This is not an exciting story, despite the title. But it’s true. And it happens to dozens of people every day, and is the reason why getting to work in London can sometimes take so long.

First, let me explain that this is not a story of me causing a fire alarm to go off, for anti-terrorist police to close a station for half an hour, or some dramatic incident that has left TfL seeking an ASBO against me.

This is a story that starts with a strap of a backpack. This strap, in fact:

This morning I caught a tube from Baron’s Court on the District Line heading East. Normally I change at South Kensington for a Circle Line to Moorgate, or hop off at Mansion House and walk up to the office through the City. This morning I had decided to stay on the District line until Blackfriars, and change there for a Circle line. It’s a man’s perogative, etc.

The tube this morning was very busy. During the Olympics it has on the whole been very quiet, but this morning it was the normal 8:15-8:45am peak time crush. I was stood right next to the door at the very front of the train, crushed in by about 20 other souls attempting to share the exact same square foot I was stood on.

At Victoria, as is often the way for the District Line, a lot of hustling and bustling went on as people fought their way out to the platform, and others tried to struggle onto the train. After around a minute, the doors closed.

Except for the one next to me. Looking down, it was jammed on my bag strap.

Swearing, I attempted to free it. It was jammed solid because the hydraulic pressure of the door was pushing against it, but not with sufficient force for the door to close. The guy next to me tried to help. The guy on the platform waiting for the next train also tried to help. Neither of us could free it. Moving it simply led to the door moving along a bit, keeping the strap jammed.

Then the sound of hydraulics releasing was heard, all the doors on the train went to open, and the driver climbed out of the cab. The release of pressure had allowed me to unjam the strap, and recover it into the train. The driver confirmed we were all fine, climbed back into the cab, closed the doors, and off we went.

I apologised to those around me for delaying their journey, even though the total delay was perhaps 60-90 seconds.

Then realised everybody else on the train was delayed, too.

Then a thought about queuing theory and a little knowledge about how loaded that line is with train traffic at that time of the morning hit me: I had delayed tens of thousands of people.

Let me explain how I worked this out.

The District Line is composed of rather large gauge trains. I estimate that conservatively, each train is capable of shifting 2,000 people during peak times. There were certainly at least 2,000 people on my train this morning. Yes, they are only 6 carriages each, but each is certainly capable of holding nearly 350 people, and frequently does. I’m prepared to revise my numbers down if shown evidence.

In addition, the District Line platforms are not just used by the District Line. They’re also used by the Circle line between Gloucester Road and Tower Hill.

A glance at any “passenger information display” on a platform along this part of the network during rush hour will tell you the mean time between trains is 1 minute. There are close to 60 trains an hour going along that piece of track during rush hour.

Because my train was delayed for over a minute, this must have caused the train behind it to be given a red signal. This in turn would have caused the train behind that to be given a red signal, and so on. This buffer effect would be dampened beyond Gloucester Road going West, because the Circle and District lines diverge, giving more time for the red signals to switch to green, meaning scheduled trains would not have to stop in an unscheduled manner.

However, there would have been at least - I think - 5 trains affected by this delay in addition to my own. So we’re now up to 12,000 people in total delayed by my bag strap jamming a door.

It gets worse.

I changed at Blackfriars to a Circle line train. I got off the train I had delayed, waited 60 seconds on the platform and got on the Circle line train immediately following it, obviously now delayed. Cautiously making sure my bag was far from any doors, I boarded aware this train was now at least 2 minutes late against schedule.

Satisfied at the figure I had come up with of around 12,000 delayed passengers, I had assumed I had done no more damage, until we got to Aldgate.

The tube system has a tendency to expect passengers always want to be moving all of the time. Any delay of more than a minute or two at a station is always explained via an announcement. As we sat at Aldgate, the driver announced we were being “regulated” by a red signal. Looking out of the window, I could see an East-bound Metropolitan line train crossing our tracks to head across to East London.

That’s when it hit me. We were “out of position”. The train was a couple of minutes late, and so the guys running the switching had decided to give priority to the Metropolitan Line train, and we were held for approximately 4-5 minutes.

Whilst this part of the Circle line between Aldgate and Tower Hill was not as busy as the District/Circle line Tower Hill back West, a 4 minute delay was enough to ensure that the train behind us was going to be red signalled waiting for us to clear the platform.

