Extension to Tring

trt
"How are they going to interleave a Crossrail service into the existing pattern then? "

The same way they will do it on the GEML and GWML. Some existing London Midland services will be diverted through the hole - presumably these will take up the slots through the Crossrail core currently intended to start/terminate at Paddington/Old Oak.

This will mean fewer services into Euston, but I think that's the whole point: they need to free up space there to rebuild it. And most people arriving at Euston are heading further south anyway, to places like Centre Point (TCR), or Farringdon, or Liverpool Street, or Canary Wharf.......

I didn't understand the reference to the health campus at Watford either - maybe it was a confusion with the audibly-similar but quite separate Croxley link, which will serve Watford General hospital.

I know what she said, but that doesn't explain what she meant. It is the Croxley link which will achieve this.


How many are heading for Euston Square I wonder?

I observe about half of an average commuter train heading out of the doors of the station. Roughly half of those head out of the Euston Square side, the other half out of the King's Cross side. Presumably some are heading for buses, others are heading for businesses along the Euston Road. I myself used to head towards Euston Square to go to work at the university and the hospital.

The point the Chamber of Commerce spokesperson was making was that the CRL links the Junction to the Health Campus and the Crossrail extension links the Junction to e.g. Canary Wharf. I suppose if they can attract more city boys to the campus, they'll get more money for those homes rather than let the plebs in.

I am not sure why that would be the case.

The proposal is not going to cost very much (a short connection between WCML and GWML a Old Oak Common and that will be pretty much it.

Also it is not as if Crossrail 2 will connecting the same places.


edit:-

I just watched the BBC London News report on BBC iPlayer.

They claimed that it would be a £6 billion project.

£6 billion just to build a short connection between the WCML and GWML.

How on earth did they come up with that number.

This would be a good use of the many trains that were planned to terminate at Paddington. It will mean that some passengers who intend their final destination to be around Euston will need to change to the Hammersmith & Circle at Paddington. However, it will offer significant relief to all the tube lines at Euston.

Further to snoggle's last point I would like to see how the passenger numbers for the GWML and WCML suburban services compare. Does anyone have information on the current peak service patterns between London and the respective WCML and GWML routes to be taken over by Crossrail?

I hope the work on the WCML extension is included as part of the current work and not planned as a separate project. At the very least it ought to provoke a re-think of the Crossrail 2 route via Euston/St Pancras.

I wonder if there will be any developments on the Abbeywood branch towards Dartford & Gravesend.

The more pertinent question, IMO, is what is right about CR2. I think it is a complete mess. You have a mass of SW branches feeding into a core and then fanning out to two NE branches. It is likely that some of the SW branches will lose their trains to Waterloo. CR2 trains won't be additional, they'll be a replacement. This will badly upset established travel patterns into Vauxhall (a development area) and Waterloo where people change for the City or Canary Wharf. In future people will either have to change trains at Wimbledon and crush on to whatever services are left to Waterloo or change at TCR to Crossrail 1. Given TfL are predicting CR1 will be full within months of opening this means stuffing vast numbers into TCR and CR1 for a dreadful journey to the City or Docklands. How is that an improvement even if CR1 trains are lengthened and some extra tph is added?

You then have the issue of the "Tooting" kink in CR2 - what's that for? Are people expected to crush on to the Northern Line to reach the City? Are people in Tooting expected to be able to board full CR2 trains?

Earlsfield is also likely to lose a lot of peak capacity and there is no explanation as to how this station will be adequately served by trains to Waterloo. Whatever released capacity there is is likely to be used to increase paths for longer distance trains into Waterloo.

You then have the utter mess that is the northern part of the line. TfL seem to have got rid of the ludicrous split tunnels but now we're forced to choose between serving Dalston or Hackney but not both. There's apparently "no demand" for a station at Essex Road which is also ridiculous. Then we move on to the lack of intermediate stations in Stoke Newington or at Clapton. Why are these places missed out? While I can understand the reason for wishing to serve Seven Sisters I am not really convinced by the branch to New Southgate given it doesn't do the obvious thing of reaching Muswell Hill. We also have the question of quite where trains will go on the Tottenham Hale line. There will be inevitable pressure to run to Stansted Airport which is the last thing we need. Crossrail 2 has to make up its mind as to what service it is - is it a metro, is a commuter railway in a tunnel, is it a regional express network or is it a mutant Metro/Commuter/Airport service???

I'd have much preferred the northern end of the line to be a full profile very high frequency Metro line from say Brimsdown and Muswell Hill to Clapham Junction or Wandsworth via KX, TCR, Picc Circ, Victoria, Chelsea. This could also serve Piccadilly Circus which I feel is a gap on the CR2 line. I really think the N / NE of London needs tube like frequencies to effect a big modal shift off bus routes which are extremely busy. This is also why you need intermediate stops at Clapton, Stoke Newington, Hackney, Dalston and Essex Road. You can save tens of millions on the bus budget by scaling back a lot of high frequency bus routes.

