The London borough of Hounslow punches well above its weight for stately homes; Chiswick House, Osterley Park, Boston Manor. But there's one I'd never properly been to, even after fifteen years of blogging, and it's probably the best of all. It's Syon House, on the Thames between Brentford and Isleworth, and it packs a whole lot of history within its landscaped grounds.
In the 15th century an impressive abbey was built here at Syon which, thanks to royal patronage, became the wealthiest convent in England. It didn't last long, alas, courtesy of the Privatisation of the Monasteries. Chief protagonist Henry VIII imprisoned Catherine Howard here before her execution, and his coffin rested for one night in Syon Abbey on its final journey to Windsor, reputedly oozing fluids from the bloated body. Within 10 years all trace of the abbey had been removed, and a Renaissance style mansion was built in its place.
The 9th Earl of Northumberland acquired the house in 1594, and it's been in the Percy family ever since. It's not their main residence - understandably that's Alnwick Castle - but various heirs have lived here over the years, and the house has been open to the public since 1951. It's damned impressive inside too, a sequence of ornately decorated rooms packed with period furniture and copious works of art - precisely the kind of thing you have lying around when you're one of Britain's oldest and wealthiest dynasties.
The entrance hall is a double cube in Graeco-Roman style, a proper 'wow' with intricate stucco coving and bold mosaic floor. The next room is completely different, dark and square-ish featuring a dozen green columns topped with golden statues (and with a door in the corner leading down to a historical display in the cellar). The refashioned Syon was one of Robert Adam's first commissions, and the ornate interiors truly dazzle.
In the Red Drawing Room are mirrors the equal of Versailles, as well as 239 individually painted roundels on the ceiling. The Long Gallery is probably the most impressive room, over 40 metres in length, and with various finishing touches designed for the amusement of ladies parading through. It required two fireplaces to heat, and doubles up as a library, with one fake bookcase concealing a door out into the gardens. It's said that Lady Jane Grey was offered the English throne in this room, maybe, perhaps.
She's not the only royal with links to the place. Queen Victoria was sent here at the age of 12 to learn courtly etiquette, and her bedroom remains much as she'd have known it on the first floor. The corridors are a bit more spartan up here, passing bedrooms the 20th century Percy family would once have used, indeed their very-1980s selection of reading matter has never been cleared away from a few lowly shelves along Nursery Passage.
Be sure to chat to the volunteers scattered about the place, they're excellent and know their stuff, and there's a heck of a lot of stuff to know. Who's the lady in the portrait, what's the provenance of these curtains, why are there only columns on one side of the room, which American institution was founded by which member of the Percy family? The information sheets you wander round with are very good too - accessibly informative, but detailed rather than dumbed down. Thumbs up to the Historic Houses Association for their ongoing work here.
And then there are the gardens. More visitors come for the gardens than the house, not just because they're open every day of the week rather than merely three. The grounds are vast for London, covering 200 acres of 'unspoilt countryside', in reality landscaped to high heaven by Capability Brown. His tidal water meadows are off limits to all but cattle, and the trout fishery is similarly private, but a not insignificant segment to the north of the house is fully accessible once you've paid up.
Essentially the gardens are a long thin lake surrounded by wooded parkland, with a single path on one side and plenty of room to meander on the other. You'll know them well if you've ever visited Syon's Winter Wonderland, although I suspect they look better in summer daylight blessed with ducks and flowers. The goddess Flora looks down from a column at the broadest point, while grassy paths and boardwalks weave through attractive pastoral beds, and a couple of slender footbridges span the water. The chief target audience will appreciate several benches for a nice sit down.
Most impressive of all is the Great Conservatory, one of the first massive showcase glasshouses, combining symmetrical ironwork and a bulbous central dome. So pioneering was the design that Joseph Paxton visited for inspiration when coming up with his plans for the Crystal Palace. Inside the conservatory is still decked out with cacti, palms and subtropical plants, but also power points for plugging in hospitality-friendly tables and trolleys, should you have the money to hire it out.
An adult ticket for the house and gardens costs £12.50, with 20% off if you can prove you live in one of a dozen local postcodes. You can also get 20% off by claiming to have seen a Syon House advert on the back of a bus and quoting the code BUS17 at the till, which is what I did. A ticket for the gardens costs £7.50, and is available daily, whereas the house is only open to the public on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Don't come for the Butterfly House, because that closed ten years ago to be replaced by a Hilton hotel. And if all else fails the Syon Park cafe is hidden inside a Wyevale garden centre, which seems to be where most visitors end up, more's the pity.
Morden station accidentally ended up in a 'Special fares apply' zone, along with the trams, when it should have been in zone 4. An easy mistake to make when adding the tram network to the tube map for the first time.
Unfortunately, due to insufficient checking, the error wasn't spotted before the map went to print. Lots of copies were printed, all of which had to be reprinted later after the error was spotted.
But how many copies were pulped, and how much money was wasted? Well, the Daily Mirror put in a Freedom of Information request, and got theanswers.
1. How many hard copies have been printed/produced of the Tube Map which places Morden in the same 'special fare zone' as the tram network, instead of Zone 4? Please itemise these by the number printed/produced of each size, giving the dimensions in each case.
Product
Dimensions (mm)
Quantity printed
Type 1 Ticket Vending Machine
240×125
700
Type 2 Ticket Vending Machine
292×204
200
Type 3 Ticket Vending Machine
233×156
600
Quad Royal poster
1270×1016
3980
Pocket tube map
297×149
460800
Large Print Accessibility Tube Map
1012×627
8000
Add that lot up and the total number of Morden Error Tube Maps printed was 474280 - pretty much the half million copies the Mirror's headline states.
The vast majority of these were copies of the pocket tube map, the version available to pick up for free in station ticket halls. I've long wondered how many of these they print, and now we know, at least for one print run (prior to the error being spotted). 460800 copies would be enough to provide for 1700 maps at every tube station, not that that's how they're distributed, but it gives an idea of scale.
Meanwhile 8000 copies of the large fold-out Accessibility Tube Map were printed, as well as a few hundred of each of the types they get to stick on ticket machines across the network. The unexpectedly high print run is perhaps the Quad Royal Poster - that's the metre-wide tube map displayed on platforms - although 4000 maps would be enough for six at every station in London, so that's not an unrealistic number either. They're big maps, though. I wonder how much money was wasted there?
2. If the information is available, how many of these hard copy maps have been put up in public areas or on trains on the Tube network?
No copies of the map were put up in public areas or on trains on the Tube network. However a delivery was sent to Victoria Coach Station and Gatwick Airport, these were then collected.
