Bit of a late update, this one, but nonetheless, my trip home yesterday unfolded as follows: a five-minute delay on the tube from Edgware Road to Waterloo cause me to miss my connecting train, and the train I did take suffered a further three-minute delay: 29 minutes late home in total.
This morning, the train didn't quite make up for its three-minute delay last night, but arrived in Waterloo two minutes early. The tube was on time, so this saved me three minutes in total arriving at work. I make that 26 minutes and £65 to add to the tally in total.
In other news, more posturing and strike threats from Bob Crow as politicians dare to suggest reviewing a pensions system that sees the taxpayer contribute six times as much as the TfL employee. Said Crow:
"Try it and you'll see the biggest wave of industrial action on the London Underground in 30 years. I have a very small penis."
OK, fine: that's paraphrasing, not quoting. Seriously, though: I thought Thatcher had broken the trade unions? Looks like she missed one. Any politicians reading this care to pick up where she left off? Seriously, I doubt anyone (except TfL employees) will give you any flack for it. In fact, you wouldn't really be a new Thatcher, more a modern-day Robin Hood.
Where's Thatcher when you need her?
(Image credit: Billyfurious.com)
It has to be admitted that TfL have been doing rather well for the last week or so. Even today, with Thatcher's funeral on, my commute was not that bad.
Let's start with last night: tube was a minute early arriving at Waterloo. That didn't let me get an earlier train, but the train was only a minute late arriving at Hersham, and that delay accrued outside of Zones 1-6, so it doesn't count.
This morning, the train from Hersham to Waterloo again arrived a minute early. This was spoiled slightly by a two minute late connecting tube (the one I would have been able to get anyway had the train been simply on time). So TfL still ends up £5 down, but that's practically a win for the organisation!
Yesterday afternoon's tube from Edgware Road to Waterloo was a minute late, but this did not cause me to miss my connection to Hersham, which ran on time.
Train was two minutes late coming into Waterloo this morning, which made me miss my connecting tube. The tube I ended up taking was also a minute late by the time it arrived at Edgware Road, making me four minutes late overall: £12.
At Kensington Olympia, a rare show of TfL listening to common sense: TfL has backed down form plans to put up ticket gates to block a public right of way used by residents of the area as a shortcut to their homes. See, the bridge can apparently also be used as an entrance to the tube station, and 10% of people dodge fares here as opposed to the average 2% elsewhere. I don't know who gave TfL the right to arbitrarily block paths that are public rights of way if it feels like it, but he or she wants his or her head examined: this was always bound to be abused. Still, crisis averted for those of you who even know what I'm talking about. And for those who don't, this is an important victory: if they get away with it there, they could get away with it near you too. I'm reasonably confident without seeing any evidence whatsoever that TfL's eventual plan is to put up ticket barriers at your front door so you can't even use their streets and pavements without paying.
Somehow, George Harrison's song 'Taxman' springs to mind:
"If you drive a car I'll tax the street, and if you take a walk I'll tax your feet"
Wasn't about TfL originally, of course, but I'm also relatively certain that's what George really meant.
Elsewhere, conservatives in City Hall have called for a ban on strikes by tube staff, something Signal Failure wholeheartedly supports. Presumably this renewal of calls to crush the trade unions comes as a tribute to Margaret Thatcher's death. Instead, the Tories say, strikes should be replaced by 'compulsory independent meditation' - which I assume is a typo (read it now before it's corrected or else don't bother telling me later I can't read).
That's it for this morning, really: the rest of the TfL-related news is more about travel around Thatcher's funeral, and another article from the HuffPo which doesn't credit me as its source (which I'm pretty sure I am, at least in the same way I'm sure of George Harrison's mind and TfL's plans for personal house arrest).
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