"dave hill" wrote in message
...
Roland Perry wrote
I'm disappointed they aren't doing the rowing in Nottingham - I could
have walked to the venue!

I was under the impression that the Row course at Holme Point(?) was
not up to standard and a NEW facility needed to be brought into
use.
I think its to do with the average wind speed over the course being in
the main more than that allowed.
I could be talking a load of old ******

*Holme Pierrepont*, which was used for the World Championships in 1975 and
1986.
In those days a course with 6 racing lanes, and one lane to the start, was
the standard. These days the authorities want 8 racing lanes so that they
can choose the fairest 6, and they also want a separate return lake to get
to the start, and those are what Dorney provides.
--
David Biddulph

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, John B wrote:

On 26 Mar, 20:43, Tom Anderson wrote:
Oddly enough, I've just successfully purchased six months' supply of
contact lenses [at 1/3 of UK opticians' prices for the same brand made
in the same US factory. Can we wind up that cartel next please?], some
groceries and toiletries, and a toasted sandwich - all from people who
speak Turkish and no English.

What was in the sandwich?

Indeterminate meat.

Hang on. Istanbul. 'Toasted sandwich'. Indeterminate meat.

Own up John, it was a kebab, wasn't it?

tom

--
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 -- AACS Licensing Administrator

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Andy wrote:

On Mar 26, 6:53*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Mr Thant wrote:
On 25 Mar, 23:49, Tom Anderson wrote:

The Jubilee?

To Docklands. AIUI the Jubilee between London Bridge and North
Greenwich is already one of the most congested bits of the network.

Right. And how is Crossrail going to relieve that? By letting people on
the North Kent line from east of Abbey Wood change there? That's not
exactly a huge fraction of the Jubilee's passengers, is it? And don't they
already have the option to do Greenwich - Docklands by DLR? Not that
that's exactly a high-capacity route itself.

There will also be the East London Line extension feeding passengers in
at Whitechapel. These passengers who would currently goto London Bridge
for the Jubilee line.

Oh, i see. So, Kent - New Cross Gate - Whitechapel - Canary Wharf?
They'll make two changes and a sort of spiral round Docklands?

True. All of which could be done without the tunnel, for a fraction of the
price.

And without increasing any capacity from the termini to where people
work/shop/go out/etc, which is the whole point of the current iteration
of the project.

Entirely agreed. But the point i was making in the text that's been
snipped is that the Crossrail project doesn't deliver significant
increases in capacity outside central London, and none that couldn't be
provided much more cheaply.

But it is the central London section that needs the capacity, as the
Underground can not distribute passengers arriving from the mainline.
How much cheaper would it be to provide the extra capacity across London
without the joining the lines to the west and east? Passengers taken
off, for example, the Central line at Liverpool Street / Stratford will
give more capacity for passengers from the West Anglia lines.

Absolutely. Sorry that i haven't really made myself clear about all this -
i think Crossrail's a good idea (although not as good an idea as some
other options which were dismissed - but that's another story), i just
think it's misleading to say it'll increase capacity on the lines it's
assimilating.

Again, could be done without the tunnel.

And where do you plan to build the extra platforms at Paddington and
Liverpool Street?

Liverpool Street isn't limited by platform capacity, it's limited by
capacity through the station throat. Rebuilding that is entirely
possible, although of course not trivial. I don't know about
Paddington, i have to confess. But since all we're talking about is
lengthening trains, why do we need more platforms?

Paddington has at least three platforms that are of limited length
(12-14, plus 11 which shares the country end track with the entrance to
platform 12). If you lengthen the trains to 8 or 10 coaches, I don't
think that any of these platforms can cope. Liverpool Street also
suffers from some of the same problems, with platforms 16-18 limited to
8 coaches. At both locations, the trains serving these platforms will be
the ones sent down the crossrail tunnels.

Right. Problems which could be solved without recourse to a tunnel.

Do we know how much of the budget is for this? My understanding was that
Oxford Circus wasn't going to be rebuilt; the Crossrail station would be
essentialy separate. It thus has a slightly marginal effect on
overcrowding - the people relieved onto Crossrail will no longer be
clogging the place up, but plenty of other people will. No idea about TCR.