I have a copy of the Morden Error Tube Map. I picked it up in a station on the Circle line where, inexplicably, the racks had been filled with copies of the incorrect map. This was on the first weekend the new maps were supposed to be rolled out across London, but had mysteriously failed to appear elsewhere. I'm not sure quite what lapse in the supply chain led to paper copies of the incorrect map being put on public display at this one station, especially given that the error was already public knowledge at this point. But it is simply not true that no hard copy maps were in circulation, because I have one. I may even have more than one.
What I think we have here is a prime example of 'FOI weaselling'. The question the Daily Mirror asked was "how many of these hard copy maps have been put up...?" and TfL have chosen to interpret "put up" as "placed on walls or in poster frames". No large maps destined to be "put up" ever made it that far. However, numerous pocket maps destined to be "put out" definitely did.
An employee at one particular tube station told me at the time, "we got a delivery but they were recalled before we could use them". It seems TfL only noticed they had a ghastly error on their hands after boxes of pocket maps had reached stations, and only just managed to recall the misprinted batch in time. That's everywhere except at one particular central London tube station where the staff put them out anyway, for whatever reason, and where the duff maps hung around in the racks for at least a week. TfL's FOI response is at best misleading, and at worst a lie.
The Daily Mirror managed to get a bit more information out of TfL once they discovered the story was about to be published. "The minor error was identified by TfL part-way through the initial printing in May 2016," they said. Minor error? Anything that results in the destruction of every single copy of a tube map is not a minor error. It's also the case that TfL were happily crowing about their new tube map in a press release and in a Londonistvideo before a member of the public pointed out the mistake. They missed this one. It got away.
3. Please give the actual or estimated cost of these hard copy maps. If not available please give the standard cost of printing each size of the Tube Map.
Product
Cost per map product
Type 1 Ticket Vending Machine
0.30p
Type 2 Ticket Vending Machine
0.99p
Type 3 Ticket Vending Machine
0.31p
Quad Royal poster
£2.06
Pocket tube map
0.08p
Large Print Accessibility Tube Map
0.25p
I've often wondered how much tube maps cost to print, so the release of this information is fascinating. If the cost of a pocket map is only 0.08p, that means twelve pocket maps can be printed for a penny, which is remarkably cheap. Meanwhile each big full-colour poster map on a tube platform costs just over £2... and in this case all of those £2s were wasted. Indeed I can now work out precisely how much TfL spent on the whole Morden debacle, like so.
Product
Quantity
Cost per map
Total cost
Type 1 Ticket Vending Machine
700
0.30p
£2.10
Type 2 Ticket Vending Machine
200
0.99p
£1.98
Type 3 Ticket Vending Machine
600
0.31p
£1.86
Quad Royal poster
3980
£2.06
£8,198.80
Pocket tube map
460800
0.08p
£368.64
Large Print Accessibility Tube Map
8000
0.25p
£20.00
That's a total of £8593.38, or about £8600, which is a wholly insignificant amount in the overall TfL budget. It seems the Morden error has wasted almost no money at all - less than, for example, the income received from four Zone 1-6 annual travelcards. This is no story of wasteful excess, so move along.
Except, I don't know about you, but those costs for the individual products look remarkably cheap. Taking the pocket map as an example, I don't believe it's plausible to print a full colour double-sided triple-folded card for a twelfth of a penny, even if the printing company strikes a really good deal. Likewise the maps on vending machines are large and colourful, so I genuinely don't believe the bill for 700 of them could be as little as £2, and 8000 Large Print Tube Maps for £20 surely isn't credible either.
Could TfL's response to the FoI request contain a schoolboy error regarding currency notation, where £ and p have been confused? That seems unlikely, and would lead to a total bill of £47656.80, or nearly fifty thousand pounds, instead. That's the sort of total a newspaper or London Assembly member might get righteously indignant about - fifty thousand pounds squandered by a public body because its checking procedures were insufficiently rigorous.
Except there was a caveat to TfL's answer to question 3, which was this.
Please note we did not pay for the incorrect maps. We were able to work with our print suppliers to have the required numbers and types of maps produced within the original agreed budget.
Whether the total was £8600 or £48000, it seems that the taxpayer didn't end up footing the bill. Some arrangement was reached, the specific details of which have not been revealed, and it seems only the printers were out of pocket.
My assumption had been that TfL were plainly to blame, either their design team for placing Morden in the wrong zone or their proofreaders for overlooking the error. I guess it is possible that the mistake was at the printers' end - perhaps they sent the wrong version of the design to the presses. But all the evidence, specifically the fact that the final printed maps were initially despatched to stations, suggests that nobody at TfL noticed the Morden error until someone else pointed it out.
The Daily Mirror managed to extract a little more detail from TfL about printing costs for the misprinted maps, specifically this. "These were subsequently recycled (the pocket maps are printed on 100% recycled paper) and through the procurement efficiencies that we have been making, we were able to recover these costs and still produce the required number of Tube maps within our overall print budget."
This version of events suggests all TfL are admitting is that their budget wasn't exceeded, and maybe there was a cost but it was covered by other savings. Who knows? The whole point of FOI responses is to be vague and evasive, and TfL have certainly achieved that here. They may also have made an error in their presentation of the information, which in an FOI response about an error would be both ironic and embarrassing.
All we do know for certain is that almost half a million tube maps had to be withdrawn and recycled because of a mistake, and that several thousand pounds which might have been spent elsewhere was lost. What Morden confirms is that it pays to check stuff carefully before you print it, and that insufficient checking costs.
What are the top 10 must-see attractions for visitors to London?
Obviously it depends on what kind of visitor you are. A Chinese tourist is going to want to see something different to a family from Northamptonshire. But generally, overall, all things considered, which 10 places would they be?
These are the 10 most-visited attractions in London last year, according to the annual ALVA list.
1 British Museum 2 National Gallery 3 Tate Modern 4 Natural History Museum 5 Southbank Centre 6 Somerset House 7 Science Museum 8 Victoria and Albert Museum 9 Tower of London 10 Royal Museums Greenwich
That's a pretty good list of world-class attractions... but flawed, because only members of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions are included.
Hence TfL's list of the 10 most popular attractions is subtly different.
1 British Museum 2 Somerset House 3 National Gallery 4 London Eye 5 Tate Modern 6 Tower of London 7 Natural History Museum 8 Victoria and Albert Museum 9 Science Museum 10 Madame Tussauds
Two of Merlin Entertainments London attractions now appear, the London Eye and Madame Tussauds. You might not rate them, but tourists certainly do, as the number of visitors confirms.
The Visit London website, our capital's global tourist ambassador, provides its own list of Top 10 Free Attractions.
