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Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"
- londons_explore 3y agoDon't clean stuff... Just hide the dirt!
- donalhunt 3y agoFunnily, the same approach is often used for acoustic / noise issues. Add music / other sources of sound to try and mask the acoustics issue (unsuccessfully).
- kozhevnikov 3y agoIsn't it the basis of active noise cancelling? It's pretty successful.
- Arnt 3y agoYes and no. Active noise cancelling works well at a point and against some common kinds of noise, but if you want to act on a large area such as a tube station, active noise cancelling won't work. Much better to introduce a bit of white noise or music, that makes e.g. the clack-clack-clack of footsteps on the stairs much less noticeable in the wider area.
- Tor3 3y agoNo, active noise cancelling isn't about masking noise with sound, active noise cancelling takes the original noise and mixes it back 180 degrees out of phase. The net result is zero noise, when done perfectly. In practice it's almost like that (for the frequencies covered by the noise cancelling equipment - in an airplane it's like the background noise just.. turns off. What's left is typically people talking. It's easier to hear the flight attendants). If instead it was by adding sound then it would defy the purpose. I use active noise cancelling because if I don't I'll hear a noise in my head for weeks after a long-haul flight (I have tinnitus in one ear which makes it even worse).
- mgaunard 3y agoI would guess that the kind of plastic resin that's used for the walls reacts with heat and can easily be permanently marked.
- SEMW 3y agoIt's glass fibre reinforced concrete (GFRC). Very much doubt it's heat-reactive, suspect it's just oil & dirt on a somewhat porous surface (so cleaning properly is labour-intensive, stickers are cheaper)
- rswail 3y agoIt is very very very unlikely that they would build an underground pedestrian station that had walls that reacted to heat, unless it was to absorb heat in case of fire. I'd also think that plastic resins are not the best thing to be reacting to heat.
- monkey_monkey 3y agoNo surprise you're taking the least charitable view possible. Perhaps what they're doing is cleaning and then looking for a way to mitigate the need for intensive future cleaning. Seems sensible.
- jm547ster 3y agoReminds me of modern API layers bolted on top of crumbling legacy systems
- Arnt 3y agoA common approach. Many of us wear blue and black jeans, few white. The women who wear white tend to choose fabric that doesn't stain easily, an approach TfL might have considered earlier.
- chilmers 3y agoUnfortunately, the material they chose for the station walls is a sort of porous cement that is likely uncleanable.
- Gare 3y agoAlso hostile architecture - benches with no backrests.
- sph 3y agoThe wall is the backrest.
- chilmers 3y agoExcept the wall curves inward, which pushes your head, neck and upper back forward. Having sat on them, it's rather uncomfortable, and must be worse for people taller than me. That said, I'm not convinced it's deliberately hostile, I just think it's incompetent design, favouring a minimalist style over functionality.
- yardstick 3y agoThe benches are designed to be used for on average 4-5mins, maybe 20mins if having to wait for a special train. Their purpose is to serve commuters using the trains. Not as an alternative to proper social housing (which the UK has lots of).
- vidarh 3y agoHave you looked at patterns on public seating wherever there's fabric? Or e.g. hotel carpets and the like? Consider the heavily patterned designs often serve a function. You can regularly clean well enough to address health and safety and still end up with plenty of marks that are high effort to remove that only really affect appearance, and so designs that reduce the visual impact have been used in high traffic spaces pretty much "forever" as a means to reduce the need for high effort cleaning. Not really much difference for a wall.
- pavon 3y agoOr replace the material with one that is easier to clean, which is exactly what these vinyl stickers do.
- david90 3y agoI prefer they fix the line service instead :D
- isaacremuant 3y agoBingo
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- maushu 3y agoFunny that it's so noticeable because of the hostile architecture.
- petesergeant 3y agoWhat is hostile about the architecture here? The armrests?
- jeroenhd 3y agoIf the (quite useless) armrests weren't there to prevent the homeless from sleeping on them, people wouldn't be sitting in the exact same spot every time, causing a light smear instead of defined person-like shaped on the wall.
- mschuster91 3y agoAnd even if they weren't there for hindering homeless people, they're still hostile for overweight people - the ones, aside geriatrics, that most need the seats.
- frereubu 3y agoPeople would be sitting in the middle of the seats with or without the arm rests. I don't think that would make any difference.
