Wednesday 13 March 2013

A lot to cover

Sorry for the lack of updates: work and life have been busy in the offline world.  Bonus for you is a bumper crop of updates!

Monday morning, the train from Hersham to Waterloo was a minute late.  The connecting Northern Line tube to Leicester Square (I had a long meeting in Covent Garden) was on time.  Coming back, the tube was a minute early, but this didn't affect the train I could take, which was on time.

Yesterday, I took the train from Norbiton to Waterloo (four minutes late) and the Bakerloo Line to Edgware Road (one minute late: six minutes late overall if I could have taken the tube I would have had the train been on time).  Going home, the first tube was too overcrowded to physically get onto, and the next a minute late (making me four minutes late overall.  The train was on time, and was the one I would have got onto anyway, so no charge for the earlier delay.

This morning, I took the same route in as yesterday.  The train was three minutes late, the tube four - seven minutes late overall if the train had been on time and I'd been able to catch an earlier tube.

So, since the last update, that's 13 minutes and £32.50

In the news recently, TfL boss 'Sir' Peter Hendy is busy gloating about his knighthood for managing to get TfL to work properly over the Olympic period (what about the rest of the time?).  Without even getting started on the cheapening of the knighthood institution (as if it needed more cheapening) by doling them out to people for doing a couple of weeks' good work, the gall of the man is incredible.  Describing his own rise from bus conductor 37 years ago, he glibly tells 'young Londoners' that he sees no reason why they can't accomplish as much as he has too.  I couldn't have put it better myself, though at least he had the decency to recognise it was other people's hard work that got him the knighthood, even if he didn't do the decent thing and refuse it for that reason.

If you're an app developer, or aspiring one, you could enter TfL's not-at-all-a-PR-stunt competition to develop an 'accessibility' app for the TfL network.  Of course, if TfL really cared about making the network more accessible, it would talk to the affected people, build up specs, and commission professionals to just do the work.

And finally, another story about TfL blighting the landscape to line its own pockets with nary a thought for locals.

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