London Banter - View Single Post - Battersea Northern Line extension now done with a loan?

Robin9 · 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by D A Stocks[_2_]

"Robin9" wrote in message
...

'D A Stocks[_2_ Wrote:
;134945']"Robin9" wrote in message
...-

'D A Stocks[_2_ Wrote:-
;134830']"77002" wrote in message
...
On 5 Dec, 16:39, wrote:
-
If the line is intended to replace the two existing Battersea stations
(accelerating services into Victoria and Waterloo), and would then
continue to Clapham Junction (for interchange with the mainlines) it
might make some sort of sense.-

Of one thing we can be very confident: Clapham Junction will *never*
have an
interchange with a tube line. Just imagine the cost.

D A Stocks-

I imagine the unavoidable costs would be quite high and the costs
provided by TfL would be astronomical. Everything done by TfL costs
about twenty-five times as much as it should. Why should high costs
prevent a Clapham Junction interchange station? Did high costs
discourage TfL from rebuilding Victoria Underground Station?
-
I'm not sure what 'rebuilding' at Victoria you are talking about. The
Victoria line itself offered clear benefits in terms of giving mainline

passengers access to West End and opened up the possibility of
cross-London
access to Eauston and Kings Cross/St Pancras. The interchange provided
then
was largely an extension to what was there before. It's getting some
much
needed improvements now that will benefit a large number of existing
users,
especially the large number of Victoria Line users who want to get to
and
from the Victoria area as a destination in its own right, rather than as
an
interchange with the mainline station.

Providing mainline travellers with an interchange to the Northern Line
at
Clapham Junction would be a vast cost for very little additional benefit

given that the money has already been spent to provide interchanges with
the
Northern at Waterloo and London Bridge.

--
DAS

Information about the Victoria Underground Station rebuilding project
can be found on-line.
Tfl's own website is very coy about the astronomical costs but before
starting work they quoted £900 million! As I stated previously,
everything done by TfL costs 25 times as much as it should.

I am very aware of what is going on at Victoria - I used to pass through the
station every day on my to work until quite recently. However, they aren't
"rebuilding" it, they are making some (quite substantial) additions to
what's already there, and even the online articles don't claim it as a
rebuilding, although "redevelopment" does creep in to one or two press
releases.

To be awarded 'rebuilding' status they would have to do something like the
changes at London Bridge when the Jubilee Line was added to the station; if
you're interchanging between the mainline and the Northern (OMG we're almost
getting back on topic) you see very little of the undergound station that
was there before.

As someone who has had the full experience of Victoria it's very clear what
the problems are, what's being done about it, and what the benefits will be
when it has been completed. What you haven't explained is why it is so
desirable to create an interchange with the Northern Line extension at
Clapham Junction. I'm particularly interested to know what new journey
opportunities would be created that aren't provided substantially by the
current services that serve the station? If you can give a convincing answer
to that one you then need to come up with a convincing proposal for the
interchange at Clapham Junction. I doubt that bringing it to the surface and
re-opening platform 1 would be a viable option, and you need to bear in mind
that

a) the current station is effectively three (or more) stations behind a
common set of ticket barriers.
b) the current interchange facilities for the existing station(s) are
inadequate.
c) any improvements to the existing station(s) are likely to involve
substantial reconstruction; probably moving and extending platforms to
provide additional circulation space.
d) you need to sell this as a package to both National Rail as owners of the
current station(s) and TfL as providers of the new line.

--
DAS

I'll leave you to quibble about the difference between rebuilding and making
large structural changes. Playing with semantics is a tedious game and one
I'm not willing to play.

I'm glad you are very clear about the benefits of the work done at Victoria.
Judging from radio traffic reports and from public statements from TfL and LU,
the main problem at Victoria does not involve people with business in the
Victoria area. The main problem is the capacity of the Underground Station in
the morning peak period. Frequently LU have to stop passengers from entering
the Underground Station because it is over subscribed. Why are those
passengers trying to board a LU train? Because they do not want to be in
Victoria and have no business there! TfL have said on several occasions that
the work being done to Victoria Underground Station is to rectify that
situation.

One of the benefits of extending the Northern Line to Clapham Junction is that
it would greatly reduce that pressure on Victoria, and on Waterloo too of
course. A second reason for such an extension is that as Clapham Junction is
the busiest railway station in the country, it is absurd that it is not connected
to the Underground system.

Injecting new capacity into public transport is not exclusively about providing
new journey opportunities. It is also about improving quality and convenience.
It is already possible to travel by public transport from anywhere in the
Greater London area to anywhere else but many journeys are slow, irksome
and in overcrowded conditions. For example, someone living in Croydon with
tickets for the Dominion Theatre can make the journey by travelling to
Clapham junction, changing to a Waterloo train and changing to a crowded
Northern Line train. Two train changes. Alternatively they can go through to
Victoria and change to an overcrowded Victoria Line train and change again
to a overcrowded Central Line train. Again two changes. If the Northern Line
were extended to Clapham Junction, only one change would be required, and
that would would be to a train that was almost empty. The improvement in
quality and convenience would be substantial.

As London's population has hugely outgrown the infrastructure, enormous
investment in new infrastructure is urgently needed. (Even politicians now
recognise that far more housing is required) Because the cost of building
entirely new railways is so expensive, it is unrealistic to imagine that five or
six new lines will be constructed in the next twenty years. Instead we will
have to add capacity by increasing the opportunities to change trains and by
squeezing more use out of the existing routes. (It was interesting to hear
Peter Hendy last Saturday say that the Victoria Line will soon be running 33
trains an hour) One way of increasing the Northern Line's capacity is to split it
into two separate lines and to re-signal the two parts so that they can each
run trains reliably every three minutes.

As Wandsworth Council have already said that they would pay for a further
extension to Wandsworth, there is a potential extra benefit in bringing the
Northern Line to Clapham Junction. The final advantage of such an extension
is that it would be very heavily used and would not be a huge loss-maker.

I'm puzzled by your ideas about a Northern Line station at Clapham Junction.
The Northern Line is a tube line so it would be underground, perhaps right
underneath the main station, as is the case with many other Underground
Stations. I imagine such a station would require a long passageway from both
St. John's Hill and Grant Road, ideally with two travelators. London
Underground do know how to do this. They built the Jubilee Line station at
London Bridge and they kept it underground. I don't understand why you feel
that doing something similar at Clapham Junction would be so difficult.