Central line - shortage of serviceable trains

[Mojo]

It’s a shame about the new timetable, that’s now two consecutive journeys, one yesterday and one today that have had some massive waits because trains have been cancelled. The 60 train timetable was very reliable in my experience, with some very consistent gaps, now you have still a few trains cancelled but large gaps again.

 

[700007]

As the title suggests, the Central line seems to run in permanent 'minor delays' at the weekends the last few weeks. Minor delays may not sound like the end of the world if it wasn't for the fact it was heavily misleading. TfL also uses the deliberately meaningless phrase 'due to train cancellations' to explain the reason for poor service.

Both branches at both ends of the line have been suffering from really poor service, with the 'core section' from Leytonstone to White City being gappy as well here and there.

Hainault and Epping branches regularly seem to be close to every 15 minutes if you're lucky during the weekend day times. In the evenings it seems to be worse. Last weekend I observed a 40+ minutes gap on the Epping branch in the early evening, with the line officially showing 'minor delays' on the entire line.

I don't use the West Ruislip branch as often as I used to but a couple of people I know who do have been complaining of how abysmal the service is up there even during the week as of late.

Between the poor service and the worsening graffiti attacks, the Central line is really feeling very unloved at the moment.

 

[Bishopstone]

I've needed to use the Hainault branch quite a bit over the last month, and it's been common to encounter an interval of >10 minutes, followed by three trains within five minutes.

On the one occasion I needed the half-hourly Woodford shuttle service at Hainault, it didn't wait for intending passengers to cross platforms (via the subway) off a packed arrival that had been the first train in 12 minutes.

Ironically, there were leaflets being handed-out by TfL staff at Leytonstone one afternoon in February, explaining that after a period of acknowledged poor service, everything was fine again!

 

[Dstock7080]

Ironically, there were leaflets being handed-out by TfL staff at Leytonstone one afternoon in February, explaining that after a period of acknowledged poor service, everything was fine again!

Still being handed out this week:
“Central line update
More Central line trains back in service improving frequency on weekdays.
Fleet challenges and timetable update

We have been working hard to tackle the delays on the Central line caused by issues including motor failures and older trains needing repair. Last year, we introduced a temporary timetable to provide you with a more regular service.

Since January, we have more trains back in service and have now changed the weekday timetable so trains can run more frequently from most stations on the Central line, Monday to Friday.”

 

[bramling]

As the title suggests, the Central line seems to run in permanent 'minor delays' at the weekends the last few weeks. Minor delays may not sound like the end of the world if it wasn't for the fact it was heavily misleading. TfL also uses the deliberately meaningless phrase 'due to train cancellations' to explain the reason for poor service.

Both branches at both ends of the line have been suffering from really poor service, with the 'core section' from Leytonstone to White City being gappy as well here and there.

Hainault and Epping branches regularly seem to be close to every 15 minutes if you're lucky during the weekend day times. In the evenings it seems to be worse. Last weekend I observed a 40+ minutes gap on the Epping branch in the early evening, with the line officially showing 'minor delays' on the entire line.

I don't use the West Ruislip branch as often as I used to but a couple of people I know who do have been complaining of how abysmal the service is up there even during the week as of late.

Between the poor service and the worsening graffiti attacks, the Central line is really feeling very unloved at the moment.

The short answer is that the trains are fairly old (though by no means ancient) and have some fundamental design issues which mean they have never been able to cope with the demands placed on them. On top of that, there aren’t really sufficient drivers available, and the way rostering works means for various reasons this tends to be felt worse at weekends or during times when there’s a high demand for leave such as school holidays.

The long answer is, arguably, that TFL have buried their head in the sand particularly over the fleet issues, which really should have been effectively tackled many years ago. The remedial project now underway is too little and definitely too late, and had it been done many years ago then it wouldn’t have run into Covid which has made the whole thing more challenging.

The cherry on the cake is that, again arguably, LU has dumped a lot of this problem on the day-to-day management to deal with as it happens, which creates a constantly massive workload for staff like crew managers and controllers, and you can bet that’s under-resourced too. So a fleet that’s falling apart, not enough drivers, short staffing of control functions - this is why things are rough round the edges

Oh and the signalling also dates from the same time as the trains, though to be fair there is work in place to address obsolescence issues with that, but it’s another thing to give trouble at times too.

All this is fully within LU’s remit, so has there been good management focus over the years? I’ll leave this for people to decide for themselves…

 

[GFE]

Will be interesting when TFL resume reporting the performance figures (such as the average/weighted Journey time) following the cyber incident.
The old issue of what gets measured/monitored gets priority !!