Burlaki [back] on the Hudson

So, Becky is now taking a bus to school on her own. My onetime morning routine of getting up early to drive her, then to drive back, and only then to go to work, is history. I can sleep for a whole hour longer in the morning (and as my brother remarked here, I tend to value morning sleep hours quite highly).

Since it normally takes less than 40 minutes for my door-to-door commute, I should now be in for a not too taxing trip to work, right? Wrong!!! We are forgetting about the Olympics…

Not this year’s Olympics in Beijing. The ones four years from now.

Most of the proceedings in 2012 will take place in or around East London. Subsequently, there are many infrastructure projects taking place now to prepare for the big occasion. Transportation improvements are at the forefront of this.

The Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which constitutes one of the legs of my commute, is upgrading from two-car trains to three-car trains. The problem is: Many station platforms are only built two-cars-long. So, for the next two months, they will be extended. To accommodate this work, platforms in one direction will be entirely closed, and the trains will be running on a single track for the better part of the journey that I need to take. (I think they are doing only one side this year, and then will perform similar exercise on the other side next year; the switch to longer trains will only occur in 2010.)

One of the key advantages of DLR has always been its frequency – 3-4 trains within any 10-minute interval during peak hours between Lewisham and Canary Wharf, my on/off points. Now, for the duration of this work, there will be only one train every 10 minutes in either direction; it will not run the full length of the journey either – the five stations between Island Gardens and Lewisham are temporarily broken out as a separate leg, with a necessary switch from one train to another.

One of the key shortcomings of DLR is that it gets extremely crowded during the rush hour. At some stations between Lewisham and Canary Wharf, people cannot get on a train during peak time. And that’s with a train every 3 minutes! At 10-minute intervals, it would be entirely impossible…

The other complication for me is that on the commuter train leg of my journey, there is one train only every half-hour. In the mornings, that is not a problem: I leave house 6-7 minutes before the next scheduled train and don’t concern myself with the details of the DLR schedule. On the way back, of course, I have to make sure that the DLR deposits me in Lewisham neither too far ahead nor a second too late to make the targeted commuter train departure. With the decreased frequency of the DLR and the unpredictability of the transfer at Island Gardens, I am now in the dark as to the appropriate time to leave office to make the once-in-30-minutes train.

The ever-helpful “service agents” – there must have been hundreds of new jobs created in conjunction with this improvement work, with responsibilities ranging from pointing a way while smiling morosely to shouting useless orders to frustrated customers – suggest that people look for alternative ways of transportation. (In all honesty, many people must be following the advice, as the service does not feel much more crowded than usual.) There is a requisite “replacement bus service”. It not only takes forever on congested London streets, but also runs infrequently, gets overcrowded as well, – and bus overcrowding is in a completely different league from train overcrowding, if you know what I mean, – and does not duplicate the entire route, necessitating more transfers. I’ll pass.

I have three alternative ways of getting to work via regular services otherwise. Or, used to have.

One of those involved taking my commuter train past Lewisham to New Cross, then catching the East London tube line for a couple of stops and the Jubilee tube line for one more stop to Canary Wharf. One extra transfer, but about the same time in duration. Except, the East London line has been closed since late last year for a complete refurbishment in preparation for the same Olympic Games…

The other alternative is to take the commuter train all the way to London Bridge, and transfer to Jubilee line there. Surprisingly, time-wise, it is again almost equivalent to my normal train/DLR combo. The cost, however, is almost twice of what I currently pay for a monthly travelcard, since London Bridge happens to be in the central Zone 1 of public transportation pricing, which I do not venture into on a normal commute. (The service modification posters at DLR stations cheekily suggest this as the best alternative during the next two months, reminding everyone to make sure to have tickets covering all zones traveled. The City will even be richer for it.)

The final option is to bypass the train altogether, take a bus from the nearest stop by our house to North Greenwich and transfer to the Jubilee line there for a one-station journey from the opposite direction. The bus, of course, by itself takes over an hour to amble all the way from Mottingham to North Greenwich…

It will, unfortunately, be my choice for avoiding DLR through the summer. Not until September will I get to enjoy my elusive 40-minute door-to-door commute every morning.

So, there you have it. My long-held conviction that hosting a major sporting event causes nothing but headaches to the local and already-employed residents has been convincingly proved. On the positive side, the DLR will be likely less packed a couple of years from now, what with an extra car on each train, but I am unlikely to be around for that…

Chronicles