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| Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan) (10408) | |||
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Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan) |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Tue Oct 19 18:53:43 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by David Fairthorne on Tue Oct 19 17:52:35 2004. I thought I heard somebody say "RER"!There's no doubt that the tracks along the North section of the Circle need an upgrade. Crossrail is not the way to achieve this. The main problem that Crossrail is intended to solve is east-west overcrowding. The most overcrowded line is (I hear) the Central line in the areas east and west of Liverpool Street, say between Stratford and Tottenham Court Road. That's where additional capacity is most needed. The Metropolitan, Circle, and Hammersmith & City lines share tracks between Liverpool Street and Baker Street, and those tracks are already fully utilised. Only because of the absolutely crass Circle working. Eliminating that would free up enough capacity to send 8tph along the GWML to Heathrow, which is really the only serious Western proposal. If a new line is built to add capacity, it may as well run through the very middle of the City and West End. That, combined with faster journey times, should attract many passengers and provide the desired relief. But we don't need another East-West line. The problem is that too many people are using only one of the existing ones, which happens to be the one with the smallest trains anyway. Crossrail will provide plenty of extra capacity (peak 10 car trains, 24 tph) through the central area. Stations will be long enough for 12 car trains, and will have entrances at both ends. It's not needed. We just need some way of getting people on to the District Line, which is the emptiest line through Central London (mainly because of the limited appeal of a single Eastern branch to Upminster). An obvious suggestion would be a short connector to send the District to Shenfield. Extra capacity on the Shenfield branch east of Liverpool Street will be limited by the fact that Crossrail (12 tph) will run on the slow tracks from Liverpool Street, sharing them with the existing Liverpool Street to Shenfield service, which will be reduced to accommodate Crossrail. This will be a disaster if it ever happens. People going to the West End will avoid the 6tph terminating at Liv St like the plague, but people going to the City will have no qualms about piling into the other 12tph anyway. The Shenfield Line needs 18tph either to the same place or to two wholly different useful lines. The Ebbsfleet branch (with the other 12 tph) will serve new housing developments in the "Thames Gateway" area, and the Canary Wharf (Isle of Dogs) business district. Oh dear. The "Thames Gateway" has already got good rail service (the South Eastern), apart from Thamesmead, which won't get any trains regardless of Crossfail. The whole Canary Wharf business sounds like JLE Mk II to me, but let's be charitable to the buggers for a minute. The Isle of Dogs wants a direct service to Heathrow. Killing the Circle (and preferably segregating 10 chains or so of track from Praed St junction to Edgware Rd station) would allow 8tph to Heathrow. Perhaps a spur could be constructed from Whitechapel to Canary Wharf to give this service a new Eastern Terminal for a fraction of the cost of boring huge tubes under the River. Two trains out of three will terminate at Abbey Wood; those that continue to Ebbsfleet will share (third rail) tracks with the South Eastern. That branch will take some pressure off the South Eastern service which passes through the bottleneck at London Bridge (high level) station. So we now want the South Eastern sorted twice? I thought TL3K was meant to do that. West of Paddington it was difficult to find useful routes that would justify the cost. Which is the main thing that makes Crossfail a big white elephant. Recently there were to be two branches, one to Heathrow and one to Kingston, but the Kingston branch was found to too expensive and now the western branch goes via the slow tracks from Paddington. Bloody stupid idea it was too. Richmond and Kingston already have a perfectly good rail service. About half of the trains will continue to Heathrow, West Drayton or Maidenhead, and the remainder will terminate at Paddington. What a waste. They could at least go to Greenford, or even Gerrard's Cross. City financial interests insisted on having Crossrail serve Heathrow Airport, the City, and Canary Wharf, and that seems to have determined branch route selection, It's public sector now, so they can sod off. apart from the busy Shenfield line which was an obvious choice. Which was the only big problem to start with, one which Crossfail makes a total pig's ear of. There is a good explanation of Crossrail at Always Touch Out. However good the explanation, a project to benefit people who are too lazy to change trains and a few commuters from Essex can never be worth £12bn, especially not when Britain's major cities, such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, and Manchester, are getting precisely nothing for rail projects. I say give £5bn to Birmingham, £3bn to Manchester, and £2bn each to Liverpool and Leeds, so they can get a start on proper undergrounds, and let Red Ken and Essex County Council work out a much cheaper way of benifitting their commuters. |
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