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Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan) |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Wed Oct 20 14:23:35 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by Fytton on Mon Oct 18 04:52:55 2004. Hopefully these are negotiable.Sorry, I was wrong. The routes still are negotiable. See ic South London report on a campaign for a stop at Woolwich. "Transport secretary Alistair Darling is to make the final decision on the preferred route." |
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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 Wed Oct 20 16:19:41 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by Fytton on Wed Oct 20 04:52:16 2004. it doesn't give Heathrow a fast service to the heart of London (the West End)That's what the Picc's for. or even to the absolute heart of The City (Bank) Barbican, Moorgate, and Liv St are walking distance from all parts of the City. I've walked from Barbican to Mansion House. It takes less than 10 minutes. And does it leave enough capacity for other subsurface line services? The service over the western side of the Circle Line (up through High Street Ken and Notting Hill Gate) is relatively sparse even now. The merge at Praed St junction would be eliminated and the Edgware Rd District would get a boost in frequency. Instead of the current gamble over whether to go to Earl's Court or wait for a direct train for passengers over the stretch Sloane Sq - Notting Hill Gate, there would be fast frequent services all via Earl's Court. What is *actually* planned for the Circle, Metropolitan, District and Hamamersmith & City lines, as I understand it, is this: [T-cup, Wimblegate, and Uxbridge - Barking] AIUI, there's a clearance problem with A Stock to Barking. What I've heard keeps everything the same apart from turning the Circle into a T-cup. This gives a wholly unnecessary doubling of service to Hammersmith. Actually, this gives the simplest solution to the Heathrow - City problem. Fourth Rail electrify the Relief Lines and the Airport branch, then send either the H&C or the T-Cup there. |
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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 Wed Oct 20 17:06:59 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by David Fairthorne on Wed Oct 20 00:40:38 2004. You want to divert passengers away from the crowded Central line and onto the less crowded District and Metropolitan lines.Exactly. The key is to break up the Circle line by abolishing the circular service, allowing services to be extended east and west. The easy option :-D The Metropolitan tracks would carry their present services, minus the Circle, plus a new service from Heathrow. In the east the Metropolitan would go to Barking with a new branch to Canary Wharf. The District tracks would carry its present services, including the remaining sector of the Circle from Edgware Road. In the east the District would go to Upminster with a new branch to Shenfield. That's one of the two options which I see: COMMON TO BOTH OPTIONS: - remove the Wimbledon WB Fast Line from Earl's Court, replacing it with a second line under the flyover, creating a flying junction (with a couple of crossovers) for EB services (anything can go to anywhere without conflicting moves) - add a track from the WB District Main East of Earl's Court to come in to Earl's Court south of the WB Edgware Rd line, creating (with two crossovers) a flying junction for the WB direction. - lengthen NHG, Bayswater, and Pad (Praed St) to 7 cars (C) / 6 cars (D). - four track Praed St Junction to Edgware Rd, keeping the District at the South of the alignment and the H&C at the North. - make both faces of the north platform at Edgware Rd 8-car length (through EB/WB); make the south platform 7-car length terminal, adding an extra 7-car platform where the sidings are (3 terminating faces). - re-hab the full length of Pad (Bish Rd) and Royal Oak (8 cars). - lengthen the platforms on the H&C to 8 cars (optional). - build a connector to the Relief Lines at Royal Oak. - 4th Rail DC electrify the Relief Lines to Heathrow. - lengthen Baker St (H&C) to 8 cars, adding a new exit to Marylebone Station at the new western end of the platforms. - Au Revoir Aldgate. OPTION I (Met to Canary Wharf/Barking, Dist to Upminster/Shenfield): - solve clearance issues for A Stock to Barking (platforms are already long enough IINM). - flying junction by creating leads from eastern end of outer tracks at Whitechapel, diving down under the District, then continuing in large tubes to a station one level below the Jubilee at Canary Wharf (no intermediate stops). - flat junction with new platforms at Monument (including a terminal bay to allow self-contained service to Shenfield), tunnelling under Bishopsgate, diving under the Met (station: Liverpool St), then rising to take over the Shenfield Line, which will be 4th Rail DC electrified. Services under Option I: 8tph Heathrow - Canary Wharf 8tph Hammersmith - Barking 8tph Uxbridge - Moorgate/Barking 4tph Watford - Baker St Semi-Fast 2tph Amersham - Baker St Fast 2tph Chesham shuttle 6tph Ealing - Upminster 6tph Richmond - Shenfield 6tph Wimbledon - Gidea Park 6tph Uxbridge/Rayner's La - Ilford (Picc concentrated on Heathrow) 6tph Wimbledon - Edgware Rd 6tph Olympia - Edgware Rd OPTION II (Met to Shenfield/Canary Wharf, Dist to Upminster): - dive Met into tubes to Lower Level at Aldgate East, then continuing with one intermediate stop (Shadwell, to interchange with the ELL) to Canary Wharf (below the Jubilee). - build a curve from the Met East of Liv St to join the Shenfield Line, which would be 4th Rail electrified. - errr, that's it. Services under Option II: 8tph Heathrow - Canary Wharf 8tph Hammersmith - Shenfield/Gidea Park/Ilford 8tph Uxbridge - Shenfield/Gidea Park/Ilford 4tph Watford - Baker St Semi-Fast 2tph Amersham - Baker St Fast 2tph Chesham shuttle 6tph Ealing - Upminster 6tph Richmond - Barking 6tph Wimbledon - Whitechapel 6tph Uxbridge/Rayner's La - Tower Hill (Picc concentrated on Heathrow) 6tph Wimbledon - Edgware Rd 6tph Olympia - Edgware Rd The most expensive parts would be the new tunnels; the one connecting the District line to the Shenfield line and the spur to Canary Wharf. I would like to know the full extent and alignment of these tunnels and what other works would be needed, such as changes in the track layout. Also how you would deal with the two forms of electrification: fourth rail and catenary. Option I would have two major, if realtively short sections of new tunnel. Neither is as signifcant as Crossrail, but both would without be expensive. We're probably looking at a quarter to a third of the price of Crossrail's tunnels. Option II would be cheaper, but doesn't adress the fact that the District is underused. Either way, the outer sections would be 4th Rail electrified to maintain compatibility with existing stock. This minimises the amount of new stock required (the D Stock isn't even halfway through its life yet). Dual voltage stock costs too much, weighs too much (wearing out the track too fast), and may cause vertical clearance issues with existing tunnels. Then you can give us an estimate of how many billions you can save the Treasury! There's the difficult bit - I'll need to go through Crossrail's sums and scale a few numbers. |
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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 Wed Oct 20 17:26:27 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by Fytton on Wed Oct 20 05:25:06 2004. The reason the Central Line is so successful is that it goes where people want to go - right through the heart of The City and the West End. The north (Metropolitan) and south (District) sides of the Circle don't.The north is adequately used by enough branches and serves the City and Main Line stations pretty well. If anything, this makes it a superior line for people getting to Heathrow, as no-one actually lives on Oxford St (compared to all the people living on the lines out of Euston, St Pancras, and King's Cross) - at least no-one who'd catch a train. The south is almost as good as the Central Line (it serves the City better than any other line, and Charing X Embankment is right in the middle of things (Covent Garden, Charing X Rd, Regent St)) , it's just that the branches are no good at the east end. Encouraging more use of the south side of the Circle (the District Line) makes a lot more sense. Presumably that was the reason why the cross-platform interchange between the Central and the District at Mile End was provided in the 1940s - yet London Underground seems to keep it secret; I've never seen any publicity encouraging people to use it. And stations like Temple, Embankment and Westminster are pretty close to important destinations. If anything, the 1940s scheme got it backwards. The eastern branches would have worked better flipped. Crossrail, whatever its faults, is meant to be an express version of the Central Line. Nice idea, but it's too expensive. A better idea might be surface (or subsurface) LRT along Oxford St to reduce the short-distance traffic instead. I see it as part of the same concept as Thameslink 2000 - fast cross-London services, one north-south, the other east-west, the two connecting at Farringdon. TL3K would work perfectly well regardless. It already crosses two East-West lines extending into the outer suburbs, one at Farringdon, one at Blackfriars. It sounds more like a marketing job to me. |
