Two more things that have crossed my mind regarding 24 hour running, firstly is the trains, are they going to be up to it.  The timetable we started in September has meant that the trains are spending more time on the line than they did before which naturally means they spend less time in the depot with less time for maintenance and the rise in number going defective has been noticeable.   There’s a rumour going around the mess rooms that quite a few are being sent out with minor defects as the train maintainers simply don’t have time to deal with them, losing the whole of Friday and Saturday night will give them even less time to work so the obvious conclusion is that unless we hire loads more staff in the depots we’re going to see a lot more trains breaking down while in service.

The other thing that occurred touches on the City, we were told that the Waterloo and City Line was staying open later on weekdays and Saturdays due to demand but the Northern Line will only be running 24 hours on the Charing Cross branch.  If there’s enough demand to keep the W&C open then surely there’s a lot more demand for the City branch.  Just vaguely contradictory but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation other than all of this is just an attempt to make it look like Boris has actually achieved something during his 8 years as chairman of TfL other than the pointless cable car, his unwanted bus and his increasingly questionable bicycle policies.

 

I had to smile at the suggestions in the media that Boris was doing this to make it easier for people to party in London, remembering that this is the man whose first action on becoming mayor was to ban alcohol on public transport.