1 British Museum 2 National Gallery 3 Tate Modern 4 Natural History Museum 5 Southbank Centre 6 Somerset House 7 Science Museum 8 Victoria and Albert Museum 9 Royal Museums Greenwich 10 National Portrait Gallery
That's almost exactly the same as the ALVA list, but the Tower of London isn't eligible because it costs, so the National Portrait Gallery edges in.
The Visit London website also has a list of Top 10 Bookable Attractions (because flogging tickets is how it makes its money).
1 Buckingham Palace Tour 2 Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour 3 Warner Bros Studio Tour 4 Kensington Palace 5 London Eye 6 Tower of London 7 Sea Life London 8 ZSL London Zoo 9 Madame Tussauds 10 The View from the Shard
Focusing on paid attractions puts a very different slant on things, and looks a lot more like a list of 'Stuff That Tourists do'. That Harry Potter tour is a naughty inclusion, though, because it's several miles into Hertfordshire.
So far we've only considered attractions you can go inside. What of iconic attractions most tourists only point a camera at, like Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parliament? Surely some of these deserve to be included. Or London's great churches - Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral - which surely more tourists come to see than our museums?
So, combining all of the above, here's my attempt at a list of London's Top 10 Must-See Attractions.
1 Houses of Parliament 2 Buckingham Palace 3 Tower of London 4 Tower Bridge 5 River Thames 6 St Paul's Cathedral 7 Westminster Abbey 8 Trafalgar Square 9 British Museum 10 London Eye
I'm sure you'll disagree. I could be persuaded to change my mind.
And finally, a top 10 list of Must-See Attractions Only Tourists Do.
1 Madame Tussauds 2 Changing The Guard 3 M&Ms World 4 Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour 5 The London Dungeon 6 Harrods 7 Shrek's Adventure 8 Ripley's Believe It or Not 9 The Dangleway 10 Camden Market
As you cannot fail to be aware, Waterloo station is partly closed at the moment. Ten of the platforms have been shut for three weeks so they can be lengthened and the track layout outside the station can be enhanced.
Hell on earth, they promised us.
"Waterloo will be exceptionally busy"
"You will be required to queue to enter or leave the station, particularly at the busiest times"
"You will have a better journey if you can avoid the station during this time"
Wrong on every count, it seems.
London's not seen transport gridlock paranoia on this scale since the Olympics. In 2012 they promised us the world would end, or at least that there'd be hour long queues outside Mile End station. When the Games finally arrived the trains were busy but they weren't that bad, almost as if the warnings had been entirely fictional, designed solely to frighten passengers away.
According to the media yesterdaymorning you'd be forgiven for assuming the same thing had happened again. A bunch of Cassandras moaning for months how bad everything's going to be, and then empty concourses and trains with more free seats than usual. Either the predictions were incompetent, or else a carefully orchestrated campaign of scare tactics worked as planned and prevented railhead lockdown. I like to think the latter.
I went to check.
"Waterloo will be exceptionally busy", they said. It wasn't. Admittedly I turned up mid-afternoon, rather than in the rush hour, but Waterloo wasn't even busy, let alone exceptionally so. This is the problem with oversimplified warnings. Presumably "Waterloo will be exceptionally busy at peak times" was ruled out for being too complicated, or not scary enough.
"You will be required to queue to enter or leave the station, particularly at the busiest times", they said. I wasn't. Admittedly I turned up mid-afternoon, rather than in the rush hour, but nobody was queuing anywhere. This is the problem with over-presumptuous warnings. I guess "You may be required to queue to enter or leave the station, particularly at the busiest times" was ruled out for being too vague, and not scary enough.
"You will have a better journey if you can avoid the station during this time", they said. Again, not so. I had a totally excellent journey, specifically because I had turned up during the three weeks they didn't want me to turn up during. Specifically I got to catch a train from platforms 20-24 - the old Eurostar terminus - which is something I hadn't done in well over a decade.
Eurostar trains were diverted from Waterloo International to St Pancras international in 2007, since which time the old terminus has been essentially mothballed, and only dusted off for events such as performances of The Railway Children. It had been intended to return them to general service considerably earlier, but a substantial amount of track reengineering was necessary, and money's tight. However, full reopening is on the cards for December next year, which'll help boost Waterloo's capacity, and enough preparatory work's been done for them to be reopened during this summer's upgrade work.
Platforms 20-24 are a bit of a hike from the rest of the station. You can't walk down the steps that used to be here when this was the gateway to Paris, you have to walk around the back and then up a long approach towards a new row of ticket barriers, and then forwards some more. During the current awkwardness platforms aren't being announced until a few minutes before trains depart, which isn't at all helpful, so try not to be up the wrong end of the station if you can. But when you do get there, ooh yes, very late 20th century, very chic.
The roof is glass and steel, of course, comprising 37 non-identical arches and tapering off into the middle distance. It's bright and airy, very spacious, and as yet unencumbered by adverts for new cars or Lucozade. The platforms are also suitably long, which they had to be to fit Eurostar trains, so you're unlikely to have to walk all the way to the end. The vaulted structure won RIBA's Building of the Year in 1994, so it's a shame it hasn't been used for so long, and great that it'll be in permanent use again.
Did I also mention how incredibly unbusy it was?
It would of course be wrong to base criticism of the scare campaign on one mid-afternoon jaunt. So I spent a bit of time heading out to Clapham Junction (which wasn't busy, but had barriers up along the overbridge in case it was), and to Vauxhall (which wasn't busy, but was full of extra staff standing around in blue tabards hoping to be helpful). I even went to poor old Queenstown Road, which is one of the handful of stations that's completely closed for the next three weeks. I was expecting to see banners hung outside warning passengers away, and a member of staff or two in case anyone turned up, but no. Access to the platform was shut off, the front doors were closed, nobody was outside, and all the useful warning notices were locked inside the ticket hall.
And then, at the very start of the evening peak, I went back to Waterloo. It wasn't busy, but then it wouldn't normally be at this time. However, in readiness for the approaching hordes, ooh, the escalators halfway down the platform were now operational. They're really new, the treads are almost pristine, and they lead down into... golly. A cavernous space exists below platform level, which when Eurostar were here would have been used for passport control, customs, and circulation. What would have been bureaux de changes or first class lounges are hermetically sealed off, and a walking route exists into the bowels of the station.
On the opposite side of the lower concourse are further stairs down - a hint that the 1990s weren't such a great time for step-free access - and then another long passage to follow. There are plans to turn this concrete undercroft into a shopping mall, because that's what all unused bits of mainline stations get turned into these days, and there are certainly enough potential units to create quite a retail cluster. A lot of dressing-up will be needed, however, because the current ambience is more drab service tunnel than boutique destination.