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Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan) |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Wed Oct 20 17:59:00 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by Wado MP73 on Wed Oct 20 01:26:08 2004. Yes indeed. The first underground line was the Metropolitan and it ran from Paddington to the Farringdon in the City.According to London Underground History: 1863-01-10 Metropolitan, now also Hammersmith & City and Circle (except for the western terminus) The very first section of underground in the world opened between Paddington (Bishop's Road) (now Paddington) and Farringdon Street (now Farringdon on a nearby site). The intermediate stations were Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road (now Great Portland Street), Gower Street (now Euston Square) and King's Cross (now King's Cross St. Pancras). Both broad gauge and standard gauge track was laid. Broad gauge rolling stock and locomotive was provides by GWR. |
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Re: Denied (Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan)) |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Wed Oct 20 18:31:41 2004, in response to Denied (Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan)), posted by David Fairthorne on Wed Oct 20 13:51:29 2004. Oh great... when will Blair sack that national nuisance Brown? |
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Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan) |
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Posted by Wado MP73 on Wed Oct 20 18:42:41 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by David Fairthorne on Wed Oct 20 17:59:00 2004. And in 1875(sorry, not 1877) the connection to GER at Liverpoool St. was completed. Unfortunately, the connection was rarely used. |
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Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan) |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Thu Oct 21 00:35:17 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by Rail Blue on Wed Oct 20 17:06:59 2004. Thanks, R.B., for that very clear and thorough explanation.Option I would have two major, if relatively short sections of new tunnel. I doubt if Gracechurch Street is wide enough, and who knows what lies beneath it, but if possible the tunnel from Monument to the Shenfield line portal should be built by the cut-and-cover method. Then it could emerge alongside Liverpool Street station in Bishopsgate, or even inside the station itself. Otherwise you would need extended ramps to reach the necessary depth for large diameter tubes. To descend 50 feet at a gradient of 1 in 30 you would need 1500 feet, so you would have to start at Mansion House, and much of that would be near the surface and would have to be cut-and-cover. I don't know if that would be feasible anywhere in the City because the streets are so narrow and property values are so high. Option II would be cheaper, but doesn't adress the fact that the District is underused. Nor does it provide that useful short cut from Liverpool Street to the District line. There is a third option, in which the tunnel connection to the Shenfield line would start from Aldgate East, and the Shenfield line would be served by both Metropolitan and District. Tunnelling in the east end should be easier and cheaper than in the City. Services under Option I: Services under Option II: Those look like off-peak tph, and you would probably want to increase them in the peak hours. Tube Prune says that the Metropolitan has 30 8 car tph and the District line has 30 6 car tph in the central area in peak hours. I forget how long the District line stations are, but the Shenfield line has 8 car platforms and needs 8 car trains. |
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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 Thu Oct 21 09:22:46 2004, in response to Re: Crossrail gets Treasury backing (was Re: London's five-year plan), posted by David Fairthorne on Thu Oct 21 00:35:17 2004. Those look like off-peak tph, and you would probably want to increase them in the peak hours. Tube Prune says that the Metropolitan has 30 8 car tph and the District line has 30 6 car tph in the central area in peak hours.Bear in mind that the District uses two different types of 6 car trains. The ones to Edgware Rd (C Stock) are regular 6 car length. The ones via Tower Hill (D Stock) are longer, equivalent to 7 regular cars. I forget how long the District line stations are, but the Shenfield line has 8 car platforms and needs 8 car trains. D Stock has a far larger passenger capacity, but only half the number of seats (because Class 315 uses 3+2 seating). A Stock is somewhere in the middle. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Thu Oct 21 12:04:10 2004, in response to London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Mon Oct 11 23:32:14 2004. Wow,Deja vue Just when I was getting some work done too. Many of us think that Crossrail as proposed is a mistake, and tried to plan several European rail journeys recently, I think that the Paris RER lines were too. Having to cross between Paris terminals on inter-city services are a pain. How many people actually travel end to end on these RER lines? Its the long distance services that should use the tunnels, not the short distance ones, or all of them. Brussels has a suberb cross-city rail tunnel for all-comers. Its an absolute pleasure to use. With all of the infinitely cheaper Crossrail alternatives being proposed, don't forget the Waterloo & City Line. There are many possibilities, but a Liverpool Street to Waterloo service would do much to relieve the Central Line, and a station at Blackfriars would be useful too. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 21 12:18:05 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Thu Oct 21 12:04:10 2004. Just when I was getting some work done too.You don't wanna do that! Many of us think that Crossrail as proposed is a mistake, and tried to plan several European rail journeys recently, I think that the Paris RER lines were too. Having to cross between Paris terminals on inter-city services are a pain. How many people actually travel end to end on these RER lines? Its the long distance services that should use the tunnels, not the short distance ones, or all of them. Brussels has a suberb cross-city rail tunnel for all-comers. Its an absolute pleasure to use. Paris needs to concentrate its TGVs on one station. I'm pretty sure there'd be a way to get them all into the Gare de Lyon. With all of the infinitely cheaper Crossrail alternatives being proposed, don't forget the Waterloo & City Line. There are many possibilities, but a Liverpool Street to Waterloo service would do much to relieve the Central Line, and a station at Blackfriars would be useful too. Nice idea. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Thu Oct 21 12:34:00 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 21 12:18:05 2004. I guess that Parisians don't see why they should help the rest of the world, or even other French people. Have you ever tried to get from Gare du Nord to Metro Line 2? Although shown as an interchange on the map, its completely unsignposted. You have to go through the fare control at "Magenta Station", but there is no way of finding that out.The other idea I have is to rebuild Aldgate East with an island platform. With cross platform interchanges, and the W&C line extended, no one at my end (Liverpool Street) would even notice the demise of the Circle Line. At the other end, send the Bakerloo Line to the surface and down the H&C, and run a Wimbledon-Paddington-Barking service. Three flat junctions gone at a stroke, plus the awful paddington-stations situation. No more guesswork for eastbound passengers. You could probably manage an Edgware Road to South Kensington shuttle with minimal disruption and then no one would miss the Circle Line at all anywhere. The trouble with todays planners is as soon as they get their pencils out, they start adding zeros to the bill. Expansion by stealth and logical progressive developments are gone. If it doesn't cost a billion, they are not interested. We had the marketing co-ordinator for the ELX project giving a talk at the London Underground Railway Society a couple of months ago. That lot don't have a clue as to what they are doing. Hardly surprising. ELX planning was taken on by the SRA, who have no metro planning or running experience whatsoever. