Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

Diamond Geezer is one of my favourite London bloggers, and I’ve been reading him for years. His interest in the public transport systems is borderline obsessional, but his writing style is so good that you don’t mind the nerdiness.

He also visits loads of London’s hidden secrets, and constantly gives me inspiration to go out and see parts of London that I haven’t seen before.

This weekend, he took a trip on the new Circle Line (hint: it’s not a circle any more), which was doing a preview of its new route that will start properly in December of this year. It now starts at Hammersmith, way out side of the circle, does a loop, then doubles back on itself rather than continually looping round.

This termination point is at Edgware Road, and as DG pointed out today, the interchange there is going to be chaos. It’s a crappy old station without clear signs or platform indicators, and isn’t exactly set up for a lot of people changing trains.

And there will be a lot of people changing, especially foreign tourists and the like. Many new arrivals to London come from Heathrow airport into Paddington, on the overland train. From there, very many get on the eastbound Circle line to head towards Baker St and Kings Cross, so as to get into central or east London.

With these changes to the Circle line, that eastbound train will only go one stop, to Edgware Road, before terminating. A change will have to be made, which is difficult with luggage as you have to go up some stairs, over a bridge and down some more stairs to another platform. Expect a lot of bemused tourists on the Edgware Road platforms from December onwards.

DG also points out that at Paddington itself (a major mainline train hub for the west of England and Wales) it’s going to be one hell of a mess:

In the past, most passengers trying to get from King’s Cross to Paddington would have arrived at Paddington (District & Circle Lines) station. It’s well positioned for the Mainline concourse, and connects easily with Bakerloo line services. In future, after the Circle line splits, everybody’s going to end up at Paddington (Hammersmith & City Line) station instead. This is a nasty small station with inadequate exits, located a long way away from most of the mainline services, and requiring considerable unpleasant yomping of heavy luggage.

You sometimes wonder whether the long-term planners have realised this kind of thing as they’re putting forward these sweeping changes to the Tube network…