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Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

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Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#121

Post by kjellsbells »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #100
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat generated by the LED ads is tiny compared to the heat generated by the actual trains and I think they handled that one very well.

Generally agreed. In DC we had a similar change over. My complaint is just that it is incredibly tacky. It's much brighter than ambient lighting is. Our metro system is facing a huge budget crunch (the Feds stopping COVID money, and the 2.5 states involved have been very unhelpful at providing funding). I get that advertising is an appealing revenue stream. I just wish we could do it in a way that wasn't so rambuncti…

Metro is a balm compared to the PenFed illuminated tunnel at Washington Dulles airport.

For non locals, this is in a long walkway between access train and terminal, is lit in bright blue moving images, and plays a silly song about interest rates at high volume for the entirety of your time in the tunnel. It has cemented my desire to never do business with PenFed, for sure.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#122

Post by Someone »

Wytwwww wrote: post #40
lhnz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very difficult to make thousands of up-front planning decisions perfectly. It'd be even more costly to try to perfect every aspect upfront within the planning stage and it'd be more reasonable to make best attempts but to provide for the ability (and budget) to retrofit bespoke alterations to fix problems that arise at a later date.

> difficult to make thousands of up-front planning decisions perfectly. So don't. Just use something well tried and tested and don't try to be innovative (in areas we you can't dedicated significant amounts of resources for up-front planning)

So, are you arguing waterfall is the better process for innovative designs, and agile should be used only for small renovations?

I think I agree with that a bit. For hardware, Apple might be an example showing that dedicating significant amounts of research to your designs is more likely to lead to good hardware designs.

I don’t see that happen soon in the software industry, though. We’re still constantly replacing libraries and frameworks with stuff that promises to, eventually, be perfect because the current approach isn’t perfect.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#123

Post by rmbyrro »

surfingdino wrote: post #82

These are Eduardo Paolozzi’s ghosts taking their revenge for the destruction of the beautiful mosaic at old Tottenham Court Road Station, obviously. Seriously, though the Lizzie Line is an example of really grand design but poorly executed. Here are some of my observations: a. The quality of material is poor and hinders easy maintenance. b. The high-res information displays show train arrivals in incorrect order, e.g…

Imagine that, in the past, the tube was steam engine powered.

If there are peoples who can handle heat deep there, they're the English.

But, yeah, it's stupidity.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#124

Post by google234123 »

Symbiote wrote: post #110
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally agreed. In DC we had a similar change over. My complaint is just that it is incredibly tacky. It's much brighter than ambient lighting is. Our metro system is facing a huge budget crunch (the Feds stopping COVID money, and the 2.5 states involved have been very unhelpful at providing funding). I get that advertising is an appealing revenue stream. I just wish we could do it in a way that wasn't so rambuncti…

Transport for London's [1] revenue should be £9100 million this year. Revenue from advertising was £130 million last year, so around 1.5%. It would be nicer if they would just end the advertising. [1] London Underground (metro), several within-London urban and suburban rail lines, buses, trams, river ferries, major roads https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2023/march/... https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-ad…

Just increase tax a bit more to make up for it :)

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#125

Post by surfingdino »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #54
Havoc wrote: post #17

I noticed some other weird design choices in the new tube stations as well. Eg air vents that are very fine and visibly clog up. It’s like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored decades of practical experience

Very many older (and not even that old) tube stations have glossy tiled walls[1], presumably because they're easy to clean with just a cloth. Choosing bare concrete looks cool, and you don't need to pay a tiler to install them, but anyone who has ever done any amount of cleaning ever will tell you a smooth, porous surface like that will look grungy soon enough and be basically impossible to clean by hand. [1]: not on…

If it was bare concrete, you could put tiles over it, but these are removable panels made of "glass fibre reinforced concrete" according to their proud manufacturer https://www.brydenwood.com/projects/elizabeth-line-cladding-...

