfortunates gather to loss their hard-earned money. This extract from this page on thee Internet, explainsSamvo‘s philosophy.
“They’re Betting Cafés,” he explains. “We wanted to create something different on the high street, a little more high class; a stylish refit with sofas, somewhere comfortable. The whole café style is more relaxed and it’s very important for us to build a nice atmosphere for the customers to enjoy. We also like the technological aspect so we make sure we’ve got HD TVs as standard and Racing Post touchscreens.
I think we’ll see more of this concept!
A Clock On A Pizza Hut
We don’t normally associate fast food joints, with nice pieces of street art.
A Clock On A Pizza Hut
But I did see this exceptional clock on a Pizza Hut in Central London.
London’s Name Advantage
It has just been announced that London has now acquired the .london domain name extension.
If you go through the major cities of the world, it generally would seem to work for many like Paris, Berlin, Rome and New York, but it doesn’t work for cities with longer names like Edinburgh, San Francisco and Copenhagen.
So do the short-named cities like London have an advantage? try typing in the domain name for the mayor of Vladivostok!
The Anonymous Widower 