Elizabeth line reliability issues

[Taunton]

Abbey Wood branch was messed up again today.

Yes, seemed like a normal show. No Liz Line from Heathrow Terminal 5 from 0601 to 0931 this morning, right in the middle of the morning peak arrivals of aircraft. Look at RTT if you don't believe me.

The Express from Terminal 5 was yet again down to half hourly, as well. Signal failure on both the Mains and the Reliefs I suppose. "Yes madam. No spikka da English? Just put your credit card on that touch pad and get the next train. Going to where? Bond Street? Yes, change at Paddington. No, no, no, not change at Terminal 2/3, change at Paddington. Much ... um ... better. Touch out there, stagger with your luggage down two escalators, once you have worked out where the entrance is, touch in again, and on from there. The Express is such a wonderful service, madam, you often get a carriage to yourself and you only have to wait 25 minutes for it. What more could you want ...?".

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I can never connect to it.

Worked fine at Heathrow T4 (may not be typical of EL wifi).

 

[Starmill]

I can never connect to it.

I've never had a problem.

Worked fine at Heathrow T4 (may not be typical of EL wifi).

Are you sure it's not different based on the provider you're using?

At London Underground stations there's a different SSID for the connection of some networks. The Three SSID appears not to be in place at all Elizabeth line platforms and corridors, although in the London Underground managed parts of the the same stations it generally is!

This is a real issue at the moment as I understand that the train-borne WiFi currently doesn't have uplink in the tunnels, as the equipment to serve the trains in the tunnels isn't all commissioned yet. It appears it does work relatively well outside.

 

[tgsh2011]

Yes, seemed like a normal show. No Liz Line from Heathrow Terminal 5 from 0601 to 0931 this morning, right in the middle of the morning peak arrivals of aircraft. Look at RTT if you don't believe me.

The Express from Terminal 5 was yet again down to half hourly, as well. Signal failure on both the Mains and the Reliefs I suppose. "Yes madam. No spikka da English? Just put your credit card on that touch pad and get the next train. Going to where? Bond Street? Yes, change at Paddington. No, no, no, not change at Terminal 2/3, change at Paddington. Much ... um ... better. Touch out there, stagger with your luggage down two escalators, once you have worked out where the entrance is, touch in again, and on from there. The Express is such a wonderful service, madam, you often get a carriage to yourself and you only have to wait 25 minutes for it. What more could you want ...?".

I arrived into LHR T5 around 07:30. When I went to take the Elizabeth Line at around 08:30, all trains were cancelled. Large gaps on the Heathrow Express and was advised the Elizabeth Line service from Heathrow Central was also a mess. I ended up taking the Piccadilly Line. A few weeks ago, it was a very similar story. In my view the Elizabeth Line is quickly becoming a national embarrassment. Consider that this is the first experience many foreign visitors will have of the UK transport network. I am sorry but being unable to get a train in the middle of the morning peak on a working day is entirely unacceptable, and this has not been a one off. I do not know the technical reasons as to why the western part of the Elizabeth Line appears to be a complete mess (and to be blunt I do not care for the reasons), but from a lay point of view this so called brand new (less than a year old) line is simply unreliable. I do understand that the GWML/GEML are not "brand new", but the integration of the core and the western/eastern portions does not appear to have gone well.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Display boards at Abbey Wood are being useless. I arrived there 10 mins ago - 14:48. The station displays were showing next Elizabeth line train at 15:17 so a half hour wait (!!!). There was a train on platform 3 which a check on the national rail app showed was probably the 14:54 departure for Reading. So I took the chance and hopped on it and it has indeed just left at 14:54.

Not sure how many people on the platform didn't get on the train because of the wrong information on the displays but a fair few were standing by looking confused when I got on it

Similar again today. I turned up at Abbey Wood in time for the 18:18 Lizzy line departure, but the displays were showing the 18:30 as the next departure - not showing either the 18:18 or the 18:24 (I got the 18:18 which departed on time). At this point, I started to suspect a pattern where for some reason the Abbey Wood station departure boards aren't aware of the next couple of departures, so I checked when I returned later in the evening: Sure enough, the next departure, 5 minutes hence, was showing on the national rail app, and the train was already waiting at the platform, but it was not showing on the station departure boards.

 

[matt_world2004]

Worked fine at Heathrow T4 (may not be typical of EL wifi).