You could then have the SW section providing a blend of services into Waterloo and through the new tunnel which could miss Victoria (served by the Metro) and then TCR, Euston, Angel, Old Street / Shoreditch and then head into Docklands to give a high capacity service to Canary Wharf from the SW without a change. Alternatively you could use the CR1 Abbey Wood branch and leave CR1 running a higher frequency to Shenfield. This provides extra capacity to SW London, doesn't destroy local services into Waterloo, gives Earlsfield a fighting chance of retaining a service and gives a direct service to the City and Docklands thus taking pressure off Waterloo and allowing it to manage more services from the Windsor Lines and further out on the SW Main Line.

I don't claim credit for all of the above as my views are influenced by someone else who has devised the above basic concept long before I realised I agreed with it!

I realise this is more expensive but I feel CR2 is neither one thing nor the other which means it will inevitably be a compromised mess. I have yet to find any sort of transport justification for CR2. It's a politicians' railway trying to solve too many problems and doing none of them well.

I have fed my comments back to my London Assembly member who asked for feedback. My remarks will make no difference but I fear London is going to make a massive mistake with the current CR2 design.

I am sorry I am not sure that I fully understand this post.

It seems as if you are proposing two lines.

Could you please clarify what you are proposing or link me to a site that shows what you are talking about.

For me the main point of Crossrail and Thameslink is to remove the commuters from outside London and from the suburbs from the underground (as far as is possible).

Now looking at CR2, Thameslink and CR1 there does seem to be several places where they linkup.

CR2 obviously connects to CR1 at Tottenham Court Road which gives destinations to the City and Canary Wharf.

Also CR2 connects with the Thameslink Network at Kings Cross/St Pancras and Wimbledon which gives a route to the City.

Now I accept that Essex Road should probably have a station so that people form the northern end of the route can change trains for the Northern City Line.

However I do tend to agree with you that they have overdone the SW branches and they seem to be trying to do too much.

To me they need to loose some of the branches and forget the metro side of it and stick to the commuter rail line and extend them further out.

As far as a metro is concerned. I would expect that once CR2 is open that the amount of people using the Victoria Line would drop significantly.

That could give tfl the opportunity to extend that line north to Chingford, East to the Hainault Loop, South from Brixton and possibly into South West London.

For me that makes more sense.

A St Albans MP has suggested that the Abbey Line should be included in the Crossrail extension

www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/11398673.Abbey_Line_should_be_included_in_new_proposals_to_extend_Crossrail__says_St_Albans_politician/

The problem with that idea is that it would mean diverting trains up another branch line. I am not sure that Crossrail or Network Rail would be very keen on that idea.

Network Rail/TfL has said that they expected an extra CR2 branch will be added from Hackney (or, less likely, Dalston) to run via Stratford to possible developments along the A13.

So the character of CR2 in the north will match the south-west, more and more over time.

Snoggle has made a very good post so I won't duplicate that.

Major corridors of inner south London on the 'southern' network are poorly served by rail, where removal of inner London stops could improve other rail services and where there is a high volume of bus traffic on the roads (Camberwell, Peckham, Streatham, Tulse/Herne Hill). On many levels (not least socio-economic) these should take priority over the SWML inner suburbans which run on a well built route (direct, multi-tracked, grade-separated junctions etc) and already have well established connections to the West End (via the District, Victoria, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Northern and directly at Waterloo itself), the City and Canary Wharf (via the Jubilee, District and W&C).

Aside from serving Hackney, the route north of the Thames is a bit more difficult. The route should broadly look at London transport post-Crossrail, HS2 and Thameslink and, where possible, focus on gaps which will remain despite those projects rather than worsening disparity by enhancing routes and locations that are already well served.

There is a suggestion that the Prime Minister has backtracked on putting Network Rail within the scope of FOI. Simon Hughes MP was apparently due to sign off the relevant change (he's the minister responsible) but has been stopped from so doing. I saw that on Twitter this evening.

I am not for one second doubting what you've been told by Network Rail - I just find it a bit surprising that's all. This is doubly so because the CR2 paperwork says that an extension out to Stratford, Barking and the Thames Gateway area was considered but ruled out as being too expensive. John Biggs, Assembly Member, has asked people to produce a critique of serving the East End with CR2 (largely on aiding development and boosting access to jobs). Some of that critique is in the CR2 consultation paperwork. I'd also have expected the idea to have materialised in the Mayor's 2050 Infrastructure consultation but it's not there either. We shall obviously see in due course what does emerge in terms of more tweaks to CR2.

For those living at the Abbey end of the city, (or indeed at intermediate stations on the line) and/or travelling to the West End, Heathrow etc, it might well be a better option.

Although most of the St Albans - Hatfield line is now a footpath/cycleway, there is now a housing estate across the line immediately west of St Albans London Road station. (London Road station building is still intact.)