Tube 'to be out of action within 15 years' due to crowding

Of course, the population increase may halt or reverse after Thursday week......

The problem is, I suspect, much like the roads.

Every time you make an improvement at one bottleneck you exacerbate congestion elsewhere.

The big problem with Metros in crowded cities is that there simply isn't the available space to expand to the extent needed to remove congestion completely.

A few comments.

1. One might expect a senior manager in charge of constructing large station schemes to be in favour of building more of them. Cynical moi?

2. It's been clear to me for years that there has been an imbalance in LU's capital investment. While LU will obviously prioritise spending on actually keeping the trains running (rolling stock, track, signals etc) it has not been spending properly on stations. Stations are always the first major area of expenditure to be cut and while you can patch and mend for a long time (as you can with bridges and tunnels) there comes a time when you have to do something. I suspect there is a rather nasty accumulation of long deferred spending on stations.

3. The sheer scale of growth in system usage is undoubtedly placing ridiculous pressure on a lot of stations. I firmly believe you can't keep pumping trains through at mega frequencies (the key aim of the line upgrades) without doing something to stations. There should be a station upgrade programme which follows behind a line upgrade so that the most congested stations are dealt with as a priority and other places gain things like a third escalator, wider gateline, extra space to enter / leave the station. Platforms are the hardest issue to fix hence why none of the current station upgrades are doing anything about them. However places like Leicester Square are going to need attention in line with the Picc Line upgrade. The platforms are dangerously narrow for such a busy Z1 station and if we stick PEDS in then the space reduces even more because people won't walk right up against them.

4. It is no great shock that when a "root and branch" review is underway and the budget will be very tight that someone might wish to lobby in support of their own area.

5. There is certainly an element of more and more pressure being applied every time you improve a bit of the network. We have quite a lot of that happening in the next few years (NLE, Met Line ext, Crossrail, Thameslink, GOBLIN electrification, NR capacity uplifts) which will ratchet up pressure on tube stations as more and more journey options materialise for people. Obviously some LU upgrades support the addition of those schemes but I still think we may get some unexpected impacts at some stations - Stratford is likely to need yet more capacity especially for interchange capacity.

The one thing that we cannot predict here is technology and now it will change in the coming 15 years. We can continue to live in the same Neanderthol thinkin of we must 'travel into town' (London) every day, or alternatively adapt and change our working culture. We can either plan for this and choose the timing... or be forced by the law of diminishing returns... as our transport network fills up, making commuting increasingly slower.

As an IT Trainer I travel much of the country (this year I've been down to Truro.... twice... and Norwich.... also twice). I am able to log into our VoIP phone system, so it no longer means that I need to be in London to have a London phone number.. It doesn't matter if I'm in Manchester, Bristol or Perth, I have the same login to our Avaya phone network and same external number. So I can be in a more local/rural office, say Ipswich, Chelmsford or Cambridge, if I'm having an 'admin' day (non-training).

Agreed that these will be non-options for those who work within manual industries...

During the Olympics many firms were asked to stagger their hours, arriving either earlier or later. When all else fails, this may become the final option when our transport network finally reached full capacity, which it will at some point (IMO certainly not within the timescales as predicted in the subStandard online article though).

Another problem is that the driving force behind the repopulation of London from the late 1980's onwards is the City & the financial services sector.

Now, without being political, the late 1980's & the last recession, it managed to ride both out without shedding jobs like a dog sheds hair.

Is it going to be third time unlucky, because there are plenty of warning signs in the global economy that another one might be on the way fairly soon?

So they could just be planning for a population growth that either isn't going to happen, or prove remotely sustainable.

And aren't they missing that now! One could hypothesise as to what the road traffic in the area would be like now if that branch was still in use

Not this again! London is able to accommodate 10-13 million people and all parties (excep UKIP) are signed up to accepting it and dealing with the implications. We need to build more homes at higher densities, and we're still not building enough. You should worry about the city if and when no one wants to come!

The point as far as this forum is concerned is simply that the lower and less dense the population, the less need for extra transport infrastructure.

Back in the mid 1960's there was an advertising campaign by the Location of Offices Bureau encouraging businesses out of London, their catchy ads have stayed in my mind since then!

One thing we DON'T want is any more tube lines, they are simply too small to cope. We need full-size lines to take full-size trains, to Berne loading gauge if necessary to enable the largest trains to be run. I know it will be difficult and expensive, but the lack of forward thinking over the decades have been lamentable. It seemed to stop in 1939. Why oh why were the Vic and Jubilee lines built to tube size? Even Crossrail is I understand of limited size due to the insistence of re-using old infrastructure.

