please empty your brain below
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The national rail companies (well, most of them) have changed their message and now encourage travel on their trains - albeit outside rush hour. TFL will never repair the hole in their finance if they continue to discourage use of their services.
IslandDweller | 17.07.20 - 8:11 a.m. | #
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I get the feeling that most able bodied people would choose to walk from Embankment to Piccadilly anyway, and there seems to be a bit of potential to villify the people who aren't up to it for whatever reason.
Side note: When I was still commuting to work on the 22nd of March and the trains were packed, it seemed a lot more dangerous than the empty, hyper sanitised, socially distant tube trains of today. I'm not proposing that we all take the tube willy nilly, but I think that the few people who take short, central London journeys are not going to be the primary agents of the second wave.
Daniel | 17.07.20 - 8:13 a.m. | #
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It depends on context, Daniel. When I worked on Oxford Street, I may have been quite happy to walk to the office from Embankment. But I'd be late every day if I did. (Child care arrangements forbid an earlier train)
I thought the JP did a fine job of distinguishing between "arriving at this station" and "arriving at destination outside the station" just fine in the past. I don't see why it has to be enforced. There are plenty of cases in which I know where I'm going once I get there, I just need timings to the station thank-you-very-much.
Chz | 17.07.20 - 8:53 a.m. | #
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As someone who used Marble Arch daily to commute, 5 minutes is definitely off.
It’s usually...
30 seconds to the bottom of the escalator
A minute up the escalator
40 seconds to exit
Giving a bit of leeway in case it takes longer due to distancing, it’s still only 3 minutes...
“Well done” once again TfL, “well done”....
FB | 17.07.20 - 9:00 a.m. | #
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If TfL wanted to discourage short hops on the tube, then maybe the message should be "These journeys are <15mins by foot, its lovely outside so why not walk?"
Geo_rich | 17.07.20 - 9:18 a.m. | #
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Given the lack of a TfL journey planner app I never use(d) it. City Mapper is (was) quite useful but as with all journey planners local knowledge/experience (if you have it) usually makes them unnecessary.
Surbitonian | 17.07.20 - 9:27 a.m. | #
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I seem to recall that back in 2012 TfL issued a number of maps showing walking routes between stations and that these may have given comparative travel times for train and walking.
strawbrick | 17.07.20 - 9:32 a.m. | #
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Brace for a large inflation busting increase in Zone 1 fares come January to discourage people from making short distance journeys.
Hadders | 17.07.20 - 9:59 a.m. | #
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Great analysis, really interesting to see how what most people would expect to be "neutral mathematical" timings can be massaged like this.
Due to these transfer times, picking a one stop local journey near me, which starts with a 6 minute walk to the tube station, the journey planner doesn't even offer the tube alternative as the added transfer times padding makes it slower than the bus alternative.
Mikey C | 17.07.20 - 10:12 a.m. | #
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The TFL journey planner seems very hard to use now if you want to make a tube journey. I was up in town yesterday (Capital Ring 7) and used the tube to get back from Boston Manor to Richmond, a fairly common journey I would expect. I had enough problems getting it even to show the tube stations in the destinations. It did eventually give me the dope and reasonably accurate with a five minute wait at Hammersmith but the 3 minute walk to Richmond at the end was nonsense - I had to dive out and in at the barriers then to platform 1 for my other station which I guess I still did in about a minute.
Plenty of room on the tube for 1m if not 2m distancing.
davews | 17.07.20 - 10:31 a.m. | #
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Strawbrick:
The maps in 2012 were produced by TfL for the Olympics. They showed the walking times from the National Rail London terminals and were designed to encourage people to walk short distances rather than use the tube, so leaving space on the Underground for the visitors to London who were travelling further to the games venues.
I still have a full set and use them from time-to-time.
John M. | 17.07.20 - 11:13 a.m. | #
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It's not just TfL stations that are affected. Doing a search for Marylebone to Wembley Stadium gave me transfer times of six minutes at Marylebone and four at Wembley Stadium.
Barry S | 17.07.20 - 11:22 a.m. | #
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Just searched Bow Road to Tower Hill. Despite me deselecting the cycling and walking options, these choices were shown first. And despite me choosing stations as my exact start and finish points, unnecessary “transfer” padding minutes were added at each end. I think it quoted 17 minutes in total, when l can actually get to Oxford Circus within that time even with changing at Mile End. What an untrustworthy organisation TfL is now. I wonder how much working from home activity it took to tweak the JP?
Kim | 17.07.20 - 12:04 p.m. | #
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If you plan a journey from Marble Arch...
...to Bond Street (0.5km), it says walk.
...to Oxford Circus (1.0km), it offers a bus.
