Thursday 1 November 2012

Back to the regular delays schedule

Thankfully - and I never thought I'd be thankful for TfL delays - just a six-minute delay coming into Waterloo this morning (though I did have a small heart attack on seeing the Overground was part suspended on the TfL homepage just before setting out; the usspension didn't apply to my route).  Had to take a different connecting tube than planned, itself a minute late.

Ended up at my final destination seven minutes late for another £17.50, which seems quite paltry compared to yesterday's gains.

In other news, the Evening Standard tells me that if you were unlucky enough to need the Jubilee Line this morning during rush hour, a cracked rail combined with a strike by maintenance engineers meant delays for you when bosses insisted trains could only travel at 5mph.  Bob Crow and his cronies up to money-grubbing tricks again, I've no doubt, but what was really interesting is that London Underground is insisting there were, in fact, no delays and that all services were running normally.  Was that your experience?  I'd be interested to hear from someone at LU quite how slowing trains down to 5mph has no effect on the service.

The Standard is also carrying a story about a junction in Islington that saw its traffic light phasing changed during the Olympics and Paralympics and resulting in 4,286 penalty notices being dished out by TfL for the period 27 July - 7 September, for which daylight robbery the organisation netted £557,180.  The same period a year previously saw not a single penalty notice issued.  Hmm.

And finally, remember yesterday I wondered if we'd ever know how much TfL pays people to strike?  Well, now we do - again thanks to the Standard, which is having a banner day today!  The answer is just shy of £1,000,000 last year.

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