Terminal 4 has mobile signal in the tunnels

 

[Purple Train]

I was going up north today. The signalling fault at Southall was showing as fixed at 11.30, but all the ex-Maidenheads were cancelled until at least 12.30 except for the 12.00, which was around 15 minutes late and ran slow behind quite a few freights.
It must be said, however, that this is only the second heavy (by London standards) delay I've had on it that encompassed multiple trains (I've had one intended train cancelled due to a fault). I think that calling it a "national embarrassment" necessitates the ingestion of several tablespoons of hyperbole - the third leg of my journey encompassed a delay of nearly 40 minutes, so that put my worries about the situation on the Elizabeth line into perspective.
I would far rather call it "teething problems" - especially if it regards new software - than any supposed headache-inducing unreliability, though it seems that the issue out west today was on the "old" network.

 

[matt_world2004]

If there are problems with infrastructure in the core which causes knock on delays on the gwml/GEML does tfl have to compensate greater anglia/GwR and freight operators for the delays this causes to their service

 

[Thirteen]

I see people on here are trying to paint the Elizabeth Line as a failure again....

 

[DerekC]

I had some interaction with Crossrail about fifteen years ago, trying to persuade them to adopt ETCS throughout as the target signalling system (like Thameslink), rather than having to have interfaces between a bespoke CBTC system for the core and ETCS (as well as AWS/TPWS) on GWML. They were very anti that idea. They had a huge team of consultants who were dead set on specifying bespoke everything and really didn't want to listen to ideas for standardisation. The other problem (which has crippled ETCS to Heathrow) is that the main line railway is quite unable to recognise that complex software based systems always have reliability problems and you have to maintain a decent, expert cross-industry team to diagnose and fix emerging issues right through from commissioning a couple of years into commercial service. DfT was quite unable to recognise that on Thameslink and promptly cut off funding to the team as soon as the "ATO over ETCS" system was through its initial testing. System working? Issue press release, disband the team, job done!

I see people on here are trying to paint the Elizabeth Line as a failure again....

It isn't a failure - it will be huge success, but it will take much longer than it should have done to achieve an acceptable level of reliability 24/7 all year round.

 

[Jamiescott1]

Went to terminal 5 yesterday afternoon and it was a toss up between should I get liz line or picadilly.
I choose the liz line that left tcr on time and then crawled from Paddington to Hayes arriving 20 mins late at Heathrow.

I commute daily from maidenhead with gwr and when checking the gwr app its always showing liz line delays or cancellations from maidenhead

 

[coppercapped]

Reading these posts it would seem that three separate issues are being treated as one.

The first is the reliability of the track and signalling between Paddington and, at least, Maidenhead causing delays. This has been an on-going issue for many years and is due to a combination of equipment of different generations produced by different manufacturers installed over a period of years and the increasingly intense service operated over both the Main and Relief lines giving a lower chance of rapid service recovery. While undeniably annoying for somebody off a flight wanting to get to London the delays are not specifically an 'Elizabeth line' problem but are a result of extending the Elizabeth line core services over an existing multi-use railway.

Until last year these problems would have been reported under a different heading - such as 'On-going signalling issues on the GW', 'Infrastructure problems in the Thames Valley' or 'GW suburban services are rubbish' and would not have been treated as a specific Crossrail or Elizabeth line issue.

The situation in the newly built sections is different. The second major group of problems reported are mostly confined to the passenger information displays. Although the lack of information is irritating for the passenger, train operation and safety in this area does not, by reports, seem to have been badly affected. The problems reported are due to the lack of maturity in the software which passes train running information to the platform displays as Real Time Trains is reporting the correct information and the trains are running.

The third issue raised is the changeover between the diffferent signalling systems. In the current context this is a red herring - none of the reported difficulties in train operation are linked to the changeover process.

This whole thread is a classic example of how to make a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[Taunton]

They had a huge team of consultants who were dead set on specifying bespoke everything and really didn't want to listen to ideas for standardisation.

Same as happened on BART in San Francisco in the late 1960s, where a similarly huge amount of money was sloshing around and the principal focus of managers on the project was to make sure it was spent by your own design team and not by someone else's, ending up with a whole series of design ideas (such as a non-standard gauge there) which have been a nuisance ever since.

 

[Horizon22]

Yes there does seem to be a lot of pushback against the Elizabeth line which is suffering quite a bit from the reliability of the GWML for which they (and freight, GWR and Heathrow Express) have little control over.

This is not to say there aren’t issues in the core section, mostly due to train <> signalling software issues and obviously a two-track intensive railway with a stoppage will present a significant issue

 

[TFN]

Also it looks like MTR seem to be learning as time goes on with service recovery, with examples such as turning one off late trains at Custom House, Hayes or West Drayton.

Is it really a day on the railway if something doesn't happen on the GWML?

 

[mrmartin]

There's also just a lot of random train failures, which seem to require a long time to 'reboot', which causes big knock on effects.

