Is there a case for re-opening Kentish Town South Station? It is on a well foot trafficked section of Kentish Town Road.

Change of location: Kentish Town Station is an interesting location. The TfL LU side is not bad. OTOH the Thameslink side is Spartan. Some protection from the weather on the footbridge and better décor and facilities on the platforms would be very welcome.

On 15/09/2013 18:43, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 10:02:10 -0700 (PDT), e27002
wrote:

Is there a case for re-opening Kentish Town South Station? It is on a well foot trafficked section of Kentish Town Road.

Change of location: Kentish Town Station is an interesting location. The TfL LU side is not bad. OTOH the Thameslink side is Spartan.
Some protection from the weather on the footbridge and better décor and facilities on the platforms would be very welcome.

I read recently that LU station reopenings are now prohibitively
expensive because of the need to provide step free access from street
to platform / train.

Therefore any notion of reopening York Way or Kentish Town South can
be dismissed on cost grounds.

I thought that they were seriously looking at the prospect of
reactivating York Way.

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 22:18:59 +0100, "
wrote:

On 15/09/2013 18:43, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 10:02:10 -0700 (PDT), e27002
wrote:

Is there a case for re-opening Kentish Town South Station? It is on a
well foot trafficked section of Kentish Town Road.

Change of location: Kentish Town Station is an interesting location.
The TfL LU side is not bad. OTOH the Thameslink side is Spartan.
Some protection from the weather on the footbridge and better décor
and facilities on the platforms would be very welcome.

I read recently that LU station reopenings are now prohibitively
expensive because of the need to provide step free access from street
to platform / train.

Therefore any notion of reopening York Way or Kentish Town South can
be dismissed on cost grounds.

I thought that they were seriously looking at the prospect of
reactivating York Way.

I can't see where the tens of millions of pounds would come from to
reconstruct it so it met modern standards. I suspect that any
opportunity to secure S106 payments from nearby development has been
lost. I agree there the scale of investment north of Kings Cross
could generate very considerable extra patronage but it seems all the
money for rail has gone into the south end of the development.

The other obvious development would be adding a York Way / Kings Cross
North station on the North London line but again where's the money
going to come from and how robust is the Overground timetable to cope
with an additional stop. Looking at a satellite view of the site
doesn't offer a lot of space as the NLL passenger tracks are the
middle tracks out of 4 at the point. This implies an island platform
and there does not seen to be enough space to create a sufficiently
wide platform unless you want to shorten the freight loops and slew
the main tracks to create the space.

Looking at the map, it does look like a new NLL station there would be
useful to serve the northern parts of the Kings Cross developments. Isn't
there a gap between the pairs of tracks there that could fit in a platform?
https://maps.google.com/?q=51.541128...32&hl=en&gl=uk

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 15 Sep 2013 17:24:44 -0500, Recliner
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:

The other obvious development would be adding a York Way / Kings Cross
North station on the North London line but again where's the money
going to come from and how robust is the Overground timetable to cope
with an additional stop. Looking at a satellite view of the site
doesn't offer a lot of space as the NLL passenger tracks are the
middle tracks out of 4 at the point. This implies an island platform
and there does not seen to be enough space to create a sufficiently
wide platform unless you want to shorten the freight loops and slew
the main tracks to create the space.

Looking at the map, it does look like a new NLL station there would be
useful to serve the northern parts of the Kings Cross developments. Isn't
there a gap between the pairs of tracks there that could fit in a platform?
https://maps.google.com/?q=51.541128...32&hl=en&gl=uk

My doubts about whether it would fit is all down to what modern
standards require and what demand the station would have to be built
to meet. If you look at Caledonian Rd & Barnesbury - not hugely busy
- and see how wide that is given it was rebuilt to current standards I
don't see how something of a similar size would fit in the space at
York Way. The central strip of land also tapers at each end plus you'd
need to fill on the bridge over York Way. I just wonder if you could
build something that was compliant or obtain any required waivers.