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 21 13:29:51 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Thu Oct 21 12:34:00 2004. I guess that Parisians don't see why they should help the rest of the world, or even other French people. Have you ever tried to get from Gare du Nord to Metro Line 2? Although shown as an interchange on the map, its completely unsignposted. You have to go through the fare control at "Magenta Station", but there is no way of finding that out.The signage at Nord is appalling. Even something straightforward like finding Line B Southbound is somewhat challenging. The trouble with todays planners is as soon as they get their pencils out, they start adding zeros to the bill. Expansion by stealth and logical progressive developments are gone. If it doesn't cost a billion, they are not interested. It's not the planners' fault. It's whoever came up with PFI and other PPPs who's responsible for not being allowed to do anythign cheap. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Thu Oct 21 12:04:10 2004. Many of us think that Crossrail as proposed is a mistake, and ... I think that the Paris RER lines were too.The RER seems a very fine system to me, and at least some lines (including line A) have high ridership. But it must have been very expensive to build. I don't know how much of it ran on existing rails and how much was new tunnelling. As for the Metro, it is incredibly dense, being concentrated mainly in department 75 (not even 92, 93 or 94). Does every building really need to be within 500 metres of a Metro station? And some lines seem to stray too much from straight lines. Its the long distance services that should use the tunnels Here I tend to disagree, and that's what makes me wonder about the RER. Some RER routes are very long. Given a choice I would prefer short distance services to use tunnels. On tunnel routes through a city you have lots of passengers getting on and off at most stations, and they are well served by local rolling stock with wide doors and plenty of standing space, all helping to reduce dwell times. The priority on long distance commuter lines should be to provide plenty of seats for a comfortable journey, even if they don't take you to the very centre of the city. Compared with RER, Crossrail's lines are not very long, extending out about 30 km from the centre. But Thameslink 2000 is another story, having short and long distance trains that seem unlikely to mix well on the tame tracks. I also share the concerns of London Rail that they are trying to do a shoehorn job, and the 24 tph projection may be unrealistic. If there were fewer trains serving fewer and shorter routes, it could be made to work reasonably well, but where are the shorter routes? Most of them are in south London and would be better served by extensions to the UndergrounD. Brussels has a suberb cross-city rail tunnel for all-comers. That's probably much easier to organize in a less populous city with fewer lines. don't forget the Waterloo & City Line. The W & C could provide the short cut from Liverpool Street to Blackfriars, but that wouldn't be so convenient as feeding the Shenfield line directly onto the District line, as R.B. would like. However R.B's plan may not be feasible because the City streets are too narrow. And the same could apply to a W & C extension. The cutaway diagram of Bank and Monument stations shows some of what you would encounter if you tried to extend the line beyond Bank. a Liverpool Street to Waterloo service would do much to relieve the Central Line It would be a useful link, but the most overcrowded stretch of the Central is east of Liverpool Street. That's because the load is unidirectional. Through the centre the line may be busier but it's not so crowded because people are going in both directions. See fig 4c.2 in this pdf file. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:17:51 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Thu Oct 21 12:34:00 2004. ELX planning was taken on by the SRA, who have no metro planning or running experience whatsoever.Mayor Livingstone has been pushing this project, but I don't think he has a good grasp of London's real transport needs. His five-year plan includes the ELL extension but not a major North Circular Road widening that would cost slightly less. The following statement comes from the London Rail department of Transport for London: East London Line Benefits The project benefits can be summarised as follows: A catalyst for £10bn worth of regeneration. Patronage will increase by 300% by 2021. Train frequency to increase by 60% through the central section. Phase one will be delivered by June 2010, in good time to support the Olympic bid. There is an artist's impression of a densely built-up area marked "Dalston Junction". "Regeneration" cannot be a euphemism for slum clearance, which wouldn't need a catalyst. More likely a "catalyst for regeneration" means that the new service would stimulate commercial development in the area. That £10bn worth of regeneration is impressive, considering how little the ELL extension does. It takes you from Dalston Junction to Whitechapel, which is decidedly less useful than the old Broad Street line that took you from Dalston Junction to the City. But the Broad Street line wasn't a catalyst for regeneration, so I don't know why the ELL extension should be. |
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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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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 05:22:22 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:00:54 2004. "I suspect. Fytton can help, but my guess that Luton to Brighton passengers outweigh Mill Hill to Sutton passengers considerably."You are probably right about that. It all hinges, of course, on trains going to useful destinations. Most suburban lines have purely residential areas at their outer ends, and thus linking them across city centres doesn't generate much cross-city traffic. Having airports or seaside resorts at the end, of course *does* generate cross-city traffic. I am sure RER line C gets lots of people from south of the city going to CDG airport. Thameslink is a good example of a cross-city route that is actually useful. I grew up in Brighton in pre-Thameslink days, in a family without a car. The biggest bane of our travel was having to take all our luggage off a train at Victoria, get on to the Underground (in pre-Victoria Line days too, so another change at Embankment) and across to one of the northern termini (Euston, Kings X, St Pancras) to get to anywhere north of London. Nowadays, probably the most useful feature of Thameslink is to get people to Gatwick Airport from north of London and to Luton Airport from south of London. By connecting at Bedford, Luton or Luton Airport stations, passengers from everywhere on the Midland Mainline system can get to Gatwick without having to use the tube to cross London. On the other hand, lots of people get off suburban commuter trains at a big-city terminus and get on to the tube for a short journey within the CBD. Cross-city services like the RER can reduce that. Not many people from Luton ride to Wimbledon, it's true, but lots go to Farringdon, City Thameslink, Blackfriars or London Bridge, avoiding the need to use the tube. The most useful feature of CrossRail will probably be to give people from the suburban lines running out of Paddington a direct line to the heart of the West End and the City, and people from the Shenfield line direct services to the West End. Much as I love the tube, at the peak of the peak the Thameslink is much pleasanter to ride on than the tube, and CrossRail would be pleasanter than the Central Line! Whether it's worth all that money is another question. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:25:49 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:17:51 2004. I agree, and one problem is that people are getting confused about what the ELX is for.Part of its purpose is to be an orbital link, hence a one seat ride from Highbury to Croydon. I've always thought this to be a red herring. Yes, orbital links are useful, and people do use them, but not for long distance, and not if many changes are required anyway: Stratford to Highbury: perfect, just the sort of journey people are likely to make. Hainault to Wembley: actually, you would be better off changing into the Met at Liverpool Street, just one change, more likely to get a seat, fewer muggers. Stratford to Acton: I've tried both ways. Take the Central Line. Anything else is stupid. So orbital links need not be continual. Orbital journeys are not long distance, and for those that are, radial links are usually as fast anyway. For area regeneration, Hoxton etc. will regenerate whether or not they can get directly to Crystal Palace. Actually, the lack of a good link to Central London is always going to count against the use of this line. If regeneration is the key, the line will regenerate the area just as well if it runs from Highbury & Islington to New Cross/New Cross gate as if it were to stretch its tentacles all over South London, which means a smaller dedicated fleet of trains and less remodelling of junctions. Here are some of the reasons why the cost has spiralled to £billion: LT was expecting a quick decision on the line, and have been deferring maintenance (despite rebuilding the line not so long ago) Everything has to be rebuilt and resignalled to national-rail standards The Dalston viaduct is in a pretty bad state, worse than anticipated A dedicated fleet of brand new National Rail standard trains is required I pointed out to the person giving the talk that: 1) On the basis of these prices, it wouldn't be much more expensive to build a brand new tube line from New Cross to Dalston. It would have better interchanges too. 2) That a DLR conversion of the line would cost considerably less. 3) No modern purpose-built urban metro in the world is 4-branched (as per the South London proposals). Even the SAS has an extremely simple service pattern proposed. He seemed genuinely interested in these points, as though they had not been suggested to him before. |
