A surprise Friday post!

I have eschewed my normal option of working from home on a Friday, since my office is near to Paddington rail station, and I want to catch a train to Reading later to attend my friend Noj's stag do.  Otherwise I'd have just had to come in past the office later anyway, so it seemed pointless to stay at home.  Especially since my daughter is at home all this week owing to the childminder's holiday, which means I would have gotten little work done in any event.

That said, I think I'll miss her like crazy: she was especially sweet and well behaved yesterday.  And, naturally, she's chosen this morning to re-enter a 'Daddy' phase, the morning when I'll be gone nearly the whole weekend.  Oh, well: good luck wife!

Now, on to the travel extravaganza: the 17:15 tube from Edgware Road was a minute late arriving yesterday afternoon, and two minutes late by the time it got to Waterloo.  However, I make no charge, since it did not cause me to miss my connecting train to Hersham.  That train, believe it or not, arrive a whole minute early, so I need to refund TfL £2.50.  I won't deny it's galling every time I have to do that, but I can always comfort myself in the knowledge that, while I've once or twice been deposited at my final destination one or two minutes early, I have never ended up there 10-15 minutes, or even one or two hours early.  Whereas when it comes to delays, this blog is a testament to the fact that, while that's not usual, it's far from unheard of.

This morning, the train from Hersham to Waterloo arrived a minute late, but since that minute's delay was incurred before the train even reached Hersham (i.e. outside of TfL's sphere of influence) I will not make a charge.  The connecting tube, however, was two minutes late, and the only reason I could deduce for this was a knock-on effect from the partially suspended, severely delayed Central Line, which was caused by a person under a train.

So altogether, Signal Failure's up another £2.50.

There's TfL-related news elsewhere in the world today but, frankly, it's boring.  So I won't reproduce or summarise it here.

Likely to be no more updates now till next week.  Have a good weekend everyone: enjoy the snow, and please don't speak too loudly to me on Monday morning, in case I'm still nursing a hangover...

News round-up

So there have been some interesting stories around TfL this week.  We'll start with this story on the upcoming recreation of the first London Underground train journey.  Despite not being an accurate recreation of the route (it includes the original stations, but is a longer journey overall), it's quite a sweet little story.  I do wonder what effect it will have on journeys for normal purposes on the day in question, but I'm sure that's been considered and discarded as unimportant.

Next up, The Guardian reports on the closure of the Hainault loop of the Central Line.  Twelve days without, commuters there will have to go for.  But TfL assures us that this action will save it £2m (in comparison to a string of weekend closures), which it will undoubtedly spend on giving its tube drivers more money.  It further assures us that this is the least disruptive way these essential maintenance works can be carried out.  As opposed to, say, the usual practise of overnight repairs.  Who knows?  There might even be a reason that overnight repairs won't work, but TfL isn't telling.

Next, we can all look forward to a game TfL has spent money on that's targeted at teenagers to help reduce the number of road casualties caused by them pissing around with phones and other mobile devices and not paying attention to the road.  A worthy goal.  The game will see players 'avoid traffic as they navigate themselves and lead a group of friends on a walk across a city'.  In a world of Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto and the like, I'm sure it will be terribly popular, but I hope no-one takes my sarcasm amiss, since this might actually be a good thing.  After all, how embarrassing would it be if even one of next year's teen road casualties was found to have been playing TfL's game at the time of the accident?

And finally, the Evening Standard tells us that tax payers bailed out LOCOG to the tune of £41m.  Why is this relevant?  Apparently, some of the total £1bn cash paid by us has been passed on to 'other public bodies such as Transport for London'.  So that's the tube and bus driver Olympic Blackmail Bonus again.

That's all for now as I'm working from home today.  Merry Thursday all!