- VBprogrammer 3y agoWhile it's an interesting point. I'm not sure I agree that these are here purely to stop homeless people from sleeping on them. For a start, I would give anyone on the underground about 3 minutes, if they attempted to sleep anywhere, before they were moved on. It's one of the few places where you regularly see staff on the public transport network in London. I think there is a legitimate argument that these arm rests are actually providing a useful service by delimiting the space for each person. Few people will naturally sit on the spot at the end of a bench seat which is already partially occupied (and other people will discourage it by sitting near the middle). Where as people will take an empty seat which is clearly free and separated from the other people on the bench.
- lhnz 3y agoInteresting that some of the stickers contain significant white elements. Is the material used less likely to mark? Actually, I'm not sure that these are stickers. Maybe it's paint. If it's a sticker it'd be very difficult to apply this perfectly...
- Symbiote 3y agoIt's vinyl, the same material used to wrap a train or bus (or racing car) in a printed advert. (Search "vinyl train wrap".)
- Havoc 3y agoI noticed some other weird design choices in the new tube stations as well. Eg air vents that are very fine and visibly clog up. It’s like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored decades of practical experience
- lhnz 3y agoIt's very difficult to make thousands of up-front planning decisions perfectly. It'd be even more costly to try to perfect every aspect upfront within the planning stage and it'd be more reasonable to make best attempts but to provide for the ability (and budget) to retrofit bespoke alterations to fix problems that arise at a later date.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoBut surely it should be simple enough to look at what alterations have been made on other lines already and start off from a basis that is at least as good.
- vidarh 3y agoOr they decided it was an opportunity to test potential improvements. Testing them on a new line where fixing any "improvements" that don't pan out will be perceived as an improvement might well be better than testing them on an old line where any regressions will be immediately perceived as such...
- martyvis 3y agoWith a constant rotation of contractors and the government staff overseeing them, offering innovative solutions at a better price than the next bidder, opportunities to learn from experience are difficult to achieve with large multi year projects
- lhnz 3y agoThe design and planning process for UK infrastructure is already notoriously expensive and we already do significantly more "planning" than we used to do 100 years ago (when we were actually capable of rapidly building high quality infrastructure). I would expect there to already be consultants doing similar to what you've suggested however the work is complex and many will be quite cut-off from the build process or only around in the short-term.
- switch007 3y agoIt’s so British to bodge the bodge: the stickers don’t hide all the dirt…
- matthewfelgate 3y agoDid they think people wouldn't sit on these seats? LOL
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoA 21st century antimacassar! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar
- adfm 3y agoYou’d think they’d consider using a clear oleophobic overlaminate instead of flashy graphics that attract attention to the issue. Good design is more than visual.
- moffkalast 3y ago> One would be to replace all the seats with new designs with backs to lean on, but that would be expensive Hmm indeed, how could a rail line that makes a mere £1 billion in yearly revenue afford such an egregious expense.
- armaanbanerjee 3y agoWhilst the Elizabeth line makes a lot of money, TFL doesn't and currently is missing around half its funding needed for maintenance, trying to justify new benches on a line that's only 2 years old would be hard to justify when other parts of the network need funding much more that the core stations on the Elizabeth line
- rswail 3y agoIt's arguable that it shouldn't make a lot of money, but it should be properly funded. What funds TfL is basically fares and city and central government taxes. Ideally the taxes fund the improvements and fares fund the operations. But fares are down since COVID, while the service kept operating.
- nuc1e0n 3y agoIt seems they are trying to make the stickers as small as possible. Why not make the sticker bigger and curved at the sides? A feature could be made of it. Any graphic designer will tell you the value of padding.
- dghughes 3y agoOption C to hose down the peasants as they entered the tube station so they didn't scuff the walls was not used.
- gchamonlive 3y agoPeople would pay good money for that stream
- shermantanktop 3y agoOther people would pay good money to watch. Hey, this is sounding like a sustainable business model with real potential!
- gchamonlive 3y agoWe should somehow cram AI in it and lure sweet VC money. Maybe a counter overlay on the stream keeping track of how many people got hosed that day, which would increment using computer vision, GPT and a very expensive production pipeline.
- shermantanktop 3y agoAdd a “rate this stream” leaderboard gamification feature powered by blockchain and crypto, just to appeal to any holdouts from 2021, and we’re in business.
