London Boroughs Challenge

[jbom1]

By the way, I have found that some of the assigments of stations to Boroughs differ between the map discussed earlier in this thread and Wikipedia. These might usefully be referred to anyone who fancies themselves as the "Third Umpire"


Manor House Map: Hackney Wikipedia: Haringey
New Southgate Map: Barnet Wikipedia: Boundary of Barnet and Enfield
Falconwood Map: Greenwich Wikipedia: Bexley
Lower Sydenham Map: Lewisham Wikipedia: Boundary of Lewisham & Bromley
Therapia Lane Map: Sutton Wikipedia: Croydon

In the case of New Southgate, the boundary appears to run down the railway line, so that the southbound platform may be in Enfield and the northbound in Barnet.

In the case of Manor House, I note that different atlases mark the station with dots on different sides of the boundary.

I personally did not rely upon Manor House to visit Hackney, but doing so might well make for a quicker route. If I'd been allowed to time myself from Oakleigh Park &/or to Falconwood, my time would have been slightly quicker. Since the previous record holder used Welling, though, I chose to treat the map as canonical and do the same.

I've put a copy of the map on the web for information, since it appears to have been lost

http://www-mitchell.ch.cam.ac.uk/BoroughMap.jpg

but I don't own the copyright and will take it down if anyone complains.

[sweek]

Looking at this map of Hackney I would say that 3 out of 4 Manor House entrances (all but the one on the Finsbury Park side of Green Lanes) are in the borough Hackney. The official address also appears to be in there.

http://www.map.hackney.gov.uk/gismapgal ... orship.pdf

[greatkingrat]

Falconwood is an interesting one. My (fairly old) A-Z shows Falconwood clearly in Greenwich but all the online sources show it clearly in Bexley. So I guess that the boundary must have moved at some point in the last few years.

[jbom1]

Thanks for both those contributions. My time was 7:41:39 to Welling; I didn't note the exact time at Falconwood, but the difference would be close to 3 minutes.

I only noticed the possible ambiguities with Falconwood and Lower Sydenham when I was actually on the Challenge. The other three had come up during the planning.

Given that Manor House is OK for Hackney, I think I could have saved quite a lot of time by using it. The route I actually took on Monday used Silverlink Metro to get from Highbury & Islington to Stratford, specifically to include stops in Hackney. I had to do Camden, the City, and Tower Hamlets later. I would have saved time overall by taking a quick trip from Finsbury Park to Manor House and back.

[jbom1]

Having looked closely at the detailed maps provided by Sutton Council's website

http://www.sutton.gov.uk/maps/findit/ma ... sutton.htm

I am now convinced that Therapia Lane is in Sutton (i.e., the map is correct) and have edited the Wikipedia article accordingly.

[editorsfoot]

If its any help as well I drove along the A2 last week and you pass the Greenwich borough sign before you reach the Falconwood junction so I guess that puts it in Greenwich, although if the border takes a funny turn I may be wrong.

[mps247]

Sorry to bring up an old topic, but I had a question about this - if you were to take a train from Willesden Junction to West Brompton, you would pass through Kensington (Olympia), which is in Hammersmith & Fulham according to the map. However, the platform that you will arrive at is actually in Kensington & Chelsea (the underground and Northbound mainline platforms are in Hammersmith & Fulham, but the Southbound mainline platform is in Kensington & Chelsea). There are two entrances to the station, one in Hammersmith & Fulham on Olympia Way, and the other in Kensington & Chelsea on Russell Road, so the station really belongs in both boroughs.

So, if you take this route to visit Kensington (Olympia), you technically haven't actually visited Hammersmith & Fulham. In order to visit Hammersmith & Fulham, you would need to get out at Kensington (Olympia), cross over the foot-bridge into Hammersmith & Fulham, and then catch an underground train (or Northbound overground train). Is that correct, and are there any other stations where a problem like this could arise?

[tubeguru]

The boundary between Hammersmith & Fulham (the borough I live in) and Kensington & Chelsea does indeed run along the line of the railway through Olympia station. The northbound platform is accessed from Olympia Way, a road that belongs to H&F. The entrance via a footbridge to the southbound platform is via Russell Road, which is a road residing in K&C.

So yes, passing through Olympia station once will only count as a visit to the borough on the same side as the platform you stop at. If your train is for some reason told not to call at Olympia and is routed through the middle road, then you will have visitied neither borough at that location!

[Starkey7]

How about Dalston Kingsland?

[jbom1]

My view on this is as follows ...

(1) Where a station (consisting of all station buildings, track passing through the station and entrances and exits) straddles two or more Boroughs, one shall be allowed to count the stop there as visiting either (any) one of the Boroughs, but one must separately visit the other Borough(s).

So one may choose to count a stop at New Southgate (if we agree that it indeed straddles Barnet and Enfield) as a visit to Barnet, but must then visit Enfield separately. Alternatively, one may choose to count the same stop at New Southgate as a visit to Enfield, but must then visit Barnet separately. One may only count one Borough per station, unless one pays a repeat visit to it.

I would propose to apply three other rules to this challenge.

(2) The map (referred to elsewhere in this thread) should be considered canonical to the extent that any station stop shall count as acceptable if it is shown as part of the relevant Borough on the map. However, one may also count a station as part of a Borough, even if not indicated on the map, if one can authoritatively demonstrate that the map is in error or incomplete. One may only record a visit to one Borough per station.

The map (I don't know its original source) looks like a labour of many hours, but is a little out of date and may contain a handful of errors. Ideally, it should be updated.

(3) A scheduled request stop counts even if not actually made (to avoid annoying drivers and other passengers or forcing challengers to alight prematurely).

(4) A pass through any temporarily closed station(s) that would otherwise have been called at by the given service is acceptable.

I would be glad to see this challenge attempted (for only the third time?) and the record beaten.

[mps247]

Nice work Matt! It's looking really good - I'm looking to have a crack at this challenge at some point in the near future, so I will definitely be using your map (or however much of it had been completed by that time)! Your work is very much appreciated !

[jbom1]

OK, 7:41:39 to beat. By the way, I'm pretty sure there's a better finishing station than the one I used. I spent a lot of time route-planning for this and there were a few points were I had some quite different options. On the day, I gave up on the ideal finish in order to save a 15 minute [edited] wait somewhere else.

[mps247]

Phil Brown (from Sheffield) and I completed this challenge last Thursday (25 June 2009), starting at Eastcote and finishing in Belvedere. It took a while for me to post, as I was unable to get to a computer until now!

Our final time was 6h 29m 19s - a new fastest time!

We started an hour later than we had planned, but this didn't work against us until our last connection. We suffered a few delays, but there was enough redundancy in the route for us not to be effected. I think this time is beatable, and a sub-6 hour time is possible.

[jbom1]

Wow, well done! That looks like an excellent time. Eastcote seems to be an ideal start or finish point for this challenge.

[mps247]

Thanks John - I admit that I was biased towards a West London start purely because it was easier for me to get to and meant that I could wake up later ! So, I haven't investigated any routes starting in North, South or East London. Phil came down from Sheffield for it, so the starting station wasn't so much of an issue for him.

There probably is a better route out there with a different start. Perhaps with a finish in Eastcote instead. We exploited the ruling that Manor House was in Hackney, so we shaved off quite a bit of time due to that. We had quite a few reasonably long waits built into the plan, so there is time to be saved from that - however, various delays throughout the day meant that we actually needed those, and would have got a far worse time without them!