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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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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 06:04:26 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:25:49 2004. I agree with you 100% about the East London Line extension. I'm reluctant to oppose new urban rail mass transit lines anywhere, but this one is seriously half-baked.Its major, major failing is that it doesn't take people into central London. People currently have a 6 tph (offpeak) Southern service from places like Brockley and Honor Oak Park into London Bridge - not ideal. But there are quite a lot of ways to get to various parts of Central London from London Bridge station. You can walk across the bridge into The City, or change on to the Northern or Jubilee Lines, on to South Eastern trains into Charing Cross, or on to Thameslink trains to Farringdon and Kings Cross. Now, those Southern trains will become part of the ELL, and you will be able to go to - er, New Cross Gate, Canada Water (change for Jubilee Line), Whitechapel (change for District/Hammersmith & City), then, um, Dalston Junction (change for the North London Line) and maybe if we're lucky Highbury and Islington (change for the Victoria Line). What's the point? NO connection to the Central Line; no stop within walking distance of The City; no way to the West End without heading east and then north first. Stations at Hoxton and Haggerston would be nice, but only if the trains go to somewhere people actually want to go! It doesn't help the proposed Olympic sites either, despite it being touted by the London Olympic Bid people. |
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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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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 07:10:52 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 06:04:26 2004. In fact, the ELX service is now intended to be added on top of what is already there, so that's 14tph through Forest Hill, each way, off peak. Your argument is still correct though. No need to guess which trains will be the more full, the ones that run the less frequently.ELL looks like a bit of a hopeless case in trying to find a role for it. Ironically, it is in a part of London which is already full of orbital routes. A cheap extension to Dalston would have put a few extra stations on the map, but in a part of London that is short of radial links. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't seem to help in any way. Its not even obvious how the DLR could absorb the line. Maybe a Chelsea-Hackney tube should be pushed higher up the list of priorities. Trouble is, finding a temporary southern destination, because the Victoria-Kings Cross section will be expensive, and you really don't want to discharge all of these passengers at Kings Cross, where it is already mayhem. |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 07:29:51 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 07:09:28 2004. Shenfield users might not have a direct link to the West End, but why should they? They would have a direct link to one major employment area, the city, which is more than can be said for people arriving at Marylebone, Paddington, Waterloo, Victoria, London Bridge, Euston, and Kings Cross, who have no direct links to anywhere at all. £20billion is a lot of money to fix just two of these problems (Paddington and Liverpool Street) and at the rate this is going, the rest won't be fixed in our children's lifetime. Time for cheap solutions and compromises. We don't want one perfect scheme, we need three or four good schemes.Waterloo & City Line will extend eastwards easily if the current platforms are abandoned, and a station is built at lower level. This also gives the benefit that the line can stay open while building work is done. During the 1930s, considerable work was done on a scheme to join the W&C with the ELL at Shoreditch, so there are clearly no real problems in going eastwards. What about various proposals to run a Heathrow to KX service via the various lines in NW London. At least other terminals would have links to Heathrow. If you want a direct West End to Heathrow service, four-track the Piccadilly Line between Northfields and Heathrow (no stations needed, so this could run in tubes under the main line) and cancel the Piccadilly Line stops at Turnham Green, Barons Court, and Hammersmith. Return South Harrow to the District Line, and run all Piccadilly Line trains to Heathrow, either all stations, or non-stop: South Kensington, Earl's Court, Hammersmith, Acton Town, and Heathrow. Actually, looking at the picture of the Bank-Monument complex again, its clear that the lines are all wrong. The W&C is pointing straight to Liverpool street, and the Central Line is horribly bent, and that curved platform at Bank does ruin the reliability of the line. So, Extend the Waterloo & City to Mile End and Romford taking over the Central Line route as far as Strateford, and divert the Central Line to Tower Hill, Whitechapel (NOW WE HAVE A DIRECT ELL CONNECTION TO THE WEST END!) and Stratford, where it regains the Epping and Hainault branches. |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 07:55:44 2004, in response to London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Mon Oct 11 23:32:14 2004. Looking at the posts, its clear that the London(ish) subtalkers disagree on various issues, but nonetheless have many cost-effective and creative proposals for improving London's transport.Maybe we should organise ourselves into the "Joint Universities Transport Thinktank" or something like that, get a copy of Pagemaker, and start making up some glossy brochures with some nice graphics. The number of times I read in newspapers "A leading thinktank has proposed that [insert bonkers scheme here]" I often wonder who these people are, and where their intellectual authority comes from. Well, if you can't beat them, join them. I'll volunteer to do the maps, statistical analysis and the nice looking 3D graphs. |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Fri Oct 22 08:26:10 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004. The RER seems a very fine system to me, and at least some lines (including line A) have high ridership. But it must have been very expensive to build. I don't know how much of it ran on existing rails and how much was new tunnelling.Line A was new tunelling from Nanterre to Vincennes. Line B/D from just north of the Gare du Nord to Luxembourg / Gare de Lyon. Line E inwards from just east of the Gare de l'Est. Line C was, however, a bargain. The new tunnel was from Invalides to Orsay. Does every building really need to be within 500 metres of a Metro station? That's one of its best features. And some lines seem to stray too much from straight lines. And that's one of its worst. Whoever designed line 12 really should lay off the Beaujolais-Villages. Here I tend to disagree, and that's what makes me wonder about the RER. Some RER routes are very long. Given a choice I would prefer short distance services to use tunnels. For commuters it doesn't really matter which London terminal you arrive at. For long distance passengers, London can be a distinct nuisance. Try getting from Ipswich to Cardiff. Or for that matter try getting from Leicester to Brighton: First to get onto Thameslink you need to ride the Slow MML train (instantly losing you 20 minutes) or have a very long walk from St Pancras to King's X TL (rather defeating the point of TL). If you do get on TL north of London, you are on an extremely slow train. First it takes ages to get to London, then it might run via Redhill, then it probably will start calling at everystation in Sussex. Compared to a Fast MML to St Pancras, the Victoria Line, and a Brighton Express, TL is useless, unless you have tons of luggage when you are merely trying to fit your luggage into a sub-standard commuter train that could at best be described as inappropriate. If there were fewer trains serving fewer and shorter routes, it could be made to work reasonably well, but where are the shorter routes? Remind me, quite how is this an advantage over terminating everything at Holborn Viaduct? "Brussels has a suberb cross-city rail tunnel for all-comers." That's probably much easier to organize in a less populous city with fewer lines. Compare Birmingham New St. Very similar almost everything goes through, hub of the network kinda thing. The difference is that the Belgians know how to run a railway, whereas the British authorities don't give a flying First-logo what goes on North of Watford. So much for my clever capacity-increasing plan for New St... However R.B's plan may not be feasible because the City streets are too narrow. I don't think they're THAT narrow. I mean, you could fit a 2-track railway alignment into 25-30ft or so. |