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#126

Post by surfingdino »

bluenose69 wrote: post #44
Havoc wrote: post #17

I noticed some other weird design choices in the new tube stations as well. Eg air vents that are very fine and visibly clog up. It’s like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored decades of practical experience

I've seen similar things where I work. In a new building, the architects called for small air vents that would look nice according to some aesthetic criterion. Unfortunately, the vents were so small that, to maintain air flow, the fans inside them had to spin so fast they screamed. This made for a very unpleasant environment. This was where high-profile events tended to take place, to show off the bright new shiny th…

This reminds me of the weird AC behaviour at one of the London office buildings I used to work in. The AC or heating would turn on or off seemingly at random and when enough people complained about it (i.e. our CEO got sick one more time) it was revealed that the building is managed remotely by a company from Iowa and the thermostat that controlled our building was installed in their office and not in London. I was glad my contract ended and was not interested in renewing.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#127

Post by IshKebab »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #58
IshKebab wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hostile architecture? This is on the underground. Nobody is going to be sleeping on these seats.

The hostile architecture in this instance is the choice to use benches instead of seats with back support.

It's not hostile, it's just practical. Seats with backs would take up way too much space. And you don't need it anyway because the maximum time you'll be sitting on these is like 5 minutes.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#128

Post by AlecSchueler »

lhnz wrote: post #35
AlecSchueler wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely it should be simple enough to look at what alterations have been made on other lines already and start off from a basis that is at least as good.

The design and planning process for UK infrastructure is already notoriously expensive and we already do significantly more "planning" than we used to do 100 years ago (when we were actually capable of rapidly building high quality infrastructure). I would expect there to already be consultants doing similar to what you've suggested however the work is complex and many will be quite cut-off from the build process or…

Sounds like many of these issues could be described with better knowledge sharing and more tightly coupled processes between planning/building/maintenence.

It sounds quite fatalistic what you've said, that we've basically reached maximum planning saturation so we can only pay the costs afterwards when things go wrong.

But surely questioning these assumptions is good for our civic involvement and for the lines.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#129

Post by bluGill »

kergonath wrote: post #119
captaincrisp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the point is a bit subtler. We should strive for improvement. We should also understand that that takes more than the normal amount of resources to do something different and better & either commit to spending what's required or, if we can't afford to, use something already proven instead. The half-done or broken improvements still get called "innovations" and give innovation overall a worse reputation.

> I feel the point is a bit subtler. We should strive for improvement. We should also understand that that takes more than the normal amount of resources to do something different and better & either commit to spending what's required or, if we can't afford to, use something already proven instead. Indeed. I wish this point were articulated that way more often. > The half-done or broken improvements still get called…

What innovation is left? Concrete has been around for centuries in modern forms - we can tweak the formula a lot, but still the same basic idea as when it was invented 100 years ago. Most of what passes for innovation has been tried before. Other things were not tried because anyone who understood the problem knows they are cannot be cost effective. Unfortunately the people who fund this cannot be experts in the field, and thus can easily be persuaded to fund things by scammers that anyone who really was an expert could tell you in a few hours of study are a bad idea.

The problem isn't that the politicians are not experts in construction - there is far too many things politicians fund for them to become experts in even a fraction of them all (they also have to fund medical studies, military spending...). The problems is politicians don't respect trained experts, thus don't keep people around to become deep experts, and in turn there is nobody around with deep technical knowledge to say what is a good idea. Or if there are such people around they are not in a position where they can be listened too, instead any scammer is allowed to present their pitch for "innovations".

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#130

Post by surfingdino »

nsteel wrote: post #53
some-human wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Londoner for 24 years. I don't know what to tell you, 'Bro'. Yes beggars walk down tube trains trying to get money, but they don't tend to set up shop on the platform which is what we're talking about here. I'm also pretty sure most of the people that have asked me for a quid on the tube were not homeless people, just chancers and drug users. Besides which, once you were past the barrier, sleeping on the tube train i…

Some of the small, outer, (above ground) tube stations I use have periods where staff leave the gates open and leave the public areas. They even do this during busy periods. It is easy to get onto the tube network at these places. There's also stations that share common areas with overground trains that don't even have gates (West Ruislip, for example). And then people also squeeze through the pram/wheelchair gates o…

They are quite common on the Elizabeth, District, Hammersmith & City, and Central lines east of Liverpool Street.
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