Friday, July 10, 2009
And now a message to East Londoners who travel on the District line a lot. Bad luck, it's buggered this weekend. There's no service between Whitechapel and Barking/Upney due to track replacement work, which means the reappearance of the rail replacement buses. They were out in force a few weeks ago, chugging out to Newham and beyond, and they'll be back again in equally scary numbers tomorrow. Slight problem - the District line crosses the Lea Valley at a point where there are no parallel roads, so the buses are taking some major twirly detours to get from one side to the other. "Journey times may be increased by up to 45 minutes." Oh joy.
But it's worse than that. The eastern end of the District line is buggered every single weekend for the next three months. It's our turn to suffer, like Londoners on the Jubilee line have been suffering for the last umpteen months. Not quite so relentless perhaps, but a lot of extra inconvenience attempting to get here, there and back again until at least the middle of autumn.
Here's a fuller list of District line weekend closures, according to the pdf list provided on the TfL website. If a stretch of line is marked in green it's open, if it's red/italic it's closed. And yes, if the District line's closed then the Hammersmith & City is too. There is no escape.
11/12 Jul Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 18/19 Jul Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 25/26 Jul Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 1/2 Aug Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 8/9 Aug Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 15/16 Aug Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 22/23 Aug Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 29/31 Aug Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 5/6 Sep Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 12/13 Sep Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 19/20 Sep Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 26/27 Sep Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 3/4 Oct Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 10/11 Oct Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster 17/18 Oct Tower Hill → W'chapel → Plaistow → Barking → Dag'm East → Upminster
It's the District line between Whitechapel and Barking that's going to suffer the most. My local station at Bow Road will be closed on nine out of the next eleven weekends. There'll be no interchange with the Central line at Mile End on those same nine weekends (and no trains through Mile End at all on Sunday 18th October). Further out there are nine imminent weekends with no District line service through West Ham (three of those with no Jubilee line either). There'll be no trains at Upton Park when West Ham play their first weekend home match of the season against Tottenham on 23rd August. There's no alternative escape route at Barking because the Overground's closed every weekend for the rest of the year. And there are fifteen consecutive weekends where it's impossible to get from Dagenham to Tower Hill on one train. Thank goodness for c2c services which should still speed passengers through with no delays whatsoever... so long as you actually live near one of their stations.
Yes, I know the work's essential and it's got to be carried out some time. And yes, I know those of you living elsewhere don't really care, because you rarely feel the need to nip from Stepney to Becontree or from Plaistow up to town. But for those of us out East it means added hassle and wasted time, wiping the shine off our weekends for weeks to come. You wait until they start on your local tube line for months at a time, see how you like it then. May there be plenty of rail replacement buses to go round.
Oh, and one bit of good news. I've been moaning for ages that TfL don't have a single page on their website listing all of the forthcoming weekend's engineering works and station closures. Turns out that they do, it's just that it's hidden and nothing links to it. So let me link to it for you. It's http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/realtime/tube/tube-all-weekend.html. Go on, bookmark it now, you may be glad you did.
14 June update: TfL have now released further details about track closures for the next few months, so I've updated the table above to take these into account. More track closed, not less, obviously.
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