That would be enough for the train behind that to be stopped.

And that would be enough for the train behind that to be stopped, which would probably be on the shared part of the network. That would be enough to cascade across the whole part of that line back to Gloucester Road, causing delays to perhaps 12 trains in total.

By now the numbers per carriage were down a little as we were close to the end of peak, but there was probably at least 1,000 people per train out there. Rounding up for the few more probably still around the Victoria area, and we’re up to 25,000 people.

There’s obviously some fudging here - people boarding trains at the “correct time” for them, did not realise the train they were getting was in fact the one after the one they had expected, and they did not suffer any delay. But I also suspect that this effect wasn’t dampened until after the peak ended at around 9:30am, and there were people who boarded their trains at 8:30am or before still out there (it can take 60 minutes easily to get from the “end” of a line into central London), whose journey had taken at least a few minutes longer than normal.

I doubt many noticed. I doubt anybody cares.

But it did make me think about how queueing theory applies to real world problems, and how when TfL moan about people keeping coats, bags and belongings clear of the doors, or jamming the doors to squeeze on rather than wait 6 more minutes for the next train, that they might have a point.

If you cause a train to be delayed, you are not simply inconveniencing the dozen or so people glaring at you in your vicinity. Or the people on the rest of the train who would glare at you if they could. But in fact, you have a cascade effect down the rest of the network. Tens of thousands of people delayed, because you didn’t want to wait 5 minutes. Or because you didn’t keep an eye on your belongings near the door.

I’ll certainly be more careful in future.

The next time I’m sat waiting for a signal to clear or am told that we are “being regulated”, I’ll wonder about whose bag or foot was to blame, and how the numbers of people flowing through London make butterflies flapping their wings on the network capable of huge cascading effects on transport infrastructure.

Utilizar XHTML puede ayudar a mejorar el posicionamiento Web. Por una parte, se consigue que el código de las páginas Web sea más limpio y claro a los ojos de los robots de búsquedas. Facilitar la labor a este robot siempre es un punto a favor del posicionamiento...

Dikkatinizi çekiyor mu bilmiyorum, toplumlar halinde yaşayan insanlar kendileriyle belli ahlak kavramları içerisinde adeta yarışıyorlar. Necip Fazıl’ın o veciz ifadesiyle, “oluklar çift, birinden nur akar birinden kir” dediği gibi. İyilikte […]

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Müşterileriniz devamlı emaillerinizin spam yada junk dizinlerine düştüğünü söylüyorsa, okumaya devam edin. Email göndermek için yapmanız gereken tekşey SMTP protokolünün dilinden anlayan bir program kullanmanız, yani bir PHP, Perl hatta […]

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“Kira öder gibi ödüyorsunuz ama kendi evinizin sahibi oluyorsunuz” yalanıyla mortgage kredi sistemini pazarlayan bankacıların, pazarlamacıların ve televizyoncuların kabirde kemikleri sızlayacak. Bu öyle büyük bir yalan ve öyle bir büyük […]

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Learn how to sell digital products like PDF ebooks, photos, music, videos and other digitally downloadable files through Google Drive and PayPal. Customers can buy your product through 1-step checkout and the files are delivered to them by email.

The post How to Sell Digital Products Online with Google Drive and PayPal appeared first on Digital Inspiration.

Today in NM brings you arts- and culture-related events from around New Mexico to your desktop by tapping New Mexico CultureNet's RSS feed of the same name. Events load automatically and refresh once a day without intervention. Click on the arrows to see event descriptions. Click on the title of an event to see more detail about it on the New Mexico CultureNet web site.

I made a widget for painter Duane Keiser. It's called A Painting A Day. Check it out!

If you keep tabs on our blog, you probably know we switch out our songs every week to keep things interesting - and to keep me from getting lazy. Every now and again we add a little theme to our playlist. This week, it's one-word song titles. Before music aficiondos flame us we'll own up to it straightaway - yeah, we fudged a little on the shoulder song by removing The from the title. Turns out we just did the only other shoulder song we have handy with a one-word title (Freestyler)!

