please empty your brain below
I agree the removal of train times seems rather odd but in this era of "inclusion" and "accident reduction" I can understand the mindset that resulted in this outcome.
I doubt it's the buggy-pushers, luggage-tuggers and stick-wielders TfL are worried about here - it's the potential athletes, who could easily run it in two.
If the nine-minute cut-off might omit four trains, does that mean there is one every two or three minutes? Sounds like "turn up and go" to me. What is the aveage gap between services here?
dg writes: There are four platforms.
If the runners know the board is lying to them, might they just run anyway (particularly if they are equiped with Citymapper or similar)?
(1) Delete it if you can't reach it at average walking speed, so nobody runs.
(2) Show it in italic, subdued colour or lower case if you can reach it at average walking speed.
(3) Show it in bold, bright colour or UPPER CASE if you can catch it even at slow walking speed.
I've already been caught out at Northwick Park - indicator at bottom of stairs says no train for 10 minutes, so I queue for a sticky bun from the kiosk, have a brief chat, stroll up to the platform and see the train before just pulling out.
When that wasn't effective enough they plastered the place with 'don't run' messages.
After that they decided to make it impossible to see if a train was in the platform to reduce the incentive to run - until the very last moment. They did this by covering the glass walls (expensively installed to jut out and replace the original walls to make the ramp wider) with a translucent mural. Oh, and by the way, they have installed handrails that are located a fair distance from the walls thus making usable portion of the ramp narrower than it has ever been before.
All this might reduce injury and be a good thing but this needs to be offset against the fact that many services are only half-hourly and hours of people's lives are wasted because they didn't realise they could catch their train if they hurried up a bit - even though it wasn't displayed on the departure boards in the ticket office.
Last weekend I visited Bethnal Green tube station to see the recently erected memorial to the 172 people crushed to death on the stairs at the station entrance one evening in 1943. dg has visited: https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/stairway-to-heaven.html
Mass crowd fatalities such as the one at Bethnal Green have three classic factors:
1. Physical configuration: a downward slope (e.g stairs), without space for people to disperse.
2. A sudden sense of ugency in a crowd. For Bethnal Green this was a new anti-aircraft gun starting to fire, an unfamiliar sound which the crowd interpreted as bombs dropping.
3. A sudden disruption in the flow of people. One person trips over. Or a door doesn't open fully. Or even just a turn in the corridor.
Without these three factors occuring simultaneously, crowds usually self-manage quite effectively, for instance by slowing down, stepping around an obstruction, communicating the cause of the disruption. So luckily not every disruption results in consequences as extreme as the Bethnal Green incident. But one disruption can still have consequences that spread out to affect a large number of people. I think TFL's aim is not simply to reduce injuries. It is also to maintain flow in their transport system, for the convenience of everybody. One person collapsed in a corridor may need the attention of paramedics, who may be a further obstacle to movement in that corridor, with the knock on effect of slowing thousands of travellers trying to use that corridor. This may cause tailbacks into parts of the station that slow down passengers whose route doesn't even include the corridor with the collapsed person. If the staff are now busy managing the crowd, trains may be no longer be dispatched on time, allowing the disruption to spread further into the network.
The manipulation of information on train indicators seems to me to be an attempt at crowd control. As passenger numbers increase in London, the chances of disruption and the consequences of disruption both increase. There are physical bottlenecks in many stations (Factor 1 above) that would need a lot of time and financial investment to alleviate. So the crowd control measures currently focus on alleviating Factors 2 and 3. Removing information about soon-to-arrive trains aims to reduce Factor 2, the sense of urgency in the crowd. And this in turn helps to reduce Factor 3, at least in terms of making it less likely that a hurrying person falls or knocks over someone else.
A smooth-running transport system benefits an enormous number of people.
AND YET AT NUMEROUS OTHER BUSIER STATIONS THE CORRECT TIMES ARE SHOWN AND NO SIGNIFICANT INJURIES OCCUR.
WHY IS THIS RULE APPLIED SO INCONSISTENTLY?
The Bethnal Green tragedy happened in a wartime blackout. The staircase was illuminated by just one screened 25W bulb. The wide staircase was missing a central handrail. People were running for their lives.
These conditions would not all combine today, and can't justify the extreme caution seen at some stations but not others. It's as daft as Please Hold Tight, The Bus Is About To Move nonsense at every stop which has thankfully now been scrapped.
TridentScan | Privacy Policy