After a dogleg at the far end, the passageway eventually leads out into the peak hour subway that links all of Waterloo's platforms at basement level. A slight technical hitch yesterday was that all the doors out of that subway were locked, which especially annoyed all the passengers who'd just been funnelled down into it. "Someone's gone to get a key," was the apologetic response from one of the blue-tabarded staff, who smiled with obvious relief when that someone finally turned up and let us escape. We emerged immediately opposite the ramps down to the Waterloo and City line, as our novel subterranean trek came to an end.
I understand that the evening peak at Waterloo yesterday turned into a chaotic maelstrom. The station was exceptionally busy, homebound commuters were required to queue, and they might have had a better journey if they'd avoided the station. Perhaps all those scare stories were absolutely true after all. But if you come down outside the busiest times, you too can experience a wing of Waterloo that's simultaneously the past, and very much the future.
10♣ Camberwell My next turned-over card revealed the Metropolitan Boroughof Camberwell, previously home to the Liberty of Peckham and the Hamlet of Dulwich, now the southern half of the borough of Southwark. Camberwell remains not as well connected as it could be, so I've been off to visit a) places where old stations used to be b) the bit of Camberwell that's over a mile from any station c) places where new stations might be built.
In a notoriously stationless suburb, it must be galling that there's still a street called Camberwell Station Road. The ex-station (on the line south from Blackfriars) opened in 1862, but swiftly succumbed to competition from electric trams at the start of the 20th century, and closed to passenger traffic in 1916. Freight continued to use a small goods yard on the northern side, but this too was closed and the station's been completely out of action since 1964. No platforms survive, but the booking office is still in use as a garage... or at least I think it is, it's hard to tell on a Saturday when the front is shuttered.
Camberwell Station Road is very garage-y these days - mechanics do tend to flock to arches under railway viaducts, which is somewhat ironic here given how road transport killed off the station. The former tram works at the end of the road is now Walworth Depot, packed with red double deckers, and retains a banner out front proclaiming the Year of the Bus 2014. Meanwhile the former Post Office depot opposite the former station is now Camberwell Bus Garage, home to another dozen southeast London routes. There do seem to be a lot of bus depots round here, perhaps because there's no station, but this could ultimately change if an imminentbusiness case supports Camberwell's reopening. It does seem utterly bonkers this one's been closed for over a century. [more history]
Here's proper carelessness, a second consecutive station closed in 1916 and never reopened. Walworth Road station lay just off the street of the same name, on a viaduct spanning four residential streets, and was a full four platform affair. Those surrounding terraces have since been comprehensively redeveloped, the Station Tavern replaced by flats and the street pattern radically changed, with Beresford Street (where the entrance was) now known as John Ruskin Street.
In what remains of the shopping parade, unisex Afro salons and spicy takeaways now butt up against Bob's Cycles, where men who properly like bikes stand around with mug of tea in hand admiring the silver steeds racked up outside. There'd be considerable latent demand for a reopened station hereabouts - the line sees plenty of Thameslink trains heading Herne-Hill-ward - but it's not clear the timetable could cope with the extra stops, and there isn't the money. There never is the money where existing residents are concerned, only where there might be the prospect of squeezing in more. [more history]
Zone 2's railway black hole lies at the eastern end of Burgess Park - the only part of inner London to be over a mile away from a station. My blog explored this phenomenon in some detail a couple of years ago with the aid of a special map, you may remember. There were once houses here where the park now stands, either side of the Grand Surrey Canal, but bomb damage and demolition carved out a new greenspace for Southwark in the 1970s. Alongside grew the monolithic slab blocks of the Aylesbury Estate, about as far removed from their Metroland namesakes as it's possible to imagine, a couple of which also nudge into the 1-mile void.
The least accessible spot, station-wise, is to be found on the south side of The Lake beside the barbecue area. Here Southwark council display a strict list of rules and regulations - no gazebos, no generators, no music - but this doesn't stop the local populace turning up and firing their coals, even less than an hour before it's forecast to chuck it down. Almost on this precise spot (in fact the floodlit football pitch) is where the R Whites lemonade factory used to be, the ultimate postwar refreshment brand, but with its roots in late Victorian Camberwell. As for the lake, in 1982 it boasted the world's largest plastic sheet lining, and is today crossed by a low-key footbridge. I checked on Citymapper - Elephant & Castle 1.1 miles, South Bermondsey 1.1 miles, Peckham Rye 1.1 miles. You won't be coming by train any time soon. [more history]
But you might be coming eventually. Plans to extend the Bakerloo line to Lewisham are progressing slowly, and one of the two brand new stations is pencilled in for the northeast tip of Burgess Park. Not actually in the park itself, you'll be pleased to hear, but on the opposite side of the busy Old Kent Road, in one of two potential locations. A recent consultation offered up either the big Tesco and its car park, or a light industrial compound the other side of Dunton Road, for the station currently codenamed Old Kent Road 1. And last week the results of that consultation were published, with a fairly convincing (2:1) public preference for supermarket demolition.
Tesco aren't that keen, unsurprisingly. They have other plans for the possible redevelopment of their enormous traffic island... which if the other site is chosen could make them lots of money. But there is a strong case for building the new Bakerloo line station on the Old Kent Road rather than a couple of hundred metres further back, not least for easy interchange with other forms of transport, hence locals may end up requiring alternative grocery options during the construction phase. If eventually built here, however, the lake in Burgess Park would be only 250m away, closing off Southwark's station-free black hole forever. [factsheet]
The location of the second potential Old Kent Road station is more of a headscratcher. Again there are two possible locations but this time almost half a mile apart rather than nearly on top of each other. Option A would be on the corner of St James's Road, opposite B&Q, with the station replacing Currys, PC World and B&M. This site is well placed for interchange with local bus services, and also close to a trading estate developers have a mind to turn into flats. On the downside it'd be relatively close to Old Kent Road station 1 - I walked it in comfortably under 15 minutes - which might be the site's downfall. When you're planning to open two new stations in an area that hasn't got any, it's a bit silly to build them too close together.
Option B would be further down the Old Kent Road, at the top of Asylum Road, and swallow up Toys R Us and its extensive car park. There's plenty of space, and most of the people who'd mourn its loss don't yet have children. It'd also space out the stations better, the next down the line not being until New Cross Gate, although the site is a bit close to Queens Road Peckham and there isn't the same amount of potential housing close by. This time, the consultation report shows, four times as many respondents preferred Option B to Option A. That doesn't necessarily mean Asylum Road will ultimately get the nod, but we'll discover more when TfL respond in due course. It's still not even confirmed there'll be trains by 2030. Until then central Southwark remains annoyingly disconnected, but also safe from the whirlwind the Bakerloo extension could bring. [factsheet]
What are parks for?
