Living in the docklands area, I am on the mailing list for issues with the Docklands Light Railway, and have received the following missive.
A new service will be in place from 10 July with modifications to some routes and frequencies, including increased AM peak frequencies, and changes to some first and last train times.
New timetables will be posted at stations and available online at www.dlr.co.uk from 10 July.
Obviously, more trains in the mornings is good news.
However, call me suspicious if you like – but publishing the changes on the very day they take place sounds like they want to avoid presumptive wailing and rending of shirts over some bad news about one, or more, of the routes.
Not to mention that changing the times of the first trains, but not publishing the details until after the first train has probably left is a bit daft.
Interesting announcement. I hope it means more trains for the Beckton line.
When I moved to the Royal Docks a few years ago, peak hour service was a train to Tower Gateway every 7 minutes. Then they closed Tower Gateway to accommodate 3-car trains, and when they re-opened the line, we still had 2-car trains, but every 10 minutes this. Service got less frequent even as ridership is increasing thanks to ExCeL and the new residences along the line.
Ironically, the off-peak service on that line is twice as frequent as during the peak.
The new timetables are up online already.
Still looking through, but I see all trains from Stratford now terminate at Canary Wharf, none go any further.
Actually, there are still Stratford-Lewisham trains in the Mon-Fri morning peak. You need to look at the smallest of small print to find it in the timetable. The other addition is a dotted line for the new route to Stratford international – first time I’ve seen that on an official DLR poster.
All a bit irrelevant this morning as I was forced onto the bus – DLR service in a total mess