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Posted by Peter Rosa on Fri Oct 22 09:24:49 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004. It sounds as if one priority is to provide faster service between Heathrow Airport and the City. Is there some way that the current Heathrow Express to Paddington could be re-routed to bring it into London Bridge or Blackfriars stations? Even if some new tracks had to be laid in the suburbs the cost probably would be far less than digging new tunnels in the urbanized areas. And even if trains on the new route ran more slowly than the current Heathrow Express, travel times between LHR and the City surely would be much faster than today through the elimination of the Tube ride from Paddington.While we're on the subject, how about another re-routing to bring the Heathrow Express into Charing Cross station for better access to the West End? |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 10:32:56 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004. I took a look at that figure, but the projected one on the next page is even more interesting, as it suggests that what we actually need to solve the problems differs from the planners solutions:1) We don't need Crossrail at all. There is no evidence for any overcrowded bits at all on the east-west axis inside the Circle Line. The overcrowding in East London can be solved by extending Met trains to Whitechapel, and the W&C line to Stratford: Make the cross-platform interchange at Stratford with the W&C line, not the Central line, so that people travelling to London get empty trains. 2) Thameslink 2000 is needed urgently to relieve the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines from Finsbury Park to London. Also, a full service from London Bridge via Thameslink during peak hours should be a priority. 3) Chelsea-Hackney should be a higher priority, to relieve the Central Line in East London, the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines in the centre, and the District and Piccadilly Lines to the west. 4) The Northern Heights project needs to be reactivated from Highgate to Moorgate. Plenty of capacity for this once Thameslink 2000 is activated, and the projected overcrowding on the Northern Line City and High Barnet branches would be eradicated. 5) A few surprises, and no obvious solutions e.g. Finchley Road to Baker Street |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 10:34:22 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Peter Rosa on Fri Oct 22 09:24:49 2004. It's not just access from Heathrow to The City (i.e. the finance district, London's equivalent of Downtown NYC) that's needed, it's also access to The West End, which is London's equivalent of Midtown. Terminating the Heathrow Express at Paddington provides direct access to neither; it is rather like building an express line from JFK and then terminating it at Long Island City.As the Heathrow Express line is a branch off the old Great Western Main Line, the only possible ways of using existing lines to get trains from Heathrow into any terminus other than Paddington would be very circuitous and slow, and would also have conflicting movements with many busy suburban routes. To reach Charing Cross, for example (which is the best-situated of all the London termini for access to The West End), you would have get from Heathrow, which is 15 miles west of Central Lnodon and north of the Thames, to the approaches to London Bridge station, which are south of the river and several miles out to the southeast - and very congested. Any direct route from west of London to the heart of The West End and The City necessarily involves tunnels, either of tube or of main line dimensions. |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 10:47:32 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004. I took a look at that figure, but the projected one on the next page is even more interesting, as it suggests that what we actually need to solve the problems differs from the planners solutions:1) We don't need Crossrail at all. There is no evidence for any overcrowded bits at all on the east-west axis inside the Circle Line. The overcrowding in East London can be solved by extending Met trains to Whitechapel, and the W&C line to Stratford: Make the cross-platform interchange at Stratford with the W&C line, not the Central line, so that people travelling to London get empty trains. 2) Thameslink 2000 is needed urgently to relieve the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines from Finsbury Park to London. Also, a full service from London Bridge via Thameslink during peak hours should be a priority. 3) Chelsea-Hackney should be a higher priority, to relieve the Central Line in East London, the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines in the centre, and the District and Piccadilly Lines to the west. 4) The Northern Heights project needs to be reactivated from Highgate to Moorgate. Plenty of capacity for this once Thameslink 2000 is activated, and the projected overcrowding on the Northern Line City and High Barnet branches would be eradicated. 5) A few surprises, and no obvious solutions e.g. Finchley Road to Baker Street |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 10:47:36 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 10:32:56 2004. "2) Thameslink 2000 ....... Also, a full service from London Bridge via Thameslink during peak hours should be a priority."Absolutely true. But that is precisely where Thameslink 2000's problem lies - the lack of capacity, and conflicting movements, over the section between Blackfriars and New Cross Gate, through Metropolitan Junction, Borough Market Junction, London Bridge station, and the junctions between the ex-South Eastern and ex-Brighton main lines south of London Bridge. Various expensive grade-separation projects are needed, and it's very difficult to find room for the crucial one at Borough Market Junction. For some reason we're not allowed to knock down Southwark Cathedral..... "4) The Northern Heights project needs to be reactivated from Highgate to Moorgate. Plenty of capacity for this once Thameslink 2000 is activated, and the projected overcrowding on the Northern Line City and High Barnet branches would be eradicated." Is the trackbed from East Finchley through Highgate (high level) to Finsbury Park still intact, or has any of it been built over? Here the main problem would be the crossing over the East Coast Main Line at Finsbury Park. The original 1935-40 plan envisaged high-level platforms above the main line ones at Finsbury Park station, and that is probably what would need to be tried again. Not an ideal interchange with the Piccadilly and Victoria line platforms, though, which are underground below the main lines at that point. (London's Broadway Junction ENY begins to emerge....) Admittedly, the alternative interchange with the Victoria Line at Highbury and Islington is good, a cross-platform one. Doesn't answer the point that the employment centre of gravity of London has been drifting westwards for many years, reducing the relevat level of need for travel to The City and increasing it towards The West End. |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 10:59:18 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 10:47:36 2004. The Northern Heights trackbed could easily be reclaimed all the way up to Mill Hill and Alexandra Palace. There are a few buildings on it, most notably a prefab school and an old people's home, but no housing estates or anything like that. In fact, some of the platforms are still there. At the north of Finsbury Park, the site of the flying junction over the ECML can easily be seen.There are still many many jobs in the City of London, and I can't see that changing overnight. The overcrowding lines on the Northern Line are there to see. Still, a terminus at Moorgate is only going to see five-days a week usage, so in the dim and distant future at Moorgate extend SW to St Paul's, Ludgate Circus, Aldwych, Charing Cross, Green Park, Hyde Park Corner, Knightsbridge, Albert Hall, High Street Kensington, Kensington Olympia, and points west. Now you have a 7-days-a-week line serving work and leisure destinations in the City and West End. |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 13:22:19 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 05:00:54 2004. Do you have a source for overcrowding on the Central Line?http://www.london.gov.uk/approot/mayor/strategies/transport/pdf/final_ch04c.pdf is my only source for the underground. