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| Re: London's five-year plan (11239) | |||
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:00:54 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004. The Brussels cross-city tunnel is at least four track, in fact off the top of my head it may even be six track. Everything is accommodated, it is wonderful.In Britain, the rail systems are really getting hammered for mid distance journeys. Even on a bad day, going on the M25 is faster. Colchester to Basingstoke, Norwich to Swindon. Forget it. For most people, rail loses to car for convenience, spped, and cost for this type of journey. Now, if we get a shiny new Crossrail, how many people will actually be going from Ilford to Kingston? Virtually none I suspect. On Thameslink, which traffic is cross-city, as opposed to joining/departing at the central stations. Very little in town I suspect. Fytton can help, but my guess that Luton to Brighton passengers outweigh Mill Hill to Sutton passengers considerably. A cross-town connection is only really worth the expense if people actually want to cross town, otherwise we need to spend money getting them into town better. On the Paris RER, despite its length, I suspect there is also very little cross-city traffic. The Paris Metro is one of the busiest systems in the world, much more so than NY or London, so yes, I guess that every building really does need to be within 500 metres of a Metro station! The solution on the W&C line is to abandon the current platforms, and go under them. Shouldn't be too difficult (the JLE managed to go under Big Ben), and would give the impetus for sorting out that dogs breakfast of a station. Of course, the W&C line should go right up to Romford. If the stretch from London to Romford could be six-tracked, (plenty of room if non-needed station platforms are demolished) we could have Southend services running non-stop to Romford, then all stations to Southend, and Chelmsford services running non-stop to Shenfield, then various stations NE. If we could have four tracking from Shenfield to Ipswich, what a superb line that would be. Then, once the goahead for Crossrail is given in 2050, ALL Norwich, Ipswich and Southend services could go into the Crossrail tunnel, sending them to Reading, Oxford, Birmingham, and Bristol in the east. Do you have a source for overcrowding on the Central Line? Its just that when Crossrail was first mooted, the worst stretch was Liverpool Street to Bank. The line could cope with the local traffic, but then commuters from East London joining at Liverpool Street were the final straw. If things have changed, and the Central Line is now overloading itself, then Chelsea-Hackney needs to become the new priority. |
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