...to Tottenham Court Road (1.8km), the tube finally appears.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 17.07.20 - 12:23 p.m. | #
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Perhaps the times were based on someone getting off the carriage furthest from the exit at rush hours then taking time to get out, in other words the worst case scenario.
Still Anon | 17.07.20 - 12:26 p.m. | #
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Some years ago, one response to a query in The Guardian’s “Notes and queries” column as to how the Countdown boards at bus stops knew how long the next bus would be was “They don’t. They’re random number generators that occasionally are right”. Perhaps TfL are now using ERNIE to suggest timings for the Journey Planner.
Purview | 17.07.20 - 1:59 p.m. | #
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The Journey Planner has never matched my real-world experience. The most reliable planner was Tubermap, which has sadly disappeared.
The results from the cycling options can also be 'interesting'. There must be a way of enhancing whatever algorithms they use with human logic to make it work better. The Open Street Map cycling layer is my preferred option. It doesn't give times, but it's really good for route planning.
The Embankment to Piccadilly Circus time of 4 minutes looks too optimistic to me. Perhaps they don't expect us to stop at all the red traffic lights around Trafalgar Square. I'd give it 5, if splitting hairs.
NickW | 17.07.20 - 2:13 p.m. | #
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It gets even stranger. I just asked JP for an off-peak to St Pauls from Ealing Broadway, yes it also takes 6 minutes to get to St Paul's Station from St Paul's Station, but when you *do* look at the cycling options you get:
Cycling: 1 hour 15 minutes (19.6 km)
Cycle hire: 2 hours 18 minutes (20.1km)
Figure that one out.
HoosierSands | Homepage | 17.07.20 - 2:25 p.m. | #
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I'm ok with nudging to achieve socially desirable outcomes. But this looks to me way beyond nudging territory, deep into outright lying. And we know where that leads, and I for one don't wish to go there.
Malcolm | 17.07.20 - 3:02 p.m. | #
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Hoosier Sands - Using a Santander bike is considerably slower than using your own bike because of the need every 20 minutes or so to find a rack to swap the bike at. The journey planner may also have factored in the very real possibility that when you find the rack it will be completely full or completely empty so you have to search for another one. Their estimate that it will take 85% longer than using your own bike doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I guess the increased distance is the walk to/from the bike racks at the start and end of the trip.
Nightmale | 17.07.20 - 3:08 p.m. | #
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That would make sense in many cases. However, we don't have Santander bikes in Ealing. The cycle hire bikes we do have, can't go into central London.
HoosierSands | Homepage | 17.07.20 - 3:37 p.m. | #
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Longest transfer I've found thus far is a slightly staggering 14 minutes for Romford station, which is hardly a labyrinth!
RickC | 17.07.20 - 4:08 p.m. | #
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Romford, ouch!
Indeed, this may be the most padded journey on the network:
diamond geezer | Homepage | 17.07.20 - 4:21 p.m. | #
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tfl are useless. they deserve to go bust
james | 17.07.20 - 5:45 p.m. | #
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I suspect that most of the short journeys are made by (currently non-existent) tourists with a fear of getting lost.
When I first started coming to London it existed as a series of bubbles around underground stations. Its only as the bubbles grew and started to overlap I realised how walk-able London is (and you get to see a lot more).
Peter Binnersley | 17.07.20 - 6:59 p.m. | #
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When safe to do so again, I'd love to see this post again but with the actual stop-watch timings (from surface kerb to kerb).
R | 17.07.20 - 7:22 p.m. | #
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Dunno why we're surprised. Time underground is different. TfL minutes can be anything from 44-odd seconds to 1 minute 50-odd seconds long.
Sthg to do whilst waiting for your train next time. Check the platform indicator against your own version of reality using your phone's timer options.
JP | 17.07.20 - 9:32 p.m. | #
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Some of the apparently incompetent managers within TfL may deserve the going-bust of the organisation. But the rest of London's occupants - who would be severely affected - certainly do not.
Malcolm | 18.07.20 - 1:38 a.m. | #
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I'd like to think there is potential for a Geoff video or two in this.
NickW | 18.07.20 - 9:28 a.m. | #
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Old Street is accurate for me. I always choose the wrong exit and have to try and or cross loads of roads.
TfL have given away the nonsense even if you have limited knowledge by claiming that it takes 10 minutes to go 1 stop from Euston to Warren Street.
Claire | 18.07.20 - 10:45 a.m. | #
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The Romford walk time might have been a programming typo - it has now been reduced from the 14 minutes in your screenshot to 4 minutes !
Still crazy, but no longer bat shit crazy.
ADS | Homepage | 18.07.20 - 11:28 a.m. | #
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HoosierSands - Click on the result and you notice that its BorisBike only from Newgate Street to Ravenscourt Park. Walk the rest.
MK | 18.07.20 - 8:51 p.m. | #
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