Parks are for markets.
Come to Victoria Park.
Come to the market.
Special food treats.
Food you don't really need.
Nice though.
Every Sunday this summer.
Tablecloth stalls.
Bearded men in aprons.
Lady bakers.
Queues for the hot stuff.
Artisan Scotch eggs.
Shroom bagels.
One-bite cakes.
Fancy a sample?
Pâté handmade with love from organic mushrooms from a farm in Suffolk,
Fabulous baked in a chicken breast wrapped in pancetta or melted on a steak,
Gorgeous on pasta, as a stuffing for courgettes, marrows, squash or aubergines.
Melt onto baked potatoes, great with watercress, or sizzled on a grilled chop.
Swap money for calories.
Bring your Instagram.
Come to Victoria Park.
Come to the market.
Q: Did the westbound Next Train Indicator at Bow Road get any better yesterday?
A: Possibly.
Q: Is it now correct, functional or usable?
A: None of the above.
Here's what the display showed during a 4-minute period between a Richmond train leaving and a Hammersmith & City line train arriving.
» Check front of train; Richmond 1 min; Hammersmith 2 mins
» Check front of train; Hammersmith 1 min; Richmond 2 mins
» Check front of train; Check front of train 1 min; Hammersmith 2 mins
» Check front of train; Hammersmith 1 min; Check front of train 2 mins
» Hammersmith 1 min; Check front of train 2 mins; Richmond 3 mins
» Hammersmith 1 min; Check front of train 2 mins; Ealing Broadway 3 mins
» Check front of train 1 min; Hammersmith 2 mins; Ealing Broadway 3 mins
» Check front of train 1 min; Ealing Broadway 2 mins; Hammersmith 3 mins
» Check front of train; Ealing Broadway 2 mins; Hammersmith 3 mins
» Check front of train; Ealing Broadway 2 mins; Richmond 3 mins
That's 4 minutes during which the first train should have read Hammersmith 4 mins, then Hammersmith 3 mins, then Hammersmith 2 mins, then Hammersmith 1 min, then Hammersmith. Instead we got a shedload of Check front of train, and a couple of Hammersmith 1 min when the train was definitely further away than that. Given that what most passengers want to know is "Is the next train a H&C or a District, and how soon will it be here?", the display has been of no help whatsoever.
The archaic signalling system in the Bow Road area is being replaced, along with that on the entire sub-surface network, as part of TfL's 4 LinesModernisation project. Signal cabins are being phased out, manual feeds are being replaced by electronic, and during the changeover period some of the datafeed reaching Next Train Indicators is horribly confused.
Eventually it'll mean better information and a lot more trains, so will be excellent, but 'eventually' remains a long way off. Specifically the rollout for 'Migration Area 6', which contains Bow Road, isn't set for completion until 2021, although it's possible that upgrades at Whitechapel will sort the problem quicker. An insider reassures me it's unlikely that the Next Train Indicator will be spouting gibberish for the next four years, but as things stand perhaps they'd be better switching the damned things off.
The Next Train Indicators at Bow Road station have long been, well, not very good. I have blogged about this far too frequently, sorry.
But this week... and I can hardly believe it... a long-awaited electronic upgrade has taken place, and we now have more information than ever before. Sounds excellent, eh? Alas what won't surprise you is that it's simultaneously brilliant and a complete fiasco, depending on which platform you're on.
Up until 2005 the Next Train Indicators at Bow Road were old-fashioned lightboxes. They showed the destination of the next train but not how long until it arrived. Westbound, they gave just under a minute's notice of an approaching train.
In 2005 new electronic Next Train Indicators were installed, with space for three next trains instead of one. However, the level of information provided didn't change - still just one next train, with less than one minute's notice.
This week, twelve years on, the electronic displays finally show the information originally intended. Suddenly they show the next three trains instead of just one. Suddenly they give over 10 minutes notice rather than just one. It should be everything we've always dreamed of. Instead, in one direction at least, it's an embarrassing mess.
Let's start eastbound, because eastbound works.
Earlier this year I blogged about how the eastbound Next Train Indicator at Bow Road was completely out of sync, announcing destinations seemingly at random, hence completely useless to waiting passengers. It might say Barking and mean Upminster, it might say Upminster and mean Barking, it might say Upminster and mean Upminster, there really was no way to tell.
This week, not only is the eastbound display showing the next three trains, it's getting them correct. If it says the next three trains are to Upminster, Barking and Upminster then they are... at least based on a couple of occasions I've spent watching to check.
Upminster 1 min; Barking 2 mins; Upminster 8 mins
Even better, the display now reveals how many minutes until those next three trains arrive, and this too seems correct (to within the usual London Underground margin of error). And this is actually a more useful improvement than getting the destination right. What most eastbound travellers at Bow Road care about is when their next train's arriving, not where it's going, so this is truly fantastic. Well done project upgrade team, well done.
But on the westbound platform, wtf.
On the westbound platform, yes, the next three destinations are shown, plus how far away they supposedly are. But those times and destinations seemingly bear no relation to reality, none whatsoever. It's as if someone is sitting in the control room operating a fruit machine, spinning the names and numbers round for a bit of fun.
Here's the kind of thing I mean.
The following action played out on the electronic display over the course of 10 minutes, inbetween one Hammersmith & City line train departing and the next arriving. I swear I am not making this up.
Ealing Broadway 2 mins; Wimbledon 3 mins; Richmond 7 mins
That's a good start. After an H&C train has departed Bow Road, that's pretty much exactly what the timetable says.
Wimbledon 3 mins; Richmond 7 mins; Hammersmith 9 mins
Hang on what? The first train to Ealing just vanished, even though it never arrived at the platform.
Check front of train 3 mins; Richmond 4 mins, Ealing Broadway 11 mins
Hang on what? The destination of the first train has blipped out, the Richmond train has suddenly jumped 3 minutes closer, and the Hammersmith train has disappeared.
Check front of train 2 mins; Richmond 3 mins; Hammersmith 8 mins
A train now pulls into the platform. It is not 2 minutes away. It is going to Ealing Broadway.
Even as the doors open the display suddenly changes again, to something differently incorrect.
Richmond 3 mins; Hammersmith 6 mins; Richmond 12 mins
At least the order of the trains is still consistent, potentially.
Check front of train 2 mins; Hammersmith 6 mins; Richmond 12 mins
And again. That Hammersmith train we're waiting for does appear to be six minutes distant.
Check front of train 2 mins; Hammersmith 5 mins; Richmond 12 mins
And edging closer. Unannounced, a Wimbledon train suddenly arrives.
Check front of train 1 mins; Hammersmith 3 mins; Ealing Broadway 9 mins
The display refuses to acknowledge that a train is here. Also, that promised Richmond train has evaporated.
