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London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

metro.co.uk

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Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#61

Post by Log_out_ »

jlg23 wrote: post #50
cameronh90 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it entirely unsurprising that passengers take matters into their own hands. It can be a safety issue to be stuck on a train for a long time, and often there are no or very few updates from the driver while you are stuck. In London, most times I get on the train, I’m expecting it to be a sub-10 minute trip. I may even be just wearing a t-shirt and shorts since I was heading to the gym. Others with health issues…

> Similarly when this happens in summer, you can bet many people don’t have any water with them. When I lived there in 2010/2011, I regularly saw signs posted at tube stations "bring water, it'll be hot!".

London underground is heat saturated. Which also means free heating for deep heat pumps.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#62

Post by MichaelZuo »

uxp8u61q wrote: post #31
MichaelZuo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transport for London has a budget of over 10 billion pounds, how is that a 'shoestring budget'?

If the cost for maintaining the infrastructure in 10x that, then it's a shoestring budget. You have to compare the budget to a baseline, you can't just evaluate it as an absolute. Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?

> Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?

Other large cities with comparable transport infrastructure?

You, or any passing reader, can just spend 30 seconds with a search engine and find dozens of papers, reports, presentations, etc... doing this kind of financial comparison.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#63

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

yabones wrote: post #17
rsynnott wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London trains are mostly third rail powered rather than overhead line, right? You really don't want people walking on one of those. Like, you don't want people walking on any train line, but particularly not one with a third rail.

The old-style "tube" trains are all DC third rail IIRC, but the newer trainsets such as the Elizabeth and Thameslink are all overhead AC. So this would actually be one of the few metro trains where it would be remotely safe to walk the tracks provided all the trains were stopped...

If not all trains are stopped, aren't they in danger of collision if they remain on the train?

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#64

Post by lm28469 »

paganel wrote: post #35

And they want to move everything to run on electrical power (cars, heating), pure madness. Btw, I've just had a half-hour power-cut here in downtown Bucharest, it was fun getting up all those stairs with two bags of groceries but at least I hadn't got stuck in the elevator.

I hope you created a petition to mandate gas powered elevators.

I personally had a single blackout in my 30 years on this planet, I think that's a fair price to pay for 24/7 light/heating/water/&c.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#65

Post by martinald »

YawningAngel wrote: post #3
michaelt wrote: post #2

> Some frustrated travellers even smashed their way out the cold, dark trains and walked down the tracks to escape after getting stuck for more than three hours. It's a shame train operators don't feel able to make the common sense decision to give the passengers the option to walk before the three hour mark, without requiring them to "smash their way out". Obviously, some passengers won't be able to make the trek, a…

I was in a similar situation on a London train (different line) this month. The problem is that the operators genuinely do not know how long things are going to take. I agree that the TTR is obviously unacceptable, but the whole service is run on a shoestring budget and is constantly cancelled or late, so there isn't really the capital available to do better.

What are you talking about with "shoestring budget?". Over £2bn was spent on electrifying the GWML, nearly £20bn spent on the Elizabeth line (which included further upgrades on the GWML), and completely new trains on nearly every service were bought (at extreme cost). There must have been >£5bn spent on this line in the last decade. Per mile, it is probably one of the best funded lines in the world.

GWML is having constant maintenance problems. I don't think this is a budget problem, I think it's NR totally dropping the ball on keeping on top of stuff. NR is extremely poorly run and wasteful; I know many people who used to work for them but left to rejoin via a subcontractor (at a hugely increased cost to NR), to do the exact same job, because NRs payscales are extremely concrete so they constantly lose vital people to this - this isn't a budget problem as they're actually paying way way more for the same staff this way.

Subcontractors are also eating them alive because they have no senior, experienced management (see above problem). You have people basically straight out of uni "project managing" subcontractors for 7 or 8 figure contracts, completely clueless.

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#67

Post by switch007 »

On another forum, someone who was stuck on one of the trains commented that staff were just walking past the carriages not attempting to convey any information to those stuck on board, which compounded the frustration.

Railway staff will complain about the people who got off the trains because we don’t have a customer focussed railway in any way shape or form. Staff are 300% safety focussed and will expect passengers to spend an indefinite amount of time on the carriage with no food, water or toilets.

It’s simply unacceptable for 7 trains (1000-5000 people) to get stuck on an extremely busy and well-funded part of the railway network in our capital city and there not be an army-style, rapid-response team dispatched to help the vulnerable. Senior management know that the British will just put up and shut up - we should be much more American in these situations.

A report will be produced, “lessons will be learnt”, then the gradual degradation of our railway will continue.

Edit: for context, regarding high expectations: a 23 minute journey in rush hour on this route is around £27 ($34)

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#68

Post by mnd999 »

beardyw wrote: post #38

> Singer James Blunt and TV star Rachel Riley were caught up in the carnage Carnage? I think the Metro staff need to borrow a dictionary.

As usual, his tweet on the subject is excellent - https://nitter.net/JamesBlunt/status/1733129524467163589#m

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#69

Post by hedora »

Symbiote wrote: post #57
hedora wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the photos, "smash their way out" appears to mean "open the door with the clearly marked manual override level", and "stranded" appears to mean "had to cross a couple tracks, and walk to the nearest gap in the fence". The text of the article suggests they had to use the emergency windows / break stuff, and that they were stuck in a tunnel without a pedestrian evacuation route (which would be illegal even her…

Britain obviously wouldn't build a new tunnel without an evacuation route, but the existing tunnels can be 100 or more years old and lack them.

That's exactly why I read the article! I wanted to see the statement from the train company explaining how they're fixing that!

Re: London trains see power cut as thousands stranded in dark for hours

#70

Post by switch007 »

vkou wrote: post #28
lotsofpulp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the different protocols needed for a 10 minute outage and a 3 hour outage.

You can't tell at the 10 minute mark whether or not power will be back in 10 more minutes, or in 3 hours.

Once you detect that electricity supply is damaged and that it’s over 10 miles and you know how many trains have stopped moving … you know it won’t be 10 minutes. It can’t take long to figure out what trains have stopped moving and where electricity has been cut.
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