 

[Taunton]

One of the issues on the GWML is the way that, when there is a disruption, the stone trains seem to get priority on the Reliefs, to the extent of running in Liz Line paths. This seems to happen because these trains have got to such a size that there is nowhere to put them. Even running to time, they seem scheduled for about 10-15 minutes more from Reading to where they diverge at Acton than a stopping Eliz train, so are highly dependent on getting through Reading to the minute just after an Eliz departs, and getting to Acton with one, maybe two now, in the blocks right behind.

Now who ever heard of freights running to time to the minute, especially after running for several hours. And if they get stopped and have to restart, even through being looped, such is the effort needed to get the gargantuan loads up to speed again that timekeeping goes out of the window.

 

[Horizon22]

One of the issues on the GWML is the way that, when there is a disruption, the stone trains seem to get priority on the Reliefs, to the extent of running in Liz Line paths. This seems to happen because these trains have got to such a size that there is nowhere to put them. Even running to time, they seem scheduled for about 10-15 minutes more from Reading to where they diverge at Acton than a stopping Eliz train, so are highly dependent on getting through Reading to the minute just after an Eliz departs, and getting to Acton with one, maybe two now, in the blocks right behind.

Now who ever heard of freights running to time to the minute, especially after running for several hours. And if they get stopped and have to restart, even through being looped, such is the effort needed to get the gargantuan loads up to speed again that timekeeping goes out of the window.

The freight regulation has always been a bit of an issue but it is currently more profound due to rerouting of trains due to Nuneham viaduct closure.

 

[rd749249]

Freight is frequently put into loops and sidings (e.g. Slough, Iver, W. Drayton & Southall). And it’s not just routes through Acton. I’ve also seen them branch off at West Ealing and West Drayton and because they’re so long, they take up more than one road causing further delay.

 

[Snow1964]

Ahead of next weeks TfL Board, Elizabeth line committee meeting various stats have been published.
per 4.2 latest period PPM (performace) is 89.2%

Also seems the new ELR400 software has multiple bugs (see section 3.4) and the 345s will need another software upgrade ahead of 21st May timetable change

https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/s19943/elc-20230518-pt1-operational-and-programme-completion-update.pdf

Also mentions team is transitioning to TfL and declaring final completion on 26th May 2023 (section 3.7)

 

[kevin_roche]

I had some interaction with Crossrail about fifteen years ago, trying to persuade them to adopt ETCS throughout as the target signalling system (like Thameslink), rather than having to have interfaces between a bespoke CBTC system for the core and ETCS (as well as AWS/TPWS) on GWML. They were very anti that idea. They had a huge team of consultants who were dead set on specifying bespoke everything and really didn't want to listen to ideas for standardisation. The other problem (which has crippled ETCS to Heathrow) is that the main line railway is quite unable to recognise that complex software based systems always have reliability problems and you have to maintain a decent, expert cross-industry team to diagnose and fix emerging issues right through from commissioning a couple of years into commercial service. DfT was quite unable to recognise that on Thameslink and promptly cut off funding to the team as soon as the "ATO over ETCS" system was through its initial testing. System working? Issue press release, disband the team, job done!

I'm still wondering when the ETCS overlay all the way from Heathrow to Paddington will be implemented.

 

[JN114]

I'm still wondering when the ETCS overlay all the way from Heathrow to Paddington will be implemented.

Paddington won’t be any time soon. I think it needs finalised signalling design for Old Oak station first.

Ealing to Airport Jn has the majority, if not all, equipment installed already; but not fully tested or enabled yet.

Last I heard there were still wranglings over teaching HEx drivers the route to Slough, vs teaching GWR (Mainline) drivers driving under ETCS L2; and that a decision needs to happen one way or the other on that before things can progress further. Plus who pays for that and so forth.

I don’t think there is an appetite for driving with L2 inhibited like they do on Thameslink, they want all capable traction (345 and 38H at present) running in L2 where infrastructure allows.

 

[800301]

Paddington won’t be any time soon. I think it needs finalised signalling design for Old Oak station first.

Ealing to Airport Jn has the majority, if not all, equipment installed already; but not fully tested or enabled yet.

Last I heard there were still wranglings over teaching HEx drivers the route to Slough, vs teaching GWR (Mainline) drivers driving under ETCS L2; and that a decision needs to happen one way or the other on that before things can progress further. Plus who pays for that and so forth.

I don’t think there is an appetite for driving with L2 inhibited like they do on Thameslink, they want all capable traction (345 and 38H at present) running in L2 where infrastructure allows.

