Fascinating how that is 3 minutes, yet at Aldershot it is 4 minutes. If it were 3 minutes at Aldershot then people would officially be able to catch the train that pulls in just after it. Thus officially cutting their journey time down a reasonable amount. I quoted the times further up.Its sloppy wording, but I also believe that the intended meaning is to use 5 minutes if there is no specified minimum connection time in the NRT.
One that I've learnt not to rely on is the 3 minutes allowed at Norwood Junction. Given that trains through East Croydon usually depart slightly late, National Rail's 06:04 ex-Purley itinerary for my commute to London Bridge is usually impossible. I'd support raising the minimum connection time at this station.
Also, why do some slow people with luggage or whatnot who have all the time in the world insist on exiting at the best door and then causing a blockage in subways and on staircases. Let faster people past first!
I find 5 minutes at Woking is fine off peak but for certain peak trains that can get held up by late running stopping services, it's not enough. However that's not every day and shouldn't minimum connection times be about the most common thing?
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Of course some stations and multiple connection times. At Gatwick it's 5 minutes from one Southern train to another. But should you consider coming off or joining a Great Western Railway service, it suddenly becomes 10 minutes. Needless to say the GWR service departs from platform 2 mostly, which is also one of the platforms used by Southern. So getting from platform to 1-2 is just as difficult no matter which TOC one uses.Precisely.
Although some train operators insist that the minimum connection times at stations they manage be set at a figure to 'cater for the less mobile' (elderly, disabled, lots of luggage, etc.), these still aren't long enough for many of these passengers (especially wheelchair users or slow walkers) and yet these train operators provide no ability for passengers to request longer connection times when booking tickets online or over the phone! On the other hand, the minimum connection times these train operators set do have the consequence of lengthening journey times for commuters (particularly those reliant on 'Advance' tickets, for which there is usually an obligation to wait for the booked connecting train).
This gives the impression that these train operators couldn't care less about assisting inexperienced or vulnerable passengers, and that their main concern is to forbid connections that may regularly be missed because of poor reliability. For example, compare the minimum connection times at VTWC-operated stations (Crewe [10], Carlisle [8], Preston [8], Wolverhampton [7]) with the minimum connection times at comparably complex stations along the same route which are managed by other train operators (Chester [5 - ATW], Milton Keynes [5 - LM], Watford Junction [5 - LM]). Speaking for myself, I don't find Crewe, which in its current set-up is actually quite a compact station, as difficult to navigate as Manchester Piccadilly or, worse, Clapham Junction (both of which also have minimum connection times of 10 minutes).
You could also compare a GWR-managed station (Bristol Parkway [7]), which has only three platforms, with an ATW-managed station (Newport [5]), which has four platforms. The Newport minimum connection time is optimistic, but useful nonetheless for regular passengers.
The best example I have of a station with a minimum connection time which caters for commuters is Stratford. A labyrinth, with an eye-watering number of passengers (for the entire station complex, well over quadruple that of Manchester Piccadilly or Clapham Junction). And the minimum connection time is...
...7 minutes!
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In these days of journey planners and phone apps, I can't help but feel that Minimum Connection Times could be a little more "intelligent"
E.g. at Crewe, a standard value of 8 minutes applies to all connections, which is fair enough for interchanging between Platform 3 and Platform 10, for example.
However, one could comfortably make a 3-4 minute connection between Platforms 1 and 5 for example. However currently the 8 minutes rules out some otherwise comfortable journey opportunities being shown in journey planners.
So is there an opportunity for 'variable' minimum connection times, depending upon the booked platforms of the services being connected between? It could even be variable based on the likelihood of a platform alteration or inward delay to a particular service. Surely not beyond the wit of some whizzy journey planner coding?
I think they are both great ideas. I've often though basing it on now close a platform is. For example 1-2 minutes to get from platform 12 to 11 at Clapham Junction is fine. 10 minutes is overkill.Indeed not, though it would require a lot of data with regard to track layouts for which certain platform alterations are impossible. But there do exist these connections - for instance, from the 1816 EUS-NMP onto the Southern to MKC, a one minute connection would be perfectly adequate, as operationally the Southern will always be held unless the fast is *very* late.
I guess it would be possible to move away from the number of minutes and build a database of confidence values in particular connections to feed the planners, though you'd still need an outline "definitely OK" cut-off time for each station for those not using planners.
If you wish to allow for trains being late then find the average delay across several years or the current year and set the mimum to that + 1 to 2 minutes.
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