This week's playlist (at left) probably seems unremarkable to most instructors, but for us it's a little different - see, we run mostly "old" songs in our classes. Old for us means anything before release 50 - mostly we gravitate to the 30's and 40's series, then throw in a 50's series track or two for good measure.

Well, Tami picks a theme for each week's playlist, and this week it's new stuff only. Guess we won't need to blow the dust off any old CDs this time around!

What goes up must come down.
What goes around comes around.
One good turn deserves another.

And... you guessed it:

What's old is new again.

Naturally. We did our 'new stuff' playlist a week or so ago, and now it's time rewind all the way back to the 30's series, because - well, for us at least - that's about as far back as we can go. (playlist at left)

But anyway... We find it's a little like climbing back on that bicycle you haven't ridden in awhile - No matter how long it's been, one crank of the pedals and it feels just as natural as ever. It's that pleasant mix of comfort and familiarity that makes the whole experience just slightly more enjoyable than normal.

Truth be told, though, here's what we really like about the 'old stuff' playlist: Even if we totally forget the choreography, we've heard these songs so many times we can fake our way through it and at least look like we know what we're doing!

Like many instructors, we've got full-time jobs that keep us both pretty busy - Tami's a personal trainer specializing in Senior Fitnees and Craig's a software engineer. So finding time to learn new releases isn't always easy.

Which brings us around to release #68. Tami's going with our tried and true formula for learning new releases, while Craig plans to cram it in 24 hours before the first class. Gee, should be interesting to see which of us crashes and burns on Wednesday! (yeah we know we're deadbeats for just now getting around to the 68 launch)

Original soundtrack from Il Giornalista by Tony Morgan. Music by Alessandro Giurato performed by Erika Lo Giudice. An ionone production. 2015

We continue our celebrations of 50 years of Hawaii statehood with another great retro radio competition open worldwide. It is easy to enter...

There's competition along the Antarctic radio dial. Yes, McMurdo alone now boasts three FM stations, and the nearby New Zealand base has yet another...

Early Radio in Argentina, 1920-1944 by Robert Howard Claxton. A Review by David Ricquish ...

The Mosquito Network - American Military Radio in the Solomon Islands During WWII by Martin Hadlow. "The American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) provides Stateside radio and television programming, 'a touch of home,' to U.S. service men and women, DoD civilians, and their families serving outside the continental United States."

The Mosquito Network - American Military Radio in the Solomon Islands During WWII by Martin Hadlow. "Once ashore, Captain Spencer Allen was relieved to find that Army engineers and Signal Corpsmen had constructed a studio building for the radio station, 'the first made of clapboard in the camp,' he recalls, and a smaller transmitter shack about 200 yards away."

The Mosquito Network - American Military Radio in the Solomon Islands During WWII by Martin Hadlow. "As AES-Guadalcanal continued to develop, it was joined by other new stations in The Mosquito Network. On April 3, 1944, AES-Munda (New Georgia), opened transmissions..."

Radio Centre 2LT, controlled by Lithgow Broadcasters Pty. Ltd. and an offshoot of Western Newspapers Pty. Ltd. commenced entertaining its 26,000 town listeners on June 7th, 1938. As Lithgow's "Sunshine Station," 2LT has won the confidence...

2BH, "The Barrier Miner" Broadcasting Service is the only station giving coverage to Broken Hill and West Darling districts under all transmitting conditions. Associated with 2BH is the Smilers' Club with close to 3,000 members...

Station 2MG, Mudgee, "The Voice of the Tablelands," owned and operated by the Mudgee Broadcasting Company Pty. Limited, is situated a mile from the chief commercial town of a very rich inner-western district of New South Wales...

3ZM 1400 AM in Christchurch, New Zealand promoted it's all night New Year's Eve Party for December 31 1976 with this cool ad in the local newspaper the day before. A one-off promotion.

When Wellington, New Zealand, was battered by storms in December 1976, local Radio Windy 1080 AM provided superb coverage...

Over the Christmas - New Year period of 1976-77, Radio Rhema broadcast an experimental 10 day short-term AM program from Ferrymead Historic Park, Christchurch, New Zealand...

Here you'll find a very interesting entry regarding the American usage of a radio broadcasting station in Australia....

Now, in assessing the available information, we would suggest that the Dutch colonial authorities took over both of the radio stations in Balikpapan from the Australian army...

