please empty your brain below
the money spent on these therefore would have been much better spent on lines and at stations where there aren't any indicators, but some are badly needed - where trains are less frequent than every minute or two
also, unless there's a problem when have you ever seen a southbound train go anywhere except Brixton?
also, it would be nice if '1 min' actually meant minute as apposed to 1:30, or 3 min meaning 3 min, and not 3:45 as it often is. Could have spent the money on that instead. Or why not have how many /seconds/ away the train is as they do in Japan? The Victoria Line with its new trains, new signals (and, now.. new timetable) would have been really good candidate for that, and would have impressed me.
That was my second and third thoughts too.
It's one of those huge portrait LCD panel types, but the lettering is so small you can't see it until after you've gone through the gateline, and it doesn't help much anyway because (1) all you really need to know at that point is what trains are leaving from 8, 9, 10 & 11 as they can be accessed via the long tunnel to the left (2) they hardly ever announce the platforms until the last minute anyway nowadays for some reason and (3) there's now always a couple of people with massive pieces of luggage trying to work out which is their train using it and blocking an area where two perpendicular streams of bodies have to cross.
I wonder if we only ever notice when they get it wrong?
There are also problems with the signage at Euston where passengers leaving the train are directed by the over-passageway signs to the way out, but the walls of that passage-way (one of the three into the same escalator lobby) are marked with "exit only in an emergency" signs.
Look, it's so wide that the only way of fitting it across the top of the platform has been to shove it into an alcove. Even when the next train is for 'Hainault via Newbury Park' there's still plenty of unnecessary blank width, but could somebody be arsed to design a slightly narrower 'next train' indicator? Could they hell. All modern dot matrix displays have to be wide, otherwise there'd be no room to write important messages about engineering works and unattended luggage. So Oxford Circus ends up with a too-wide box that doesn't fit, and isn't fit for purpose. And you know, that's why I liked the old lightboxes, because they were invariably narrow, and therefore capable of being positioned nearer to the tracks, and therefore visible. Today's one-size-doesn't-fit-all approach is evidently far too inflexible.
Hey presto, TfL designed a narrower NTI which could fit in more places, and now you're complaining the letters aren't wide enough!
Unfortunately these signs have the double whammy of having a much smaller text size that quickly becomes illegible when you move away from it.
e.g. whilst at Pimlico I moved down the platform a short way (about 1/4 platform length) and the text was unreadable. And I have perfect vision thanks to an up to date contact lens prescription!
(n.b. only the clock was working at Pimlico during my visit.)
These new units are narrower but they are not easy to read. I am surprised that they have been purchased as the older wide units had been patched into the new control system perfectly well. Further when Tube Lines refurbished many of its stations they procured DMIs with 3 line displays which are of the "wide" design. These are perfectly readable and are on the Vic Line at Green Park and Finsbury Park.
Given the usual approach to customer facing technology taken by LU I am really surprised these new units have passed "customer acceptance testing" which is a requirement for kit like this.
The Victoria line upgrade team must really hate those with visual impairments.
There was loads of blank space on the original displays which could have been chopped out. Instead they just shrunk everything. Mistake.
they probably had valves in them!
I imagine they were long past their maintainable life and spares were not economic to source.
( It reminds me of the Not the nine o'clock news sketch about looking for a grammophone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSINO6MKtco )
They should have spent the money researching train doors that don't break if a moth accidentally gets trapped in them.
Apart from that, people who specify things, like policemen, are always getting younger. I'm used to print too small for me to read, but recently I find that when I ask people of around 30 they quite often can't read it either. Perhaps the designers of such things are on work experience.
I think the answer is a combination of two factors. Firstly, Overground trains are only four carriages long (much shorter than Victoria line trains) and many of its platforms are also very short, which means it's possible to stand a lot further away from an NTI at Vauxhall than it is at, say, Surrey Quays.
Secondly, some commenters have rightly pointed out that this squidgy design isn't at all uncommon on the 'big railway' - in fact, the Underground is unusual in having always had such enormous indicators. You should see the one at Wandsworth Road - I had trouble reading that when I was standing right next to it! But a major difference is that, typically, where a platform is longer than the Overground's miserly lengths, there's more than one NTI on it. This is, again, a measure the Underground has never traditionally had to resort to (I know a PR once told DG that, if an indicator isn't visible from the whole length of a platform, they try to install a second one, but it was utter rubbish then and still is), because of the abnormally large size of its NTIs.
So, if the tube is going to adopt main line practices in sizing its NTIs, it's only fair to say that it should adopt good practice in positioning them as well.
And as for the question about whether the new indicators are any better positioned than the old ones: If Vauxhall southbound is any indication, what with a hanging accessibility sign plonked right in front of the indicator rendering the destination unreadable from the entire southern half of the platform, installation by cretins shows no signs of abating...
It is, of course, essential to have indicators on lines with more complex service patterns or at stations where several lines serve one platform (e.g. KX sub surface).
Also most DLR stations now seem to have LCD displays at the entrance showing the next trains at all platforms, very useful for deciding if you need to walk or run upstairs!
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