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/rail/downloads/pdf/londons-future.pdf has a similar map showing the inner part of the rail network in 2011, with serious overcrowding on the Shenfield line and on the south east approach to London Bridge. None of these maps give a very clear picture, but taken together they are perhaps slightly better than nothing! |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 15:32:13 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Rail Blue on Fri Oct 22 08:26:10 2004. Line C was, however, a bargain. The new tunnel was from Invalides to Orsay.That would explain why the route to the north (lines C1 and C3) starts out going south west, then turns north east! For long distance passengers, London can be a distinct nuisance. Yes but you obviously cannot expect through routes to connect every combination of places served from eleven main line termini, or even every combination of airports. So London is an unavoidable nuisance for through journeys. Try getting from Ipswich to Cardiff. Or for that matter try getting from Leicester to Brighton: Liverpool Street to Paddington via Circle line. Kings Cross / St Pancras to Victoria via Victoria line. Definitely not Thameslink! Remind me, quite how is this an advantage over terminating everything at Holborn Viaduct? I am not happy about the excessive number (twelve) of southern branches planned for Thameslink 2000, especially combined with the mixture of local and long distance routes using the same tracks. There are too many interfaces with the rest of the rail network for a robust and reliable service of 24 tph. I think they should reduce the planned tph through the Snow Hill tunnel, and (yes) continue to terminate more long distance trains at the main line termini. I mean, you could fit a 2-track railway alignment into 25-30ft or so. But you would need four track width for the junction at Monument, unless it's a flat junction. |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 23:35:09 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 10:32:56 2004. I took a look at that figure, but the projected one on the next page is even more interestingLooking at those maps closely, I see that each line has two colours and two widths, one in each direction. Widths denote volumes, putting parts of the Central and Victoria in the lead among crowded underground lines. suggests that what we actually need to solve the problems differs from the planners solutions: Those are interesting and surprising suggestions but ... the weakness of your methodology is that overcrowding is only one factor. Others include speed, convenience, service to unserved areas, population trends, financial backing, nimby objections, and ultimately of course all decisions are political. Overcrowding becomes a serious problem when it delays an entire line. That can happen when dwell times are so long that the frequency of service has to be reduced, resulting in even longer dwell times and slower and even more crowded trains. I don't know if the Central line is reaching that stage. Typically dwell times are long at stations where many people alight and many more people try to get on board. If nearly all are boarding, or nearly all are alighting, they don't get in each others' way so much. A dramatic example of dwell time limiting capacity is London Bridge (high level), where some tracks split into pairs, to allow trains to stop at one of two possible platforms. With just one platform and there wouldn't be nearly enough platform time, and they could only run about half the service, and the full service is barely adequate. We don't need Crossrail ... no evidence for any overcrowded bits at all on the east-west axis inside the Circle Line. But the City financiers claim that it's vital to London's survival as Europe's leading financial centre, and they are threatening to take their business elsewhere if the line isn't built according to their wishes, from Heathrow to Canary Wharf via the City. The overcrowding in East London can be solved by extending Met trains to Whitechapel, and the W&C line to Stratford: Make the cross-platform interchange at Stratford with the W&C line, not the Central line Given that there are two lines from Liverpool Street to Stratford, many people choose the more crowded line for the sake of convenience. Unless both lines are seriously overcrowded, I don't see that a third line is needed. The Shenfield line is at its most crowded east of Stratford and the Central line is most crowded west of Stratford, which confirms what we already know, that many people take advantage of the cross-platform interchange, regardless of crowding. The capacity of the Shenfield line could be increased by better signalling (with shorter signal blocks) or by platform lengthening. Thameslink 2000 is needed urgently to relieve the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines from Finsbury Park to London. I doubt that Thameslink 2000 would make a big difference to the Victoria or Piccadilly line. There are easier ways to reach Moorgate and the Bank (Moorgate Thameslink would be closed) and Thameslink 2000 is no help to reach the west end. Thameslink 2000 should attract people living to the north who work in the Holborn and Blackfriars area. Also, a full service from London Bridge via Thameslink during peak hours should be a priority. The Northern line via Bank is crowded, but Thameslink 2000 takes a less popular route with no transfer to the Central line. I don't know how important the Thameslink service to London Bridge would be. Currently Thameslink cannot serve London Bridge in peak hours, due to the London Bridge (high level) bottleneck, and if Thameslink 2000 can solve that problem it's worth considering. Chelsea-Hackney should be a higher priority, to relieve the Central Line in East London, the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines in the centre, and the District and Piccadilly Lines to the west. Crossrail #2 would certainly help to relieve the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines especially in the centre. The Northern Heights project ... Plenty of capacity for this once Thameslink 2000 is activated Thameslink 2000 would run nonstop from Finsbury Park to Potters Bar; GN local services would still need the Moorgate line. |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Sat Oct 23 00:07:55 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 10:47:36 2004. Various expensive grade-separation projects are needed, and it's very difficult to find room for the crucial one at Borough Market Junction. For some reason we're not allowed to knock down Southwark Cathedral.....The plan is to let Thameslink 2000 use the existing Borough Market viaduct and to build a parallel viaduct to the south to serve Charing Cross. London Bridge station would have nine through platforms: three serving Cannon Street, two serving Thameslink 2000, and four serving Charing Cross. Thameslink 2000 would cross the Charing Cross tracks at a new dive-under in Bermondsey. |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Sat Oct 23 01:24:47 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Peter Rosa on Fri Oct 22 09:24:49 2004. Even if some new tracks had to be laid in the suburbs the cost probably would be far less than digging new tunnels in the urbanized areas. ... bring the Heathrow Express into Charing Cross station for better access to the West End?It's a good idea but the routes you have named are way too crowded or too devious. You could probably build a Heathrow branch off the lines from Windsor to Waterloo. Waterloo is directly connected by underground to the west end (three lines), the City, and Canary Wharf, all of which would become a two-seat ride from the airport. Heathrow trains could occupy the Eurostar (Channel Tunnel) terminal at Waterloo, soon to be vacated when the St Pancras Euro-terminal opens in 2007. |
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Posted by Peter Rosa on Sat Oct 23 10:22:42 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 23:35:09 2004. We don't need Crossrail ... no evidence for any overcrowded bits at all on the east-west axis inside the Circle Line.But the City financiers claim that it's vital to London's survival as Europe's leading financial centre, and they are threatening to take their business elsewhere if the line isn't built according to their wishes, from Heathrow to Canary Wharf via the City. Financiers in lower Manhattan say much the same thing. Downtown will decline if it doesn't get a rail link to JFK and a one-seat ride to Long Island. More ambitious - or greedy - types demand a one-seat ride to the northern suburbs on Metro North. Granted, Downtown has declined, relatively speaking, when compared to Midtown, just as the City seems to have declined slightly as compared to the West End (though of course 9/11 is a big factor in New York). Whether transit links can change what might be inevitable shifts in business locations is another matter entirely. |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Sat Oct 23 15:48:18 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Peter Rosa on Sat Oct 23 10:22:42 2004. Whether transit links can change what might be inevitable shifts in business locations is another matter entirely.New York's financiers can move to Midtown or New Jersey, but I don't know where the City of London would move to. But wherever they go, it might be an improvement, because London is crowded and expensive (thanks in part to the Green Belt)! |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 28 19:42:41 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 15:32:13 2004. That would explain why the route to the north (lines C1 and C3) starts out going south west, then turns