As soon as things settled down in Balikpapan, the Australian army personnel got themselves busy in the area of radio broadcasting. They began to make program broadcasts over the camp amplifier system under a pretend radio station callsign TBC...

The Dutch authorities at The Hague in their homeland over in Europe began an interest in the usage of wireless very early. They established a Wireless Company in 1916, they installed two spark Morse Code stations on the Dogger Banks in 1917, they made their first wireless broadcast in 1920, they installed their first wireless...

As a child I always fancied being on the radio, playing cool music and emulating the gun DJ...

Image of Edward Dahl added. He was secretary and general manager of 4AY Ayr in the late 1930's.

Enjoy a refreshing beach stay at our heritage 1920's beach bungalow. North Beach, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Mackay Broadcasting Service Pty. Ltd., is a 100 per cent. Mackay organisation established firmly in a very prosperous district...

An updated detailed list of Australian stations currently operating in the 1611-1701 AM band together with analysis of this fascinating and little known broadcasting landscape is now available as a downloadable Word document at www.radioheritage.net....

'Diamonds of the Dial', that's what the Radio Heritage Foundation calls 40 Australian heritage AM radio stations that have broadcast continuously for over 75 years with their original station calls...

US$240 in gifts available to donors September 1 - November 30 Read on to find out how to win!

RAF Bungay (referred to as RAF Flixton) is a former World War II station in England. The airfield is located around 3 miles (4.8 km) south-west of Bungay in Suffolk on the south bank of the Waveney River close to the B1062 Harleston to Bungay road.

The airfield is also known after the village of Flixton, near which it was built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bungay

The Chicago Motor Speedway at Sportsman's Park located in Cicero, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, was built in 1999 by a group including Chip Ganassi, owner of Chip Ganassi Racing. In 2002 the 1.029-mile (1.656 km) oval shaped track suspended operations due to financial conditions in the motorsports industry. The track was also the site of horse races, when the track was called "Sportsman's Park". The track was one of two racetracks that hosted both auto and horse races (the other is Dover International Speedway).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Motor_Speedway

At the German city Pfulling the third VFL- Summer Ski Jumping for kids is underway.

http://www.gea.de/region+reutlingen/pfullingen+eningen+lichtenstein/vfl+sommerskispringen+fliegen+wie+die+voegel.2762608.htm

The 2014 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts was held between 25 to 29 June 2014.

Among bands and singers on stage were: Metallica, Dolly Parton, Manic Street Preachers, Bryan Ferry and Blondie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Festival_2014

In this file you can see all the railroad lines the has been in Denmark and the lines of today, including the S-Train lines of Copenhagen. Also the railroad ferries are shown.
Many of the stations of the different lines are today used as private houses.

Three colours of icons are used:
Green: Stations of lines today.
Yellow: Station buildings of closed stations.
Red: Stations no longer there.

Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film 2024. The highly coveted gold statue is c...

The good folks from streaming giant Crunchyroll have sent us details for their UK home video release schedule for May to August 2024. Titles...

The good folks from anime streaming giants Crunchyroll have sent us details about their Ani-May promotion. For starters some of their top...

The good folks from streaming giants Crunchyroll have sent us details for their June to September 2024 DVD and Blu-ray release schedule. ...

The good folks from anime streaming giants Crunchyroll have just sent us details about their anime playlists on Spotify. They've got a dedic...

Download/Listen here!

Hello everyone. This episode is really short, it's just a shout out to say that yes I'm still here :). Had some life complications but I think things have settled down enough where I can get back into the swing of things.

On this episode, I hint towards an interview I did and hope to put on a future episode. I also do a short interview with Kristi, and I mention me possibly doing a personal podcast where I would be talking about my other intertersts and where I'll be doing future interviews with my daughter.

Next one will be a full, regular show :)

On July 12th, 2005 the Sampradaya Sun began publication as a daily news website and independent reporting organization for the Vaisnava community. The Sampradaya Sun will serve as a full-service news venue, offering in-depth feature stories, fast publication of news and events submitted by the worldwide Vaisnava community, and philosophical editorial commentary from Sun editors and contributing writers. [more]

The government's plans to build 120,000 new homes in the Thames Gateway by 2016 will not work without a series of new and improved transport facilities, an official report warned today...