The other answer may be already-though-of by some idea of street tramways and eliminating a lot of the road traffic that gets nowhere.

I would suggest that 36 tph must be the maximum anyone can cope with; trains simply cannot load and unload and faster than they do now.

Apart from a school(?) at Cranley Gardens isn't most of the infrastructure still in tact? Apart from the connection at Finsbury Park that is.
With a connection at Highgate I would think the locals would welcome its re-introduction

Roythebus, you are quite correct. And LTE did its best to exhort employers/ees to adopt staggered hours - there was a 50s LT advert showing a sardine can (sse www.ltmcollection.org/posters/poster/poster.html?_IXSR_=oMDXBwAy6pn&_IXMAXHITS_=1&IXinv=1983/4/11820&IXsummary=results/results&IXsearch=stagger&_IXFIRST_=6)
Very apt, perhaps they ought to revive it?

I'm not too worried as I left London in 1987 largely because I didn't like the crowding then, particularly on the Underground. It's much, much worse now and nothing that anybody says of any political hue about being able to cope will ever convince me differently. The intervening 30 years or thereabouts of deterioration have only served to reinforce my views. ChrisW is on the right lines. Get people out of the place. Enable them to work effectively from elsewhere and then just maybe you have a plan

Businesses should be encouraged to move outside London and thus reduce the number of people wanting to live here - or adopting flexible working hours, working from home etc for office workers who don't need to travel every day. How many office workers travel an hour or more each way to sit at a desk and email, telephone people they could contact from anywhere in the world? Although unless TfL adopts the notion that weekend commuters deserve the same service as those during the week, flexible working days are unlikely to take off!

Given the short length platforms on the tube route via Essex Road and the need to cope with high passenger numbers by using the highest possible capacity rolling stock the service would probably have been provided by 6 car S stock trains, especially on the Ally Pally and High Barnet services. Trains to Bushey Heath however would have been restricted to small profile tube size, as whilst the route would have been suitable for full size trains as far as Edgware, the section north of there was designed to only accept small profile tube trains.

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re: reopening this route, I walked it in 2014 after attending the Routemaster bus event at Finsbury Park. Below are some notes on what I found which may be of interest to those wondering about the viability of restoring this back to railway use.

First though, a diagram / map. Although based upon something that I found on Wikipedia I've completely redrawn it and added much more pertinent information that was missing.I use this map on my webpage about the Northern Line.



The section south of Highgate High Level is a public footpath and cycle path. Any attempt to revert back to railway would likely result in massive public protest from those who use this pathway.  (Whats the opposite of "Nimby"? Could it be "Yimby" - Yes In My Back Yard?) What I do not know is whether the locals who don't use the walkway and who might prefer a railway will outnumber those who do want the walkway. Especially at night, when surely few use the walkway for fear of personal safety.

The tunnels to the south of Highgate High Level platforms have been repurposed as a bat sanctuary (hmm, a truly batty thing to do). The tunnels to the north of the high level platforms are closed, I have no idea if they too have "gone batty". However the route from the end of the tunnels as far as East Finchley station is still part of a live railway - as railway sidings - although nowadays only trains that are not carrying passengers travel along here.

re the the branch towards Ally Pally, the curve off what is now the sidings line has been allowed to become overgrown (as a forest) and is inaccessible to all. This extends as far as Cranley Gardens station where some private dwellings have been built over the trackbed. From there the section to Muswell Hill (including the high level viaduct) is now a footpath and cycle path. As is already known, a school blocks the site of Muswell Hill station, but I suppose that a new station could be built on the other side of the road. The rest of the route is used as playing fields and for what I suppose could be called light industrial uses. When I walked the route in 2014 I tried to reach the site of the former Ally Pally station but because of a spate of burglaries and my not being known to anyone there I was made unwelcome in the area.

The Palace Gates branch has mostly been built over.

I think the Crystal Palace High level branch has also been built over; as have the other lines that should never have been closed, these including Stanmore LNWR and the GWR route to Uxbridge. The LMS Rickmansworth branch is a public footpath. At one location there is a good view of canal locks and the Met GC route.

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re: the comment that nothing not planned before 1945 has been built, I'd suggest that that not even everything that was planned before 1945 has been built. (eg: tube line to Yeading, west London, which even today is remote from any rail service and diversion in the Northwood area of LMS services to Tring etc from Euston to Marylebone)

Simon