Who wants to stay up late? I do

Would you change the Tube's timings over the weekend?

As you may have heard in the news there's currently a proposal to make keep the tube open an hour longer over the weekends, but as usual there's a catch as it would mean that the ones in the morning would also start later. Generally first trains would arrive at central London stations at around 7am on Saturdays and 8:30am on Sundays; last trains would depart from the West End on Friday and Saturday nights at around 1:30am.

Transport for London have a questionnaire that you can fill in to make your views heard. You can also get the results of the consultation sent to you.

I've no idea how many people's opinions will be taken into account, but it's interesting that at least TfL have made an attempt to listen to what the public say rather than be guided by purse strings.

As you may guess with the amount of times that I've moaned about having to leave pubs and parties early just to make the last train back to Richmond, I am for the proposals. To be honest I hadn't really thought about the effect this is going to have on people who have to get into town early at the weekends - although there was a bit of a debate about this going on over at The Londonist. Happy drunk people or annoyed morning commuters?

Why can't we have our cake and eat it too? Tfl's FAQ's sort of try to explain this by answering a "question" about why this couldn't happen every day and not just the weekend:

"If we are to reduce to a minimum the number of weekend closures, we need to make the most of the night-time close-down. So any extension to the operating hours of the tube at night needs to be balanced by an equivalent reduction in operating hours the next morning.

The number of people benefiting from a later shutdown on Sunday to Thursday nights would be outweighed by the number adversely affected by a correspondingly later start on Monday to Friday mornings. By the same token, extending the tube further into the night on Friday and Saturday would create problems on Saturday and Sunday mornings."

Anyone else have any views on all this?

London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Thursday, February 24, 2005 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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