Monday, 3 August 2009

Transport For LIES

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Thanks so much TFL for misleading the passengers of your expensive and crap service over the weekend, in this case over the closure of the Victoria line south of Warren Street. I seem to remember these dot matrix boards were introduced after a weekend closure of Walthamstow, so that was time well spent. This for a service that is shut down for a quarter of every day as a matter of course. By the way this is an enlargement, the actual signs have tiny text and large expanses of unlit dots.

The only mention via signage of the line closure in the station was written on a whiteboard next to the up escalator, so any passengers leaving the station had, in case they had not been affected by the delay, the chance of being fully informed of something that had had, by now, no impact on their journey .

Perhaps there was something on the magnet board summarising all the lines just before getting to the down escalator, but unfortunately I was rather too focused on not falling 50 feet down serrated metal steps to notice that. I had also for some reason already noticed the dot matrix board, and foolishly trusted it, even with the experience of them lying about which platform's train would be leaving first. Thanks to the jobsworth tube driver on Saturday there was no mention of the closure until just before we pulled into Warren Street. Naturally the rail station above barely ever acknowledges the fact that it is on top of a tube station, so no chance of any info there.

There seems to be a history of useless info boards at Walthamstow Central. This is from a previous moronic and no doubt expensive attempt:

Thanks Currybet

Soon after these latest lying boards were put up, some right-minded person had the sense to switch the trusty old "first train" indicator board back on, it having been sneakily turned off in the hope of the public growing to love the new dot matrix boards, with their lies and tiny text . I'm sure they received a healthy beating from the underground overlords.