nmtop40 wrote:

It's a connecting line around London we need, not more lines going
through the middle of it.

Can you point me to the traffic survey that came to this conclusion?
(The bit about not needing more lines through the middle)

It wasn't just guesswork, was it?

In article , david stevenson
wrote:
nmtop40 wrote:

It's a connecting line around London we need, not more lines going
through the middle of it.

Can you point me to the traffic survey that came to this conclusion?
(The bit about not needing more lines through the middle)

It wasn't just guesswork, was it?


My thought exactly. I fear it wasn't even guesswork. I fear it
was people who looked at a map and drew lines on it and said "wouldn't
it be nice...." (like Hollywood films of WWII generals, planning their
strategy by stabbing at maps with their cigars. Real generals were
more professional) and that's the crossrail plan. I hear that a
Parliamentary committee judged that Crossrail was "poor value for
money"

I have seen commentators criticise national railway projects,
such as the West Coast Modernisation, as "a black hole", and I thought
it was shamefully obvious that this was a narrow London interest which
thought that money was only well spent in London, and wanted West
Coast modernisation to be stopped, so that the money could be diverted
to the likes of Crossrail.

Rather than very expensively create NEW, it might be much
better value to make best use of what ALREADY IS. Things like create
interchange at the dozens of places in London where lines cross
without any interchange at all or stations just too far apart to be
really "the same place" the remnant of the railway politics of the
19th century. Places like :-

* The crossing of the North London line with the Northern
line. A pair of underground stations to be dug out. Simple
but expensive!

* Putney and East Putney. Join them with a Birmingham
airport-type shuttle? That cost £10M for 1Km, (wow!) and the trackbed
was already in existence.

* At the crossing of more routes than I can list just
west of Old Oak Common depot, roof over the whole area with a
concrete slab, build flats, offices, etc on top of it, which
could be sold for a tidy sum, and connecting stations beneath it.

It all looks possible, and VERY worthwhile.

Michael Bell

--

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 07:13:55 +0100 in uk.transport.london, Michael
Bell tapped out on the keyboard:

In article , david stevenson
wrote:
nmtop40 wrote:

It's a connecting line around London we need, not more lines going
through the middle of it.

Can you point me to the traffic survey that came to this conclusion?
(The bit about not needing more lines through the middle)

It wasn't just guesswork, was it?


My thought exactly. I fear it wasn't even guesswork. I fear it
was people who looked at a map and drew lines on it and said "wouldn't
it be nice...." (like Hollywood films of WWII generals, planning their
strategy by stabbing at maps with their cigars. Real generals were
more professional) and that's the crossrail plan. I hear that a
Parliamentary committee judged that Crossrail was "poor value for
money"

I have seen commentators criticise national railway projects,
such as the West Coast Modernisation, as "a black hole", and I thought
it was shamefully obvious that this was a narrow London interest which
thought that money was only well spent in London, and wanted West
Coast modernisation to be stopped, so that the money could be diverted
to the likes of Crossrail.

Rather than very expensively create NEW, it might be much
better value to make best use of what ALREADY IS. Things like create
interchange at the dozens of places in London where lines cross
without any interchange at all or stations just too far apart to be
really "the same place" the remnant of the railway politics of the
19th century. Places like :-

* The crossing of the North London line with the Northern
line. A pair of underground stations to be dug out. Simple
but expensive!

* Putney and East Putney. Join them with a Birmingham
airport-type shuttle? That cost £10M for 1Km, (wow!) and the trackbed
was already in existence.

* At the crossing of more routes than I can list just
west of Old Oak Common depot, roof over the whole area with a
concrete slab, build flats, offices, etc on top of it, which
could be sold for a tidy sum, and connecting stations beneath it.

It all looks possible, and VERY worthwhile.

Michael Bell

There's enormous potential for interchanges in South London - Penge,
Brockley, and where the SE lines to Victoria cross over the lines to
Waterloo spring to mind.

--
John Youles Norwich England UK
j dot y.o.u.l.e.s at n.t.l.w.o.r.l.d dot c.o.m
http://www.ukip.org/

Michael Bell writes
Rather than very expensively create NEW, it might be much
better value to make best use of what ALREADY IS. Things like create
interchange at the dozens of places in London where lines cross
without any interchange at all or stations just too far apart to be
really "the same place" the remnant of the railway politics of the
19th century. Places like :-

* The crossing of the North London line with the Northern
line. A pair of underground stations to be dug out. Simple
but expensive!
[...]
It all looks possible, and VERY worthwhile.

And where is the extra capacity to shift all those extra passengers
going to be found?

--
Dave

In article , Dave
wrote:
Michael Bell writes
Rather than very expensively create NEW, it might be much
better value to make best use of what ALREADY IS. Things like create
interchange at the dozens of places in London where lines cross
without any interchange at all or stations just too far apart to be
really "the same place" the remnant of the railway politics of the
19th century. Places like :-

* The crossing of the North London line with the Northern
line. A pair of underground stations to be dug out. Simple
but expensive!
[...]
It all looks possible, and VERY worthwhile.

And where is the extra capacity to shift all those extra passengers
going to be found?



************************************************


With an improvement like this, I should think that most of the
increase in traffic will be outside the peak, because :-

* People make the work journey they have to make, no matter
how inconvenient.

* If they can make their work journey shorter by using one
of the links I propose, then they will cut out rail miles.

* Mostly the current layout does not hinder journeys into
and out of the city centre, this reform will make it easier to move
jobs out of the city centre.

BUT :-

* Out of peak hours people's journeys are mostly not into
and out of the city centre, they are cross-suburban, and the links I
propose will these journeys very much more convenient.

Michael Bell

--