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| Re: London's five-year plan (11247) | |||
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:56:52 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 05:22:22 2004. Commuters are a captive audience. They are already there, you don't have to be nice to them, they will travel by train anyway. They might hate switching to the tube at Victoria or wherever, but as long as the capacity is there, they will do it. Where capacity is insufficient, this can be enhanced by utilising unused or under-used stretches of lines and joining them onto commuter lines. Smaller trains, less tunneling, no 25K AC electrification. Aldwich to Holborn, Waterloo to Bank, Charing Cross to Green Park, Finsbury Park to Moorgate, and Moorgate to Farringdon are all waiting to be used properly. Likewise (as pointed out elsewhere) with passengers arriving at Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street, turning round Underground trains at Aldgate, Whitechapel, Tower Hill and Barking is crazy.If you were to plug the Romford Line into the W&C line, the passengers might whinge about the tube-sized cars, and complain that they lose five minutes because all trains now stop at MaryLand and wherever, but they would be grateful of getting to Bank, Blackfriars and Waterloo direct (and with a cross-platform interchange at Stratford, as they have now, other destinations). No need for glitzy 12 car platforms and vast underground cathedrals of stations. You have solved the distribution problem at Liverpool street and have a lot of change out of £20billion. My overall view is that commuter relief schemes need not be lavish. No need to spend extra money making them happy, no need for money-burning schemes. You are not going to generate extra fares, and you are not going to take cars off the road. On the other hand, the car is now the norm for mid distance journeys, and this is where more lavish schemes are needed. A lot of this is getting caught up in rail solutions for serving Heathrow, but is Crossrail the best solution for this? We already have one expensive Heathrow link going under-used. Perhaps we should be looking at how to improve usage of this one. |
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