You also have to allow for people getting up / down stairs and in
lifts from the street and where would the ticket hall be? I suppose
you could dig it out under the railway but that would be some task
given the confined space and the need to keep trains running. Goodness
knows how well or badly constructed the NLL's alignment is.

Clearly nothing is impossible if you can throw enough money at a
solution. However we would soon get into "is it justified?" territory
if the capital cost was excessive.

I still think it's a good place to build a station given the huge
developments and nearby long established housing but we do not have a
Mayor with any great attention span for tedious things like building
extra stations on railway lines.

Regarding the cost, I wonder if the property developers of the northern
Kings Cross area would be prepared to make a hefty contribution? There
does seem to be room to widen the embankment to slew the southern pair of
tracks a few metres further south, to make way for a wider island platform.
But, agreed, building a new station while keeping the lines running would
be very hard.

On 2013\09\16 00:12, Recliner wrote:

Regarding the cost, I wonder if the property developers of the northern
Kings Cross area would be prepared to make a hefty contribution?

I don't. Getting developers to fund new platforms as a condition for
planning permission is hard enough, getting them to realign a railway as
an afterthought is not going to happen.

We're still waiting for the Central Line platforms at Park Royal!

Basil Jet wrote:
On 2013\09\16 00:12, Recliner wrote:

Regarding the cost, I wonder if the property developers of the northern
Kings Cross area would be prepared to make a hefty contribution?

I don't. Getting developers to fund new platforms as a condition for
planning permission is hard enough, getting them to realign a railway as
an afterthought is not going to happen.

We're still waiting for the Central Line platforms at Park Royal!

True, but the office developments in that area have stalled. Two buildings
up, only one occupied (by Diageo itself). I thought the Central line
platforms weren't required until more buildings were completed?

On 2013\09\16 05:37, Recliner wrote:
Basil Jet wrote:
On 2013\09\16 00:12, Recliner wrote:

Regarding the cost, I wonder if the property developers of the northern
Kings Cross area would be prepared to make a hefty contribution?

I don't. Getting developers to fund new platforms as a condition for
planning permission is hard enough, getting them to realign a railway as
an afterthought is not going to happen.

We're still waiting for the Central Line platforms at Park Royal!

True, but the office developments in that area have stalled. Two buildings
up, only one occupied (by Diageo itself). I thought the Central line
platforms weren't required until more buildings were completed?

Well yeah, I wasn't suggesting that they had broken the rules. Some
people suggested at the time that the platforms plan was a hoax from the
start and that the proposed seven office buildings were never intended
to be built at all. I wasn't aware that one of the buildings was sitting
empty though... that pours cold water on the hoax idea.

In message , at 22:38:17 on
Sun, 15 Sep 2013, Paul Corfield remarked:
I thought that they were seriously looking at the prospect of
reactivating York Way.

I can't see where the tens of millions of pounds would come from to
reconstruct it so it met modern standards. I suspect that any
opportunity to secure S106 payments from nearby development has been
lost. I agree there the scale of investment north of Kings Cross
could generate very considerable extra patronage but it seems all the
money for rail has gone into the south end of the development.

And I suspect they gain comfort from the Northern Ticket Hall, with one
of its entrances specifically for the "lands" beyond.

The fact it's rather a long walk from there to any of the tube lines,
other than perhaps the Northern, isn't enough for them to untick the
"job done" box.
--
Roland Perry

On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 06:43:07PM +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

I read recently that LU station reopenings are now prohibitively
expensive because of the need to provide step free access from street
to platform / train.

It's better to provide no service to anyone than to provide a service to
only most people!

Next, we'll prevent any new radio stations from being set up, on the
grounds that they're not accessible to the deaf.

--
David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig

If you can't imagine how I do something, it's
because I have a better imagination than you

Paul Corfield wrote:
I offered no judgement one way or the other.

On the subject of disability legislation, that is.

I do, on the other hand, get the occasional hunch - no more than a hunch of
course - from your posts that the current Mayor of London's agenda is not a
100% match for your own. I am sure I could be mistaken however, given the
extremely light touch of your utterly neutral comments in this area.

;-)