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In fairness, rumour has it that the station fit outs were an avoidable screw up. Supposedly the detailed design work was behind schedule so they started the ph

by shubb 5y ago

In fairness, rumour has it that the station fit outs were an avoidable screw up. Supposedly the detailed design work was behind schedule so they started the physical building work "at risk". Because it was not well planned, it was done in the wrong order - installing cabling before moving a wall so the new cables have to be ripped out along with the old wall for instance. It was alleged that this was done deliberately by the subcontractors to create additional paid work. A few years ago, recognizing that the project management was a huge mess, there were a lot of big changes and the project management team have been running a events in london showing off the real time project tracking they've put in place. Presumably, Covid hasn't heled either. I remember these radio problems from when I was interviewing for rail automation jobs 20 years ago. They were having this exact problem on the jubilee line. The tunnels seem to be an amazingly harsh environment, and the safety requirements seem much harsher than for self driving cars or human train drivers.

Reason077 5y ago
> "It was alleged that this was done deliberately by the subcontractors to create additional paid work." I don't entirely doubt this. I actually briefly lived in a flat overlooking the Hayes & Harlington station works some years ago. And also used to often commute to the Prince Regent DLR station which had a good view of the Crossrail works at Custom House. In both cases, as far as I could tell, progress was very slow with typically large amounts of idle workers and equipment sitting around (workers on-site but seemingly without much to do!). > "They were having this exact problem on the jubilee line." And Crossrail's signalling is, of course, much more complicated compared to the self-contained Jubilee line because of the need for interoperation with the wider rail network and for trains to run on 3(!) totally different signalling systems: Siemens' proprietary TrainGuard ATO on the central (Paddington-Abbey Wood) section, traditional British TPWS & AWS on the Reading and Stratford branches, and ETCS on the Heathrow branch. I can certainly imagine that getting all of these systems to work together has been a systems integration nightmare, so it's worrying that they seem to be struggling just to get the core Paddington-Abbey Wood section running in self-contained operation!

by shubb 5y ago

Reason077 5y ago

> "It was alleged that this was done deliberately by the subcontractors to create additional paid work." I don't entirely doubt this. I actually briefly lived in a flat overlooking the Hayes & Harlington station works some years ago. And also used to often commute to the Prince Regent DLR station which had a good view of the Crossrail works at Custom House. In both cases, as far as I could tell, progress was very slow with typically large amounts of idle workers and equipment sitting around (workers on-site but seemingly without much to do!). > "They were having this exact problem on the jubilee line." And Crossrail's signalling is, of course, much more complicated compared to the self-contained Jubilee line because of the need for interoperation with the wider rail network and for trains to run on 3(!) totally different signalling systems: Siemens' proprietary TrainGuard ATO on the central (Paddington-Abbey Wood) section, traditional British TPWS & AWS on the Reading and Stratford branches, and ETCS on the Heathrow branch. I can certainly imagine that getting all of these systems to work together has been a systems integration nightmare, so it's worrying that they seem to be struggling just to get the core Paddington-Abbey Wood section running in self-contained operation!