Slightly marginal? The two Crossrail stations adjacent to Oxford Circus
will have enormous entrances at the ends nearest to it, exactly to
attract the crowds away without overcrowding the actual Oxford Circus
area. In theory at least they're hoping to attract away a lot more
passengers.

If you're going into Oxford Circus to get on the Victoria line, this isn't
going to make any difference whatsoever. The new bit being added, however
enormous, will only decongest the existing station to the extent that they
can abstract passengers away from the Central line.

The difference in getting to the Victoria line is that it will be easier
to enter the station.

Yes, yes, but the extent to which it does that is only the extent to which
you take passengers off the Central, that's what i'm saying.

It will also mean that Oxford Circus doesn't need to be expensively
rebuilt to add capacity for entrance / exit.

It might. It probably will still need it!

tom

--
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 -- AACS Licensing Administrator

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Mr Thant wrote:

On 26 Mar, 18:53, Tom Anderson wrote:

Right. And how is Crossrail going to relieve that? By letting people on
the North Kent line from east of Abbey Wood change there? That's not
exactly a huge fraction of the Jubilee's passengers, is it? And don't they
already have the option to do Greenwich - Docklands by DLR? Not that
that's exactly a high-capacity route itself.

But if you're coming from Finchley or wherever, you can easily switch
from using the Jubilee at London Bridge to Crossrail at Moorgate. I
think the same applies to passengers coming from most places west of
Docklands.

Ah, that's a good point, i hadn't thought of that. Crossrail also
eliminates the Essex - Stratford - Docklands traffic, did anyone mention
that? Not that this is the crowded bit of the Jubilee.

Liverpool Street isn't limited by platform capacity, it's limited by
capacity through the station throat. Rebuilding that is entirely
possible, although of course not trivial. I don't know about
Paddington, i have to confess. But since all we're talking about is
lengthening trains, why do we need more platforms?

Crossrail is expected to release significant capacity at Liverpool
Street for other services, even if its own route isn't seeing a big
increase.

I'm very slightly dubious about this. Where are the trains run using this
capacity going to run to? More trains on the GE fasts? More WA trains?

And there's quite a few more trains west of Paddington planned, which
would require platforms Paddington doesn't have.

Okay, i thought it was path-for-path. There will be more actual trains
under Crossrail?

If you're going into Oxford Circus to get on the Victoria line, this isn't
going to make any difference whatsoever. The new bit being added, however
enormous, will only decongest the existing station to the extent that they
can abstract passengers away from the Central line.

Again, it depends where you're ultimately going. Yes Crossrail is
useless if your destination is actually on the Bakerloo and Victoria
(except Paddington of course), but if you're changing to some other line
than there's possibly a way to do the same journey using Crossrail.

The orientation of the lines at Oxford Circus makes this difficult,
though; east is east and northeast is northeast, etc, to a large extent.

Farringdon in particular is going to have direct trains to places you
might currently reach from Victoria or King's Cross, as Thameslink 2000
will be complete.

That's a very good point.

Plus, if you take the Bakerloo to get a train at Paddington, you might
have a single seat (or half square metre of floor) all the way home.

Is TLnK getting Victoria trains? I haven't been keeping up, i have to
confess.

tom

--
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 -- AACS Licensing Administrator

To bring this back on topc: Whatever the cost, Crossrail is essential.

Adrian

Even if its 5 times more expensive than 5 new tube lines through
central london?

It will be a faster way to get _thru_ London, instead of just _into_
London.

Cheers,
L.W.
Who exactly needs to go through london that quickly, everyone in kent/
france can already get through via CTRL/St Pancras - and its only a
couple of stops round the tube if they want to get to paddington/
euston [and vice versa]. So that only leave the people in Anglia, but
north & central Anglia can access kings cross, so that's really just
the people in essex, which is hardly significant in the scale of cross-
london travel.

On Mar 25, 8:56 am, Jane Sullivan
wrote:
In message , Charles Ellson
writes

Nowadays the whole point might be that with modern technology there is
no longer a need for a physical centre as there was in the past when
the City of London was full of messengers running around with
negotiable documents.