Check front of train; Hammersmith 2 mins; Ealing Broadway 9 mins
Only after the doors close do we finally have recognition that a train is in the station. This display of 'zero minutes' never occurs again.
Check front of train 2 mins; Ealing Broadway 8 mins; Hammersmith 12 mins
Hang on what? Maybe that 'Check front of train' train is the long-promised H&C, but all anyone walking onto the platform right now would know is that an H&C is due in 12 minutes.
Check front of train 2 mins; Ealing Broadway 8 mins; Richmond 11 mins
No, it's vanished. Instead the train now 11 minutes away is going to Richmond instead.
It's at this precise moment that a Richmond train rumbles into the platform. The display continues not to have noticed.
Check front of train 1 mins; Ealing Broadway 7 mins; Richmond 11 mins
Let's hope the train 1 minute away is to Hammersmith.
Check front of train 1 mins; Ealing Broadway 5 mins; Richmond 10 mins
That closest train doesn't appear to be getting any closer.
Ealing Broadway 3 mins, Richmond 10 mins, Hammersmith 12 mins
Hey presto the closest train has disappeared without ever arriving.
Ealing Broadway 3 mins; Hammersmith 11 mins
Now the Richmond train has disappeared.
Check front of train 3 mins; Hammersmith 11 mins
Now the display no longer knows where the first train is going.
Check front of train 3 mins; Hammersmith 11 mins; Ealing Broadway 14 mins
I'm going to be waiting forever for a Hammersmith train, aren't I?
...and of course this is the moment that the Hammersmith & City train finally arrives.
The display takes this opportunity to tell more lies.
Check front of train 3 mins; Richmond 9 minutes; Hammersmith 10 mins
And if all that was far too complicated to follow, here's the next three-minutes-worth, before an Ealing Broadway train arrives.
Check front of train 2 mins; Hammersmith 9 mins; Richmond 10 mins
Check front of train 2 mins; Richmond 8 mins; Hammersmith 9 mins
Ealing Broadway 2 mins; Richmond 8 mins; Ealing Broadway 12 mins
Richmond 8 mins; Wimbledon 11 mins; Ealing Broadway 12 mins
Check front of train 7 mins; Wimbledon 10 mins; Ealing Broadway 11 mins
Check front of train 7 mins; Hammersmith 8 mins; Wimbledon 9 mins
Check front of train 5 mins; Hammersmith 8 mins; Wimbledon 9 mins
That isn't just wrong, that's insane.
I've tried to work out what might be going on, and failed.
I wondered if it might be 'the Barking problem'. At Barking trains are added to the line sort-of unpredictably, so Next Train Indicators there are notoriously unreliable. But Barking is 13 minutes before Bow Road, so all the trains are already in the correct sequence during the time periods shown on the display, so it can't be that.
I wondered if the display might be roughly right if you followed a particular train's progress. For example, try following the Hammersmith trains through the lists above and you can see them approach, approximately, with occasional disappearances. But only approximately. If you were standing on the platform, watching the churning tombola on the display, it would reveal little.
I wondered if the display might be sort of right but with trains intermittently missing. The timetabled order of westbound trains arriving at Bow Road is supposed to be ← EB ← W ← R ← H&C ← EB ← W ← R ← H&C ← There are certainly several echoes of this sequence in the displays above, but not quite consistently enough.
I wondered if the display might be correct in a location somewhere other than here. These virtual trains approach but hardly ever arrive, hanging around a couple of minutes away and then disappearing, as if this isn't the correct list for Bow Road at all. But that didn't explain it either, as the constant reordering proved.
So all I can assume is that the electronic information behind the scenes is incorrect. Either what's feeding in is wrong, or the software's interpretation of it is wrong, or the display isn't able to interpret what it's receiving. If I'm feeling charitable, perhaps we're in a testing phase. But I'm still left wondering, if it now works perfectly fine eastbound, what the hell is going on for trains heading west?
I saw similar rubbish up the line at Plaistow a few weeks ago, so perhaps this is simply the best the system can currently manage. What disturbs me is that somebody official somewhere has agreed to switch on the new system and leave it spouting utter nonsense, without even a single apologetic announcement over the loudspeakers in its defence.
Until last week, at least when you arrived on the westbound platform at Bow Road you knew where the next train was going. Now you have no idea at all, as a series of random and vague destinations jump erratically around the display. As customer experiences go, it's humiliatingly inept.
The lightbox on the platform 50 years ago was actually better than the 'improved' experience we have today. I look forward, one day, to being able to say the opposite.
Five years ago an old carpet warehouse stood empty on the corner of Cooks Road and Stratford High Street. This postwar brick building, beside a temporary carwash yard, retained half a broken sign on its frontage, and the door to the delivery bay gaped open revealing a huge pile of tyres stacked inside.
Yesterday, on the precise spot where those tyres were stacked, I saw two impossible people. A posh man in a smart tie and a tailored suit. A posh lady in a couture dress and pristine heels. People like this simply don't visit the area around the Bow Roundabout, it is not for them. I was shocked.
But a lot has happened on the site of the carpet warehouse since the Olympics. In 2014 they knocked the building down. In 2015 they threw up a pair of liftshafts in its place. In 2016 two tall apartment blocks took shape. This year the first tenants moved in. And that's why the impossibly posh duo were here.
This is Capital Towers, a development flogged off-plan in the Far East with the pledge that there would be "no social housing" inside. The very idea that this exhaust-choked corner overlooking the Bow Flyover might somehow be attractive to foreign investors seemed ludicrous, but without having seen the place, they bought in.
The smaller of the pair is the City West Tower. It's 14 storeys tall, tucked in between the River Lea and one thread of the Bow Back Rivers. The taller of the pair is the Sky View Tower. It's 34 storeys tall, a height Newham Council deems appropriate for this landmark location on the edge of the borough. You can't miss it hereabouts.
The development's USP is that the two towers are linked, at 4th floor level, where a communal roof garden is provided. It's by no means a large facility, certainly too small for a croquet lawn, but its existence allowed the developers to flog their flats for a bit more than they would have done otherwise.
Floors 2 and 3 are also joined, and enclosed for use as a car park. The kind of people who live in developments like this need cars, apparently, so there are two dozen spaces per floor accessed via a lift from ground level. The presence of this car park also conveniently avoids anyone's kitchen window staring straight out onto the Bow Flyover.
Facing the road at ground level are half a dozen commercial spaces, which could be used as offices or presumably as shops. Given that the only retail successes within five minutes walk are a McDonalds drive-thru and a tiny corner shop, I don't rate their chances of being rented out.... but we'll see.
