Fascinating. Are the passengers walking to the station and know exactly how long the walk takes? Or is it some closely timed transfer from another source?
Often when different lines meet the tracks are organised such that the trains pull up together on either side of a platform: a so-called cross-platform interchange[1]. The passengers on either train then have 30 seconds or so to board the other train if they wish to change. Obviously this has to be precisely timed - if one train is late or the other departs early, the transfer can't take place.
It really is an amazing system, a wonder of the world. There's one part of the yamanote line that runs parallel to the keihin-touhoku line. In this section, the K-T line acts as an express, whereas the yamanote generally stops all stations. So as the lines meet, you'll have a bunch of people get off the yamanote onto the "express" keihin-touhoko - they arrive synchronously, then the keihin speeds past a few slow poke yamanotes, before arriving in sync again with a yamanote a few trains ahead of the original one, so people can switch back before the keihin diverges and goes off on its route. It's unbelievable, choreographed like a steel ballet. The best train system in the world bar none.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-platform_interchange#Tok...
Of course, being London sometimes the times are off and the system probably wouldn't work if the station was not close to the ends (less predictability due to random delays)
As you stare deeper into the rising, darkening mist of the pint, you edge ever closer to it. Until the darkness obscures all else in your view.
Still better than bus eireann, where if you're getting on in the last 25% of the route, the timetable is often every hour, +/- 30 minutes, which means there could be a bus at any time and it's not likely to be the scheduled time.
There are lots of little hacks like this because trains always stop in the same place, and leave at the stated times.
Transfer times are often quite short too, particularly if it’s just walking across the platform.
People in the U.S. pay for reliable service, we just get a lot less in return. The D.C. Silver Line cost $150 million per km, even though it's almost entirely above-ground and mostly runs through low-density suburbs along highway medians that were specifically reserved for it decades ago when the highways were built. Stockholm, in contrast, built a new line mostly underground through central Stockholm for about $250 million per km.
I can't do that, I always worry I'll be delayed somehow haha