Aidan Stanger wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:


Aidan Stanger wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:


On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, Dave Arquati wrote:


Aidan Stanger wrote:



(snipped lots of extra discussion)
However, extra capacity and better connections will be urgently needed
further up the Lea Valley and near to Stansted will be needed if
government plans for significant house-building in this area are given
the go-ahead.

A CR1 branch up the Lea Valley Line would do this, though. I refuse to
believe CR1 can't support three interfaces at each end. Or, if it's stuck
at two, maybe this route will be added when the Docklands branch is
eventually cut back to non-existence!


The Victoria line will also be in urgent need of congestion relief.

Taking over the Central Line from Stratford serves neither objective,

An interchange at Hackney does.

Not well. It won't improve capacity northwards to the
London-Stansted-Cambridge corridor which those development agencies keep
yapping about. It could relieve the Victoria of West Anglia interchange
passengers, true - but at the expense of merely extending their journeys
on unimproved WA services to Hackney.

And that's the rub - even if CH did take over the NLL route to Stratford,
where would it go afterwards? The Central Line is daft,

Agreed.

the GE's Crossrailed already,

It could take over the slow service to Romford, with CR1 losing all
intermediate stations except Ilford. But this would probably require
more tracks, which may make it too expensive.

What's the point? Readjustment of services on the Great Eastern with
Crossrail will already provide superb connectivity to central London and
18tph. Spread the benefits out a bit.

Spreading them out a bit mo Southampton, Clacton etc...

London would be paying a lot of money to build the central tunnel for
Crossrail 2. Surely it's better to give the benefits mainly to London
boroughs (i.e. mainly inner suburban services); it's much better to
encourage better development of land closer to people's workplaces,
rather than encouraging them to live miles away and travel long
distances every day. If you work in central London, why live in a
standard housing development in Southampton when you can live in exactly
the same standard housing development in the upper Lea Valley and be at
work in half the time?

Why would the other GE services be readjusted? I thought Crossrail would
be using the slow lines and not affecting the other services at all. Is
it to do with the Liverpool Street approach tracks bottleneck?

I meant that 18tph will be provided once Crossrail arrives, with 12tph
Crossrail through trains, supplemented by 6tph Liverpool Street-only
trains (serving short platforms at Maryland).

which basically only leaves the Lea Valley Line - and KX - Hackney -
Stratford - Tottenham Hale is, if you'll excuse the pun, completely loopy!

True. I think this would make an excellent Jubilee extension, but I
haven't found anyone else who does.

They're already planning to run NLL services up the Lea Valley from
Stratford to somewhere.

Only because of the lack of a proper interchange at Hackney, and they're
only planning it because they don't know what else to do with the NLL.
Anyway, as Tom pointed out, that route's completely loopy.

Yes, if you want to travel from the Lea Valley to Hackney. But it's a
reasonably logical (and cheap) way of beefing up frequencies between the
Lea Valley and Stratford, given that the NLL will be using the Lea
Valley platforms at Stratford.

Anyway, where do you want to extend the Jubilee to?

Tottenham Hale. I'd originally thought it Enfield Town might be a good
terminus, but having walked the dismantled section between Edmonton and
Angel Road, I can see that relaying it would be rather too disruptive
(and therefore expensive) to justify it.

It's not a bad idea. I imagine it would be reasonably expensive to get
the Jubilee from one side of Stratford to the other though.

It won't provide a decent service from the Lea Valley to central
London (too slow)... might do to Canary Wharf though. Given the
passenger numbers involved, surely it's probably more cost-effective to
let them use extended NLL services or new services and change at Stratford?

The idea was to increase Canary Wharf catchment area at a small fraction
of the cost of a Crossrail branch.

Canary Wharf Group are extremely keen on their direct link to Heathrow
and will be helping to fund it - so I'm inclined to leave their branch
alone (Abbey Wood will do fine for now).

Unless you're proposing to take over the DLR?

There is one other option that's not DLR (yet): The Woolwich Branch. If
it doesn't become part of CR1, it could become part of CR2 until a new
direct line is constructed (which could take decades).

Westminster & TfL are quite keen on DLR-ising that.

I know. Unimaginitive, aren't they????

I have to side with them on DLR-isation. Low cost, high benefits to
local residents, improving connections with their local centres rather
than telling them all they have to work in Central London. Oh, and those
benefits probably 20 years before CR2 even breaks ground.

Besides, it seems a bit inefficient to cart the denizens of LB Newham
around Hackney before dropping them off in central London.

A bit, but not as inefficient as building a Crossrail tunnel all the way
to the Royal Docks.

The traffic might not be there yet - but by 2013 there will have been
massive development in the Thames Gateway, with thousands of homes
feeding in to Custom House via the DLR Dagenham branch, and more homes
feeding in to Abbey Wood via Greenwich Waterfront Transit or the North
Kent lines. At least if Crossrail terminates at Abbey Wood (instead of
Ebbsfleet), fast services can easily be provided from Kent Thamesside
developments, stopping for interchange at Abbey Wood. Otherwise they'll
all be cramming into London Bridge or St Pancras (or perhaps the DLR at
Lewisham or Woolwich).

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London