This isn't everyday housing, oh no, this is 'luxury accommodation' complete with gym, well-being zones and residents' lounge. Obviously there's a concierge too. This may be normal where you live. It is very much not normal for the Bow/Stratford hinterland.
But if we locals are suddenly feeling like lesser citizens, Capital Towers has a sly trick up its sleeve - its two towers are deliberately unequal. The taller Sky View Tower is the place to be, the more expensive option, and if you've only bought in the smaller City West Tower you're a second class resident.
On the top of the Sky View Tower, available to Sky View Tower residents only, is a 35th floor roof terrace. Imagine the view from up there, and the potential opportunities for cocktail-sipping-at-dusk. Residents of the City West Tower can only imagine. Even in a beacon of inequality there is further inequality.
Residents of the City West Tower also no longer have a concierge. They had one while the Sky View Tower was being finished off, but he's now moved nextdoor, so all parcel deliveries have to be made to the other building. A sign on the desk in reception, visible through the glass, apologises.
So yes, the posh couple I saw had been ushered into the entrance lobby of the Sky View Tower, were sharing a joke with the concierge, and were about to be led somewhere exclusive inside. It's not all posh - an hour later I saw a man in hoodie and joggers heading out with a basketball under his arm. But it is posh for E3/E15.
The developers have done well to squeeze 191 flats onto this small brownfield site. But it feels somewhat insulting to have riff-raff-free flats for overseas investors imposed on the local area, when there are so many locals who'd love to live somewhere properly affordable instead.
Stare up at Capital Towers after dark and a fair number of the windows are lit, at least below the 20th floor, so this isn't an entirely buy-to-invest development. But every time the go-ahead is given for an exclusive gym-and-roof-garden development, the capital's housing problem surely gets worse, not better.
WALK LONDON Green Chain Walk[section 7]
Oxleas Wood to Middle Park (4½ miles)
The Green Chain is a network of footpaths threading through southeast London linking woods and open spaces. It's one of the capital's key strategic walking routes. It's less well known than the Capital Ring or London Loop, but much better signposted. For today's jaunt I chose to walk the section between Falconwood and Mottingham, which contains two utterly blatant examples of "walking round three sides of something just because".
You may well have walked section 6 of the Green Chain without realising, as it overlaps with the first two sections of the Capital Ring. Section 7's a bit of an alternative route, a detour via New Eltham, hence starts and finishes in two wilfully off-road locations. The opening instructions, for example, assume you're standing in the middle of Shepherdleas Wood without ever telling you how to get there. I hiked in through verdant tree cover from the bus stop at the foot of Shooters Hill. The paths leading off from the Green Chain signpost were utterly empty. A butterfly rested on the brambles, then skittered off. Something squawked. This is why I prefer a good walk to a cocktail pop-up.
Taking the path that isn't the Capital Ring led me downhill through peaceful woodland to a bus shelter where local teens were necking a packet of Haribo. Across the railway bridge a man was standing in the middle of the road taking a photograph of Falconwood station - which is something I might do, but rarely see anyone else attempt. Cars thundered down the chasm of Rochester Way. The gate to Eltham Cemetery was open, with ladies tidying up the bouquets and balloons beyond. A hearse drove slowly down Riefeld Road, negotiating the speed bumps somewhat awkwardly and making someone's final journey rather jolty.
Gravel Hill Lane is no longer for cars, or carts, which once headed this way towards Eltham's vanished windmill. Today it's a track hemmed in between spiky railings, with an academy on one side and a golf course on the other, dotted with streetlamps for those daring enough to cycle this way after dark. Where the woodland begins the blackberries are already starting to ripen, and the holly will no doubt peak in time for Christmas. On reaching Bexley Road, if Pippenhall Meadows look familiar it's because GC6 and CR2 run down the other side, barely 200 metres distant. This path's nicer. It also boasts a single Green Chain post with a braille disc on the side, randomly by the allotments, which I suspect the visually impaired would be extremely unlikely to spot.
It's now time to follow the edge of Avery Hill Park, and also a narrow ditch which turns out to be the beginning of the River Shuttle. The waymarked Shuttle Riverway starts here and follows it downstream, which is a decent six mile walk if you're ever out this way. Instead we're heading south, past grass where labradors exercise their owners, then along Sparrows Lane where collies lead their tired owners home. If the sports ground across the hedge looks a bit smart that's because it's Charlton Athletic's training ground, currently undergoing a multi-million poundrevamp to add artificial pitches, improve drainage and stamp the club's aspirations on the community. I hope nobody replaces the gates.
Now for the non-Green bit of this Green Chain Walk. The next mile is mostly along the pavements of New Eltham, past a fortress estate where the Stanley Works used to be, and all the takeaways a neighbourhood could ever need. In consecutive sequence that's Mandarin House, Crumbs, My Plaice, the disturbingly titled Cafe BigBoyz, Ruchita Indian takeaway, Pizza Hot 4 You and The Smoking Grill. Someone's done up the crossroads by the station all nice with trays of geraniums on top of the pedestrian barriers. And then comes the first of those "walks round three sides of something", traipsing the perimeter of a somewhat mundane recreationground for no especially good reason. A half-dressed bloke is doing keepy-uppies. The pavilion is locked and decaying.
The fingerpost on Green Lane promises an enchanting treat: The Tarn, via Fairy Hill, ½m. Alas Fairy Hill Park fails to live up to its description, with barely a contour, let alone a toadstool ring, being more the place to take your offspring for a slide, a kickabout or some lacklustre tennis. The Tarn is much more impressive, a small natural lake surrounded by woodland and gardens, and home to a busy collection of over-confident geese and other waterfowl. The poolside trail is properly ornamental without ever feeling artificial, aided by the sterling influence of local volunteers Friends of the Tarn. "Walking round three sides" here is a pleasure, ending up pretty much where you came in, and exiting up the steps past Eltham Lodge's former icewell.
Yes, Mottingham has some council blocks, as the penultimate stretch of this walk proves. But pretty soon a rusty gate beckons into Middle Park, or rather up a confined and overgrown path through a patch of somewhat shabby woodland. Partway in I met a tired grandad dragging the scooter his grandson no longer wanted to ride, and at the summit a field full of donkeys. Two of them paused their grazing to wander over to the fence and peer over, then followed me along for a while, then lost interest, while the horses in the paddock opposite looked on. And at the junction with King John's Walk that's it, Green Chain section 7 suddenly terminates, again not anywhere terribly convenient. Turn right and the view across central London is splendid, but that's a different walk entirely.
The Docklands Light Railway is 30 years old this summer, and TfL are celebrating with a new map.