Stage B as it is known is from Ealing bdy to Stockley Junction and ‘should’ be GWR drivers leaning ETCS L2, but other than saying ‘coming late 2022’ not much else has changed. There is mitigation in place if a driver isn’t competent in ETCS L2 if it works in the real world is another thing

800’s can’t transition from ATP to ETCS on the move so they will still run with ATP and AWS/TPWS protection over that section despite being fitted with working ETCS equipment

 

[321over360]

If there are problems with infrastructure in the core which causes knock on delays on the gwml/GEML does tfl have to compensate greater anglia/GwR and freight operators for the delays this causes to their service

For the GEML services, delays with EL services would more impact c2c and Freight Services than Greater Anglia given GA and EL run on separate tracks, however c2c and Freight movements to/from Barking would be disrupted if an EL was delayed and held a c2c service back for example, or would the delayed EL be held at the last signal before the tunnel portal to give Priority to the c2c which after Stratford wouldnt stop anywhere until it reached Barking, but if it was held to allow the EL to come out first then this would delay the c2c service as it would be sitting behind it at Stratford, Maryland and Forest Gate so EL would have to compensate c2c for the delay

 

[Taunton]

I don’t think there is an appetite for driving with L2 inhibited like they do on Thameslink, they want all capable traction (345 and 38H at present) running in L2 where infrastructure allows.

Not surprising, is it, given that the two huge accidents on this very line of the 1990s both involved trains running with the on-board equipment for the installed ATP safety system not being used. In fact I thought that had been specifically banned there to run with less than the most effective installed system.

 

[alf]

This morning, Thursday, I travelled from Paddington to Maidenhead on the Liz line. Passed queue of virtually stationary trains on the up line west of Langley Station.

Was caused by 5, yes 5 mph, temp speed limit on up line over the points that lead to the closed Langley fuel depot & up recess track.
30 wagon virtually empty container train creeping past my train must have taken 3000/10 secs to pass over the TSR. If my sums are right 5 mins plus the time to reaccelerate to 60 mph, line speed for freight.
Could not be at a worse time with the extra traffic due to failed river bridge south of Oxford.

 

[Taunton]

Issue at Langley seems to have been handled by cancelling half the Liz service, but letting everything else run. Meanwhile there was also a big hiccup westbound at Bond Street right at 0800 in the morning peak, which soon reacts back onto the eastbounds on Paddington to Shenfield, and another "regular" recovery, again this morning, seems to be cancelling all the Heathrow Terminal 5 trains in succession during their morning peak aircraft arrivals.

 

[Jamiescott1]

Issue at Langley seems to have been handled by cancelling half the Liz service, but letting everything else run. Meanwhile there was also a big hiccup westbound at Bond Street right at 0800 in the morning peak, which soon reacts back onto the eastbounds on Paddington to Shenfield, and another "regular" recovery, again this morning, seems to be cancelling all the Heathrow Terminal 5 trains in succession during their morning peak aircraft arrivals.

The gwr Didcot and Newbury services were cancelled too

 

[mrmartin]

Software bugs are holding up Elizabeth Line services, TfL says - 853

Software bugs that are blighting journeys on the Elizabeth Line will continue to affect services until they can be ironed out, Transport for London has warned. The line’s core section between Abbey Wood and Paddington was closed over Easter to upgrade the software used in its signalling system...

853.london

 

[Horizon22]

This morning, Thursday, I travelled from Paddington to Maidenhead on the Liz line. Passed queue of virtually stationary trains on the up line west of Langley Station.

Was caused by 5, yes 5 mph, temp speed limit on up line over the points that lead to the closed Langley fuel depot & up recess track.
30 wagon virtually empty container train creeping past my train must have taken 3000/10 secs to pass over the TSR. If my sums are right 5 mins plus the time to reaccelerate to 60 mph, line speed for freight.
Could not be at a worse time with the extra traffic due to failed river bridge south of Oxford.

Yep 5mph speed restriction although fixed overnight thankfully. With all the extra freight it caused a heap of delays, as that freight is pretty long and can’t accelerate up again very quickly. Western infrastructure issues are having a dramatic impact on Elizabeth line performance, which is quite a concern considering the timetable ramps up in a week.

I imagine that for a month or so (until Nuneham is fixed and freight no longer diverted) reliability is going to be a major issue between Reading and Paddington - the dwell is also removed outside Paddington so there’s no make up time there either.

Issue at Langley seems to have been handled by cancelling half the Liz service, but letting everything else run. Meanwhile there was also a big hiccup westbound at Bond Street right at 0800 in the morning peak, which soon reacts back onto the eastbounds on Paddington to Shenfield, and another "regular" recovery, again this morning, seems to be cancelling all the Heathrow Terminal 5 trains in succession during their morning peak aircraft arrivals.

Freight isn’t going to be cancelled, GWR mainline services were running for the most part so something has to give. Also if it’s a Relief line issue, then Elizabeth Line has to take the brunt of the impact (GWR if it’s a Mains issue). Perhaps it’s not fair, but it is how NR Western operates currently.