John Rowland wrote:
sweek wrote:
i don't see the point in this. There is so much congestion on stations
already that we should work on actually spreading people around more
stations, not trying to centralise it. As long as the termini are
interconnected I think you're fine. And of course Crossrail schemes
can help with that as well.

Actually, it's best if all main lines passed through London, and all lines
interchanged with each other and with all tube lines, but not too many lines
interchanging at the same station. That way a terrorist strike on a single
station causes minimal disruption. A single London Central station has no
benefits and huge disbenefits.

Actually if the point is simply to interchange and that the passenger
doesn't want to go to London at all then I would suggest a couple of
decent orbital rail service. I would like one around the M25 and one
around the North/South Circular.

Someone coming from the North and going to Southampton, say, could take
their service as far as the outer orbital, then round the orbital, then
from there to Southampton. Still 2 interchanges but would reduce the
congestion in London.

Note that having such orbital services would also provide commuters
with an alternative that using their cars and would justify any
road-charging schemes for those who continued to do so anyway. The
money raised from any such road-charging schemes would then help to pay
for the cost of building and maintaining the railway.

"John Rowland" wrote in message
...
sweek wrote:
i don't see the point in this. There is so much congestion on stations
already that we should work on actually spreading people around more
stations, not trying to centralise it. As long as the termini are
interconnected I think you're fine. And of course Crossrail schemes
can help with that as well.

Actually, it's best if all main lines passed through London, and all lines
interchanged with each other and with all tube lines, but not too many
lines interchanging at the same station. That way a terrorist strike on a
single station causes minimal disruption. A single London Central station
has no benefits and huge disbenefits.

Planning rail routes and services around terrorism? Does it really happen
that frequently?

asdf wrote:
On 24 Oct 2006 08:40:15 -0700, Earl Purple wrote:

London Bridge is not a terminus.

In the same way that Paddington isn't a terminus?

No.

Earl Purple wrote:

London Bridge is not a terminus.

Yes it is - it just isn't a terminus for every service that uses it,
same as Blackfriars.

--

Stephen

The Doctor: Must be a spatial temporal hyperlink.
Mickey: What's that?
The Doctor: No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'magic door'.

On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 08:40:15AM -0700, Earl Purple wrote:

Perhaps now there's a congestion charge and internet shopping and all
the shops in Oxford Street are doing so badly, we should bulldoze is
all down to make that the common London terminus then?

Not only do the shops claim to be doing badly (although I don't see them
all closing, so they must still be making some money from the hordes of
tourist scum) certainly the vast majority of them, especially east of
oxford circus, are just plain crap, selling nothing but poor quality
clothes, phones, "sports" shoes and stolen goods to, to be blunt, poor
quality people. Flattening them all would be a good thing even if we
didn't build a huge Victorian-style temple of gleaming wrought iron and
glass on the site.

--
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life
-- Samuel Johnson

I think that there was a suggestion, round about 1870, that
Farringdon be such a thing. Didn't the Circle Line have broad gauge
tracks, as well as standard, at one time?

The only thing I remember about the Abercrombie plan of 1943 was that
it proposed to abolish Waterloo.

I liked its plan to have aeroplane landing strips on the roof of all
the main line terminals, for the taxi planes bringing people into
town from the long-haul airports.

Jeremy Parker

Jeremy Parker wrote:
I think that there was a suggestion, round about 1870, that
Farringdon be such a thing. Didn't the Circle Line have broad gauge
tracks, as well as standard, at one time?

The only thing I remember about the Abercrombie plan of 1943 was that
it proposed to abolish Waterloo.

I liked its plan to have aeroplane landing strips on the roof of all
the main line terminals, for the taxi planes bringing people into
town from the long-haul airports.

This was standard thinking for some time - the French government
considered not building the first TGV line to Lyon because there would
be dozens of STOL runways on roofs across Paris allowing people to get
to and from Lyon much more quickly.


--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Dave Arquati wrote:

Jeremy Parker wrote:
I think that there was a suggestion, round about 1870, that
Farringdon be such a thing. Didn't the Circle Line have broad gauge
tracks, as well as standard, at one time?

The only thing I remember about the Abercrombie plan of 1943 was that
it proposed to abolish Waterloo.

I liked its plan to have aeroplane landing strips on the roof of all
the main line terminals, for the taxi planes bringing people into
town from the long-haul airports.

This was standard thinking for some time - the French government
considered not building the first TGV line to Lyon because there would
be dozens of STOL runways on roofs across Paris allowing people to get
to and from Lyon much more quickly.


I'm fascinated by these postwar notions of STOLports everywhere!
Reading about the development of London City Airport it would seem that
in the 80's people were pretty certain that STOLports were going to be
big as well - but whilst LCY is doing well STOLports haven't cropped up
everywhere else as was predicted. I'm not an expert on LCY, but as it's
had a runway extension to enable it to take larger aircraft perhaps it
doesn't really qualify as a STOLport anymore. Or maybe the term just
never really caught on!

Given the environmental damage that flying does perhaps it's just as
well these ideas didn't materialise. That said the aviation industry
has managed to expand massively anyway without STOLports so perhaps it
doesn't really make much of a difference anyway.

Indeed there is a slightly contradictory view that's comes across on
this newsgroup - on the one hand public transport is approved of given
it's environmental credentials, yet people are very keen to ensure
there are good public transport links to airports so people can fly
more. An argument can be made saying that the better the public
transport links are the more people will be encouraged to fly (and fly
more often) - an argument which could particularly be made in the case
of LCY - but I've don't think I've ever read any such notions expressed
on utl.

I'm not rabidly anti-flying, but the truth is this method of transport
has significant negative effects on the environment. The problem is
people are now hooked on air travel so such arguments often cut a
little too close to the bone for some.

Mizter T wrote:

I'm fascinated by these postwar notions of STOLports everywhere!
Reading about the development of London City Airport it would seem that
in the 80's people were pretty certain that STOLports were going to be
big as well - but whilst LCY is doing well STOLports haven't cropped up
everywhere else as was predicted. I'm not an expert on LCY, but as it's
had a runway extension to enable it to take larger aircraft perhaps it
doesn't really qualify as a STOLport anymore. Or maybe the term just
never really caught on!

Probably that. Notably, Schiphol's website (I think) still refers to
it as "London City Stolport". It certainly is still one, and the
largest aircraft you tend to see there is the BAe-146 (I think) small
quad-jet. Approaches are still steep and rough, but one of the most
spectacular and impressive I've seen. The runway is short (but longer
than it was) - but many of the aircraft you get there now can take off
and land using probably about half to 2/3 of it (the Fokker 50s
certainly can, being well off the ground before getting even near the
terminal when doing a London-direction takeoff).

Apparently, though, Airbus did a successful test with an A318 (small
version of the A319/20) with a software mod for steeper descents, so
perhaps some of those will be seen there soon, especially as the F50s
and BAe jets are getting on a bit.

Neil

Mizter T wrote:
I'm fascinated by these postwar notions of STOLports everywhere!
Reading about the development of London City Airport it would seem that
in the 80's people were pretty certain that STOLports were going to be
big as well - but whilst LCY is doing well STOLports haven't cropped up
everywhere else as was predicted. I'm not an expert on LCY, but as it's
had a runway extension to enable it to take larger aircraft perhaps it
doesn't really qualify as a STOLport anymore. Or maybe the term just
never really caught on!

Off the top of my head, they have them in Belfast and Toronto too - and
probably other places with disused docklands.