- JackFr 3y agoI was going to suggest that they hand out soap and laundry detergent to riders.
- bsza 3y agoI’m pretty sure a lot of the discoloration comes from pigments/microplastics from the clothes rubbing against the wall. Look how dark the shoulders of these “ghosts” are. If it were just grease, you’d expect the head part to be darkest.
- troymc 3y agoAnother solution would be to hire some folks with proton packs to lasso the ghosts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_pack
- DoubleGlazing 3y agoI used to work in a building that was once a factory, the room I was in was once a break room. For years workers would come in for their lunch and lean back against the walls. Years of (probably Brylcreme'd) heads being placed against the walls led to a situation where no amount of painting would cover it up. All these little brownish-grey spots appearing on the walls a few hours after each painting. Then one day the room was properly refurbished and management paid the decorators to put in a special barrier layer and the grease spots finally dissipated.
- taylorius 3y agoI think I'd prefer the "ghosts" to those hideous eye-disrupting wall decals.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- meindnoch 3y agoUsed to have grease spots on the living room wall adjacent to my dad's computer, where 6yr old me and my 4yr old brother were leaning against the wall while watching dad play Duke Nukem and Quake. (mom didn't allow us to play these games)
- ametrau 3y agoHave any other games ever captured that feeling for you as those two releases? Not for me.
- jxf 3y agoIt's funny that a significant fraction of human effort goes to counteracting that humans (as a whole) are pretty gross — constantly shedding a fine, moist mist of dead skin cells and waste products wherever we go.
- alecco 3y agoWhy is this Hacker News?
- surfingdino 3y agoThese are Eduardo Paolozzi’s ghosts taking their revenge for the destruction of the beautiful mosaic at old Tottenham Court Road Station, obviously. Seriously, though the Lizzie Line is an example of really grand design but poorly executed. Here are some of my observations: a. The quality of material is poor and hinders easy maintenance. b. The high-res information displays show train arrivals in incorrect order, e.g. 1. Abbey Wood 4 min 2. Shenfield 2 min c. All advertising spaces are now LED displays, some with additional LED-lit frames which use a lot more energy than the old printed posters, which used none. There are hundreds of these things at each station. They heat up the air inside the stations making them unbearably hot in the summer. The solution is more AC and ventilation using even more energy. I stopped caring about saving the planet when I saw what the TfL did. d. The western section of the line beyond Paddington basically doesn't work in any reliable fashion and should just be repainted green and given to the GWR where it would fit with the rest of the often cancelled services.
- RadiozRadioz 3y agoThe heat generated by the LED ads is tiny compared to the heat generated by the actual trains and I think they handled that one very well.
- frantathefranta 3y agoPresumably the LED ads are also cheaper than employing people to change the posters.
- notatoad 3y agoi doubt it's less actual cost, but they definitely make more money overall by being able to rotate the ads more frequently.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoGenerally agreed. In DC we had a similar change over. My complaint is just that it is incredibly tacky. It's much brighter than ambient lighting is. Our metro system is facing a huge budget crunch (the Feds stopping COVID money, and the 2.5 states involved have been very unhelpful at providing funding). I get that advertising is an appealing revenue stream. I just wish we could do it in a way that wasn't so rambunctiously over the top; I wish we could preserve some level of taste.
- sgu999 3y agoI guess paying a local to put tiles as we were doing a century ago is deemed too simple and expensive at the same time? Better to use some polymer derived from Saudi Aramco's oil, printed on a machine made in China, somewhere in east Europe at the very best. At least a couple British managers got paid a fair amount to discuss the proposed designs in a meeting room with their contractors.
- geocrasher 3y agoThese vinyl stickers are an elegant hack. Vinyl is cheap and easily replaceable, in fact it might just be easier to put another sticker over them in the future.
- alricb 3y agoThe same problem exists on the granite walls of Laurier Station in the Montreal Metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurier_station_%28Montreal_Metro%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurier_station_%28Montreal_Me... (picture)
- isaacremuant 3y agoThey should test a signaling system that allows for them to not cancel so many trains, so often. It's shockingly bad in terms of reliability for such an expensive form of transport. It's become "apology line". It should apologize with full day discounts, see how that incentivizes them to improve their service. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66754481.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66754481.amp