The official 30th anniversary was on Sunday, three decades after the Queen first took a ride. Thanks to teething problems with the automated systems, however, the real 30th anniversary is on August 31st, three decades after the first paying passengers finally made it on board.
You can read all about the Queen's first DLR trip on TfL's new blog, Experience London, which "highlights some of London’s hidden gems, including lesser know cycling and walking routes, river trips and other great leisure experiences in the capital." This is also where you can download the new Destination DLR leaflet, which features "30 things to do via the Docklands Light Railway". And this leaflet - now available in several stations - is also where you can grab yourself a copy of the new DLR map. If you can't find a leaflet, the new map's also on the TfL website.
The Experience London blog's quite good if you like family-friendly leisure tips, or entering competitions almost nobody else In London has noticed. The Destination DLR leaflet's quite good, especially if you have East London offspring with a summer holiday to fill. But we're obviously going to spend our time talking about the map. The map may or may not be good.
The key change with the new map is that it uses different colours. Using colours on the DLR isn't new, the very first DLR map 30 years ago used green for the line from Island Gardens to Tower Gateway and red for the line from Island Gardens to Stratford. But the map soon switched over to using the DLR's trademark blue instead, so for the majority of the network's life all the lines on the map have been the same colour. No longer.
The increasing complexity of the DLR network has made use of a single colour increasingly confusing. The extension to Beckton, the extension to Woolwich and especially the extension to Stratford International - all of these made it harder to work out from the map precisely where your train might be going. Ever-changing service patterns didn't help, indeed a single colour map enabled the DLR to run flexibly on weekdays and at weekends as appropriate. But when service patterns stabilised, and the designers tried separating out the lines into distinct blue threads, that's when things got really complicated.
The previous map showed a line from Stratford International to Beckton but also to Woolwich, from which another line went to Bank, from which another line went to Lewisham, from which another line went to Stratford... it looked like blue spaghetti. Particularly at Poplar and Canning Town there were blue lines heading everywhere, like one of those 'follow the muddled threads' puzzles you enjoyed solving as a child. Too much information can be as confusing as too little.
Enough is enough, the cartographers have decreed, let's do colours.
There are three colours. They're all shades of bluey-green, or greeny-blue, depending. One appears to be the usual DLR blue, one is distinctly darker and one is distinctly lighter. The lightest shade is almost too light - perfect as the filling in the 3-line sandwich between Shadwell and Westferry, but unhelpfully faint elsewhere when it appears by itself. Had the designers used three completely different colours the lines would be a lot easier to distinguish, but only if you're not colour blind, which I guess is why they've used three shades that vary in contrast instead. Better for all, but also worse for most, that's how this works.
The three colours make a lot more sense on the right-hand side of the map - dark for Lewisham, medium for Beckton and light for Woolwich Arsenal. Alas this simple categorisation doesn't work so well at the other end, where all the colours intermingle awkwardly. The geography's all wrong too, with Stratford apparently very close to Bank, and Lewisham far too close to Woolwich. But this is because the new DLR map is a long thin rectangle specifically designed to fit into the space above the door on a DLR train... it had to be distorted otherwise it wouldn't fill the gap. Sadly no attempt has yet been made to create a better, less-stretched map for the public to download or view.
DLR designers do make squarish maps, like this Route finder displayed on every DLR platform. This map is better proportioned, made possible because all the poster frames on DLR platforms are portrait rather than landscape. It also means the maps displayed on DLR platforms can have Stratford at the top and Lewisham at the bottom, which is clearly easier to understand... but currently they still only use the same old shade of blue. Perhaps an update is coming later, but for now the public is being fobbed off with an in-car diagram rather than a specifically-designed 30th anniversary map.
The new DLR 30 map also adopts a new tactic for coping with The West India Problem. Trains from Bank don't stop here, whereas trains from Stratford and Lewisham do - a messy situation here addressed by the use of inconsistent arrows. One arrow is solid, whereas the arrow in the opposite direction is dashed, a convention which normally means 'only some of the time' but in this case means 'all of the time'. It's such an odd use of arrows that separate text has had to be added in red underneath, a sure sign that the designers know their diagram doesn't convey the information properly by itself.
The new map also continues the illusion that trains from Stratford go to Lewisham, when this is only the case for some trains during peak hours. For the vast majority of the week trains from Stratford terminate at Canary Wharf, which the designers could have shown by means of a dotted line, or a different line colour, or some other representation, but have chosen not to.
It might be illuminating to compare the new DLR map with maps for other hybrid TfL networks. The Overground map inside Overground trains is one of the ghastliest crimes against topology ever committed - elongated, twisted and perverse - whereas the Overground map on the website is roughly square and a lot more friendly. The map for the Tram network on the website, however, is as long and thin as that used inside the carriages... but then it is a simpler network, so that's OK.
The tram map already uses two shades of green, one to show trams from Wimbledon and the other to show trams that go round the Croydon loop. It used to use four shades of green, which must have looked hopeless to the colour-blind, but on the latest version of the map those four lines have been merged into two. That's simpler to follow, for everyone, but also conceals the complexity of the underlying service pattern. Meanwhile the Overground map has only ever used the one colour, that characteristic shade of tangerine. At least six distinct Overground 'lines' exist, but nobody's ever dared distinguish them separately on a map, and there wouldn't be enough on-brand shades of orange to go round anyway.
Nobody's ever dared to give the Overground lines customer-friendly names either, only horribly unmanageable combinations of the multiplicitous termini. Dalston/Highbury & Islington - West Croydon/Crystal Palace/Clapham Junction/New Cross, anyone? Individual names will have to emerge one day, surely, but for now the 'simplicity' of having everything indistinguishably orange has won out. Croydon's tram lines, meanwhile, did get numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4, which helped when trying to work out if your tram was going to IKEA or not, but on the latest map this distinction has disappeared.
Is it time to give the three DLR lines names? The Canary Wharf line, the City Airport line and the ExCel line, maybe. Except that's no help whatsoever travelling west, in which case it'd be more useful to call them the City line, the Tower line and the Stratford line. Alas, the routes are so mixed-up that geographical names would never work, so maybe numbers or letters or some other non-specific attribution would be better. At least there are no plans to extend the DLR at any point in the near future, so the situation can't get any worse.
One final thing. The DLR may have a new map, but the tube map won't be changing. That'll continue to use the usual blue for the whole of the DLR, just as it uses the usual green for trams and the usual orange for the Overground. TfL's overall colouring system reveals a web of inconsistencies, with the new DLR map merely muddying the waters further.
I'll leave the last word to Danny Price, former boss of the Dangleway and since promoted to TfL's Director of the DLR.
The new DLR map may be "easier to read", as the press release crows, but that's no triumph when they could hardly have made the previous spaghetti harder to follow.