north east!It's a distinctly silly routing if looked at on a map, but it's really bloody useful. If only the entire Petit Ceinture were open. Yes but you obviously cannot expect through routes to connect every combination of places served from eleven main line termini, or even every combination of airports. So London is an unavoidable nuisance for through journeys. You don't need to connect all 11 termini. Think what the first few InterCity destinations are on each line: GE - Ipswich, Norwich / Cambridge, King's Lynn EC - Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, Doncaster Midland - Leicester, Derby / Nottingham, Sheffield WC - Milton Keynes, Rugby, Nuneaton, Tamworth / Coventry, Birmingham Chiltern - Banbury, Leamington, Birmingham GW - Reading, Oxford / Swindon, Bristol, Caridff SW - Basingstoke, Salisbury / Southampton / Guildford, Portsmouth Brighton - errrm, Brighton, and maybe Eastbourne, Worthing, Chichester SE&C - Maidstone, Ashford, Margate, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Folkestone, Dover Noting the major cross-country routes (which need significant development in themselves) and allowing for full IC use of the WLL (covering GW/Chiltern/WC to Brighton/SE&C) and reinstating the Oxbridge line (which would fully cover GE-GW). There are big improvements needed to make Cross-Country work (notably re-opening Birmingham Curzon St station), but it solves most London issues on the national scale. This leaves GE/EC - SEC/Bri/SW and MML - SEC/Bri. This line would not even have to go through Central London. It could run from Bedford, Hitchin (maybe using the 1860s MML), then skirting East London (connector from the GE), then bridging the estuary near the proposed Cliffe Airport, with junctions to the NKL, the SEML both ways in the Tonbridge - Paddock Wood area, then a curve south onto the Brighton Slow Lines (to avoid reversal at Redhill). Liverpool Street to Paddington via Circle line. Kings Cross / St Pancras to Victoria via Victoria line. Definitely not Thameslink Great without luggage, isn't it. I'll never forget the day I heaved my suitcase from the Northern Line to the Brighton station at London Bridge. I am not happy about the excessive number (twelve) of southern branches planned for Thameslink 2000, especially combined with the mixture of local and long distance routes using the same tracks. There are too many interfaces with the rest of the rail network for a robust and reliable service of 24 tph. I think they should reduce the planned tph through the Snow Hill tunnel, and (yes) continue to terminate more long distance trains at the main line termini. It's a really silly project, no doubt about it. With a proper interchange station at Southwark, a lot of pressure could be removed from London Bridge and the number of branches halved. What would probably be a sensible compromise would be to forget the 12-car trains, split the service and run Southern 3rd Rail trains to West Hampstead (needs a bit of electrification) and Midland OHLE trains to Moorgate. Then the expensive buggy non-standard rolling stock could be well and truly buried. But you would need four track width for the junction at Monument, unless it's a flat junction. It would be a flat junction. The Upminster service would only be 6tph, remember, so it should be pretty easy to make sure the diverging intervals line up. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 28 20:15:11 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 22 06:04:26 2004. I agree with you 100% about the East London Line extension. I'm reluctant to oppose new urban rail mass transit lines anywhere, but this one is seriously half-baked.If you don't oppose the dumb ones, it plays into the road lobby's hands. It will prove to them that rail sucks and it will make you look distinctly biased. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 28 21:13:45 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 22 07:10:52 2004. ELL looks like a bit of a hopeless case in trying to find a role for it. Ironically, it is in a part of London which is already full of orbital routes. A cheap extension to Dalston would have put a few extra stations on the map, but in a part of London that is short of radial links. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't seem to help in any way. Its not even obvious how the DLR could absorb the line.Easy - make it a DLR loop (existing line to Bank, then Liverpool St, Shoreditch, Hoxton, Haggerston, Dalston, Hackney Cen, Homerton, Hackney Wick, Stratford Intl, then the proposed DLR route to Canning Town). This would double the capacity between Canning Town and the City, making BOTH Dagenham Dock and Thamesmead (via the TGB) possible. And everyone gets a ride into the City, and everyone is happy. Next challenge: a West End terminal for the DLR. Maybe a Chelsea-Hackney tube should be pushed higher up the list of priorities. Trouble is, finding a temporary southern destination, because the Victoria-Kings Cross section will be expensive, and you really don't want to discharge all of these passengers at Kings Cross, where it is already mayhem. The Southern bit is easy. It would take over the District to Wimbledon. There, you'd want to get it outside the South-Western tracks (basically a dive-under for the SB - this might mean taking the Sutton loop platform, so that line might need incorporating too). There are six tracks through Raynes Park station, so it'd take the outer two. The destinations would therefore be Chessington and Epsom (Leatherhead, Guildford, Dorking, Horsham etc). Why King's Cross? It'd be far better to run on a Fleet Line type alignment from Charing X to the City, then it could either terminate or go to Shenfield (which is becoming rather a "Morningotn Crescent"). A temporary London terminus is already there at Charing X. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 29 00:53:33 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Rail Blue on Thu Oct 28 19:42:41 2004. [Thameslink 2000, ... too many interfaces with the rest of the rail network.]It's a really silly project, no doubt about it. With a proper interchange station at Southwark, a lot of pressure could be removed from London Bridge and the number of branches halved. If a new interchange station was built at Southwark (serving Thameslink and the Charing Cross line), it would no longer be important to run Thameslink trains via London Bridge, and you could forget Thameslink 2000. Charing Cross could be dedicated to its main job of serving the South Eastern. Then there would be no need to lengthen Farringdon or Blackfriars stations or rebuild London Bridge (high level) station or build the Bermondsey dive-under or the duplicate Borough Market viaduct, or demolish the London Bridge train shed. However I would like to demolish London Bridge platform 8 (outside the train shed) and use the space to build the missing platform 7. Then all Charing Cross trains could (and should) call at London Bridge. Use the one-track connection between Blackfriars and London Bridge only for ECS movements from Cannon Street to Blackfriars and Grove Park sidings. forget the 12-car trains, split the service and run Southern 3rd Rail trains to West Hampstead ... and Midland OHLE trains to Moorgate. Then the expensive buggy non-standard rolling stock could be well and truly buried. I too would like to split the service, but for different reasons (unrelated to the dual powered rolling stock). Forget 12-car trains on Thameslink (allowing Moorgate to remain open) but divert the crowded Brighton service from Thameslink to the London Bridge terminus, with 12-car trains in peak hours (all platforms are already long enough). For the benefit of people on the Brighton line and others who really want to reach Thameslink, provide an 8-car Thameslink service via Crystal Palace to somewhere on the Brighton line (East Croydon or possibly Gatwick). Let Thameslink continue to serve the Sutton & Wimbledon loop and perhaps add other routes in south London such as the Catford loop. Southward expansion of Thameslink is limited by the flat junction at Herne Hill, but some paths will be vacated by Eurostar in 2007. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 29 05:19:34 2004, in response to London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Mon Oct 11 23:32:14 2004. The press release about the Transport for London (TfL) five-year Business Plan lan has finally appeared on their website today, Friday 29 October.One entertaining error - the extension of the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Terminal 5 is listed under the Docklands Light Railway heading! And so is the rebuilding of Kings Cross St Pancras underground station to link up with the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link terminus at St Pancras. I think I'll apply for a job as a proofreader with TfL when I retire from the university.... Most of the stuff we already knew about. Apparently the 45% increase in capacity for the Jubilee Line, promised to the International Olympic Committee, is to be achived by running longer trains - if they are going to be 45% longer, then some very very expensive station lengthening is going to be required (and I don't believe it will happen). What is a bit depressing is a subtle shift away from rail - the East London and Greenwich "rapid transit" schemes are that well-known abomination, "bus rapid transit", which just means plain old buses, unless they are really going to have extensive bus-only roads. The Greenwich scheme is really only an upgrading of the existing bus network from Thamesmead to try to get some more usage at that magnificent white elephant, North Greenwich tube station. And there is nothing there about any extensions of the Croydon Tramlink, or the West London Tram, about which public consultations have recently taken place. From which we assume nothing will happen regarding any new tram schemes until after 2010 at the earliest. