Future DLR improvements revealed
Good news is coming for DLR commuters as TfL reveal exactly what improvement will be made when new trains arrive in coming years.
A Freedom of Information request to Conservative Cllr Andrew Wood (Canary Wharf) reveals these impressive improvements to services:
A train every two minutes on the Lewisham branch with a 65% increase in capacity.
A train every two minutes on the Woolwich branch with a 97% increase in capacity.
This will be achieved through:
- Stratford International – Woolwich Arsenal two-car services will be replaced by walk-through three-car trains improving peak services from 8 minutes (7½ trains per hour) to 4 minutes (15 trains per hour)
- Replace Bank – Woolwich Arsenal 3-car services with new full-length trains
-
- Replace Bank – Lewisham 3-car services with new full-length trains
- Introduce new peak Stratford International – Beckton service with 3-car trains
- Replace all Stratford – Canary Wharf 2-car services with new full-length trains and extend all these services (i.e. every 4 minutes) to Lewisham
Relief will not be immediate however. Trains are expected to start running in late 2022 and introduced up to 2024. The oldest stock – dating back to the early 1990s -will be scrapped.
Increased capacity is welcome given large-scale development. Stations such as Pontoon Dock beside the 3,400-home Royal Wharf development have seen monthly usage numbers rise from around 80,000 a month in 2017 to over 200,000 a month in 2019 with more homes to complete.
Incidentally, Andrew Wood who sourced this information is a model example of how a local cllr should behave. He’s on the ball, engages online via different forms of social media including a Facebook group he created with 15,500 members and seeks information for residents through Freedom of Information requests. Many other Cllrs from all political parties could learn from that.
- Support the site by donating here via Paypal or Ko-Fi.
- Or become a monthly Patron here.
- I also have a Facebook page for news in your feed.
It’s completely insane that an elected representative should have to use FoI legislation to get information about what’s happening in their patch out of a public body.
Every public body should be sharing their plans with the representatives of residents in each area they operate in via regular briefings. They used to, in my experience, but it seems channeling all information flow through FoI is simpler and has become the default.
Unfortunately, it then becomes a “pull” process rather than a “push” process. gobbling up local representatives’ precious time.
Lewisham/Bank trains are already five cars long and have been for some time. However, I don’t see the logic of continuing to run trains into Bank once the rush hour is over. Would it not be better to switch over to Stratford at 09:30 when most commuters are at their desk?
I think the message there isn’t that the trains are being lengthened, but they’re being replaced with new walk-through trains of the same length – which being walk-through will increase the capacity of each train.
The Bank service:
a) isn’t just for commuters – travel between the 2 financial sector employment centres is needed throughout the day
b) It provides connection and interchange with all the other lines at Bank, to say nothing of LO at Shadwell and LTS at Limehouse
c) consistency of service pattern is critical for the usability of a mass-transit system
what I find very interesting (to think about) – the Stratford Int – Beckton line = the future extension to Thamesmead [instead intention]? That would both boost the area as well spreading passengers vs Crossrail users