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| Re: London's five-year plan (11255) | |||
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 07:09:28 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:56:52 2004. "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"Two objections to this plan, First, as David Fairthorne has pointed out, it may not be physically possible to extend the Waterloo and City Line eastwards to come to the surface in or near Liverpool Street station, because of all the clutter under the ground in that area (which has after all been occupied by the city for 2000 years!). Nor is it necessarily going to be very easy to provide a Blackfriars station on the W&C line, though it may be possible. Secondly, the long-suffering Shenfield commuters *still* wouldn't have a direct service to the West End, which is London's main centre of employment these days. They'd have to change at Stratford (which they can now), Liverpool Street (which they can now), Bank, Blackfriars or Waterloo. Only the last two give them any new options for access to the West End. "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." Exactly. The Heathrow Express is underused because it's expensive and stops at Paddington. It needs to be extended through the heart of London. Which needs the....um, CrossRail. There is another possibility which would be cheaper but wouldn't reach the West End directly. As part of the campaign to get rid of the Circle Line, you could run more Hammersmith & City trains. After they have dived under the Great Western main lines west of Royal Oak station, you could make a junction with the Great Western fast lines. Half of these "H&C" trains could still be H&C; the other half could skip the Royal Oak stop and then run to Ealing Broadway and Heathrow. These Heathrow trains could terminate at Aldgate. They'd then provide direct service from Heathrow to Euston, Kings Cross, The City (Moorgate), and Liverpool Street (connect for Shenfield!). But not to the West End, which would still need a change at Baker Street. |
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