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 29 05:32:43 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 29 05:19:34 2004. Ah yes, Bus Rapid Transit, I remember. An open back so that people can get on and off quickly. 72 seats so that passengers can travel in comfort, a bus conductor collecting fares to discourage evasion and vandalism, a driving position with superb all round visibility, and a highly manoeverable vehicle, just 30 feet long, perfectly suited to London's traffic.Too bad they are getting rid of them! |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 29 06:00:34 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 29 05:32:43 2004. "Too bad they are getting rid of them!"Interestingly, London's evening newspaper, the Evening Standard, is mounting a vigorous rearguard campaign to keep the Routemasters. Their latest suggestion is that each route should have a mix of new buses and Routemasters, to provide for disabled access. They also point out that their suggestion would help to cope with the rising bus ridership without extra investmant in new vehicles. They forget about the costs entailed in keeping 40-year-old vehicles on the road, though. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 29 06:37:34 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 22 01:04:39 2004. "Its the long distance services that should use the tunnels""Here I tend to disagree, and that's what makes me wonder about the RER. Some RER routes are very long. Given a choice I would prefer short distance services to use tunnels....... ....But Thameslink 2000 is another story, having short and long distance trains that seem unlikely to mix well on the tame tracks. I also share the concerns of London Rail that they are trying to do a shoehorn job, and the 24 tph projection may be unrealistic. If there were fewer trains serving fewer and shorter routes, it could be made to work reasonably well, but where are the shorter routes? Most of them are in south London and would be better served by extensions to the UndergrounD." So far as cross-city routes are concerned, they are actually doing two different jobs. One is for people who actually don't want to go to the big city at all, but want to get from (say) fifty miles north of it to fifty miles south of it - a non-random example since that's exactly what Bedford-Brighton is. The other is for people who live (say) west of the city but whose commuting destination is at the eastern end of the CBD - precisely the situation of commuters living on the Paddington line who work in The City. Such people were of course the intended audience of the world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway of 1863, Paddington to Farringdon, and indeed the Great Western Railway did run through trains from its main line west of London down on to the Met. So far as the first type of journey is concerned, I think James (Rail Blue) is right to point out the inconvenience of having to use the tube for crossing London when you have lots of luggage. And so far as the second is concerned, I do observe lots of Bedford commuters riding Thameslink across to Blackfriars or London Bridge instead of alighting at Kings Cross. Both functions are useful, if properly planned; half-baked cross-city schemes are of course no better than any other half-bakes rail schemes. Your remaining point concerns mixing the two sorts on a single route (Thameslink 2000). I do foresee some difficulty with that, owing to timekeeping problems with the trains coming from so many different branches on the south side. However, it will be such a long time before it gets built that I probably won't live to have to grapple with them! A thought - if the politico-legal problems could be overcome, would it actually be useful to people in the Greater New York metropolitan area to link the LIRR and NJT, with trains running through NY Penn? |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 29 07:00:28 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Fytton on Fri Oct 29 06:00:34 2004. Routemasters are surprisingly sound, a pure aluminium body with no corrosion or metal fattigue. Many have been refurbished in the last few years, when Ken initially went into office and went Routemaster mad. Virtually no Routemasters have the original AEC or Leyland engines, these being replaced by Iveco engines around ten years ago (these are also designed for low sulphur fuel) at the same time they were completely rewired and fitted with new heaters. The second round of refurbishments initiated by Ken involved replacing the entire innards. They are effectively Dennis Darts with Routemaster bodies. The main problem is that the operators don't look after them.If I ever end up in a wheelchair, the last thing I will be doing is travelling by bus. I will either be driving around in my motability allowance-paid-for car, or campaigning for subsidised taxi vouchers. The politics of inclusion are going too far. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Fri Oct 29 18:51:21 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by David Fairthorne on Fri Oct 29 00:53:33 2004. Forget 12-car trains on Thameslink (allowing Moorgate to remain open) but divert the crowded Brighton service from Thameslink to the London Bridge terminus, with 12-car trains in peak hours (all platforms are already long enough).Pedantic correction: 9-13 are long enough; 8 and 14-16 can only fit eight cars. In practice, 8 is little used, and 14-16 are mainly (but not exclusively) used for services via Peckham Rye, so to almost all intents and purposes all platforms are long enough. The problem is that this would pretty much leave the Brighton fast trains isolated. They could be diverted hardly anywhere off route. These are the stations trains that long can call at out of London Bridge (LBSC): London Victoria (p1,2,7,9-19) Sutton (not the Downs Platforms), Dorking, Guildford (only p2 (up or dn) and 3 (dn) via any sensible route) Clapham Junction (p12,13 - Brighton Fast Lines) East Croydon (NB not West, and no local stations inward via any route) Oxted, Hurst Green (and no further - it would be a right mess at East Grinstead with the loop and everything!) Purley (but not the branch platforms, or anywhere on the Tat or Cat) (NB also S Croydon and Purley Oaks are too short) Coulsdon S, Merstham, Redhill (NB not Reigate, then the electrification ends) Tonbridge Earlswood (NB not Salfords) Horley, Gatwick, Three Bridges Crawley, Horsham, Arundel Balcombe (up only) Hayward's Heath and all stations to Brighton Lewes (p1,2), Newhaven Marine (which is abandoned), Seaford (which is useless) Polegate, Eastbourne, Bexhill Central, Hastings (p2-4) Hove, Portslade (up only), Shoreham-by-Sea, Worthing, Littlehampton (p1,2) Barnham, Bognor Regis (p1-3) Chichester, Havant, Portsmouth & Southsea (through platforms only), Portsmouth Harbour (p3-5) Eastleigh (p2) Southampton Central If you look at the stations missing, it would be horrendous if a 12-car set had to be reassigned. The last 4 cars could be locked if the terminus permitted (which isn't always the case), or there would have to be coupling and uncoupling moves going on in the middle of rush hour. Much better to run more frequent 8 car trains. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Fri Oct 29 19:11:30 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 29 07:00:28 2004. Why don't we build more Routemasters? It's not as if Britain's car industry's doing very well. I'm sure Longbridge or Cowley would welcome the chance actually to build a decent sized production run.Anyway, if I were wheelchair-bound, I'd much prefer a bus with a conductor to drag me up onto the platform. Those things are a menace to get up the tiniest slope. |
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Re: London's five-year plan |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Fri Oct 29 19:16:46 2004, in response to Re: London's five-year plan, posted by Max Roberts on Fri Oct 29 05:32:43 2004. Now all we need is a sensible Central London bus map. The main map doesn't work because it doesn't differentiate lines at all. The spider maps go to the opposite extreme (if you want a laugh, look at the Oxford Circus map). A great idea would be a map covering tube zones 1 and 2 with the buses grouped by colour into their trunk routes (eg Oxford St - Regent St, Oxford St - Charing X Rd etc).I somewhat suspect, however, that the central London bus network appears to be a confusing mess precisely because it is a total mess. |
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