Lots of people use trains/buses when in London who wouldn't regularly in the rest of the UK because they can trust the London experience
I've banged on about the platform/train interface before, so apologies for going over old ground, but this is such an important and overlooked issue
We all know how it works, we know how long the train should generally be, we know where to stand, we know the protocol
Put yourself in the shoes of an infrequent traveller though. Someone who doesn't know the railway that well and isn't obsessively tracking their service on Real Time Trains before it arrives
They don't know how long the train will be or where on the platform their carriage will come to a halt (or which end First Class will be etc), so they crowd the area in the middle of the platform near the staircase and wait for it to pull in, only then realising that it stretches some distance along the platform so they need to dash best part of a hundred metres along to the right door, causing the platform dwell to have to be a lot longer than usual
Even some regular passengers will be reluctant to leave the sheltered canopy in the centre of the platform for the "exposed" ends until the train arrives
But on the London Underground, you know that the train will generally occupy the full platform length, you know it's fine to spread along the platform, you know you can board any door and always walk along the train if it's too busy in the first doorway - given that a large proportion of travel takes place underground or in sheltered stations you don't have to worry about being rained on - you can trust the experience - it's simple
So if I was involved in stations I'd be looking at how to improve things here - signs showing where trains are expected to come to a halt - ensuring that the "screens" at stations clearly show how long the train will be and which end First Class will be at - consistent stopping places for certain lengths of train - so the melee of passengers becomes a thing of the past
Imagine how much faster trains would be if people know where the door would open and were waiting at the right point on the platform?
I'm not saying we could do twenty second dwells but things could be a lot smoother and we'd help the unconfident irregular passengers too - it can't be easy being one of a hundred people on a platform trying to work out where to stand etc
When this latest “great idea” gets shot down there’ll probably be a proposal next month to run intercity stock on the tube...
It was only a couple of days ago that there was a suggestion for an eight track tunnel under London to link the ECML and GWML services, so that you could take an 801 from the "West End" to Paddington or Liverpool Street...