I work in IT in the finance industry, at Canary Wharf

- The transport links are abysmal, and during the rush hours trains
are always overcrowded.
- I have "modern technology" links at home (Broadband and phone) and I
am allowed to work from home occasionally (i.e. not all the time,
and there has to be a good reason).
- It is much easier and more convenient to do my job in the office.
- Yes, you can have meetings via conference call over the phone, but
it is much better to get everyone together in an office.
- It is far easier to get things from a colleague by going to their
desk and having a quiet chat than by phoning them.
- My clients on the trading desks are not allowed to do their jobs
from home. This is a regulatory requirement.
- Lastly and most importantly - you can't have a drink with your
colleagues and clients after work if you're all working from home.
--
Jane
British OO, American and Australian HO, and DCC in the gardenhttp://www.yddraiggoch.demon.co.uk/railway/railway.html

There's lots of nice houses in the docklands. If you choose to live
miles away from where you work, the commute is your own fault.

But Crossrail includes 8 underground stations, most with two entrances
(doubling many of the costs), the rebuilding of several miles of Great
Western Main Line including two grade-separated junctions (Heathrow
and Acton Yard), the electrification of 11 miles of GWML (requiring
the rebuilding of about ten bridges in Slough), rebuilding a of a fair
bit of GEML, rebuilding of ca. 30 stations (about half will be
completely demolished) and so on. It's a much larger project.

Yes, so they could reduce the costs by doing it at tube guage, and
having single entrances for the stations, and raising the level it
runs at through farringdon so that they can re-use the tracks for the
moorgate branch of thameslink.

On Mar 25, 9:53 am, "Grumpy Old Man"
wrote:
The Real Doctor wrote:



On 24 Mar, 23:10, Adrian wrote:
On Mar 24, 4:00 pm, Dan G wrote:

Anyone seen a more detailed costing of the scheme? *Why* is it costing
so much more than other, not dissimilar, projects?

In part it will cost a lot because it will be (or should be)
engineered to a very high standard. The Jubilee Line extension is a
pointer in that respect.

But it is predicted to cost more than five times as much as the
Jubilee Line extension ...

You have clearly never lived in a city where good spacious (1,000 sq
ft per person) affordable housing is available to middle class
workers. Or, enjoyed one where a normal comfortable journey to work
is 40 minutes or less.

And how many people do you think will find good, spacious, affordable
housing as a result of this line. It'll knock quarter of an hour,
tops, off the journey onto London - are those fifteen minutes really
deterring millions from moving to good, spacious, affordable housing?

Ian

The only way to get good, spacious, affordable housing in Britain is to have a
smaller population. It's gone up 50% in the past hundred years.

The housing crisis is more about the fact that everyone wants to live
in their own home now, while before people were content to have their
entire family live in the upstairs floor of a standard victorian
terrace house.

On Mar 25, 10:27 am, "BH Williams" wrote:
"Lüko Willms" wrote in message

...

Am Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:00:56 UTC, schrieb Dan G
auf uk.railway :

Anyone seen a more detailed costing of the scheme?

I didn't. But I have some thoughts about this:

*Why* is it costing so much more than other, not dissimilar, projects?

Comparing just the length of the cross-London tunnel with the length
of the HS1 London tunnel and wondering why the same length of tunnel
can be much more costly to build -- does make sense only when one
wants to see the cost of the tunnel as only the cost of boring it, by
meter or kilometer.

But there may be a lot of utility lines ond other uses of the
underground to be removed before one can go on boring; also London
Crossrail is planned to have more stations, and underground stations,
which in itself would be more expensive than the one Stratford Int'l
box, plus interchanges with existing underground and train stations.
That is a lot of extra work, which makes the London Crossrail tunnel
more expensive to build than the London HS1 tunnel with the one open
station in its middle.

Just my two cents...

Cheers,
L.W.

More to do with the very deep foundations of tall buildings in Central
London than utilities. In comparison, the tunnelling for CTRL2 and JLE were
relatively unimpeded by such constraints. The gradient profile should be
'interesting' as a result of this.
Brian

Instead of going along oxford street, which is quite filled with
building foundations, they should continue through hyde-park to hyde-
park-corner, and then take the old fleet-line route via charing cross/
aldwych, and then along kingsway, routes which already have tube lines
under them.