TFL & Southwark to put forward Bakerloo extension case:

One could get the Bakerloo Line. The other could get the Cross River Tram.

Simon

The curse of Bromley Council strikes again.

Given what was or actually was NOT said at the Assembly Transport Committee last week then I am sceptical about any Bakerloo Line extension happening. If Bromley isn't supportive then they will have an influence within government and probably not a positive one. It makes little sense to terminate the Bakerloo at Lewisham as it won't be able to cope because the station area is already constrained and will be vastly worse when the current development work finishes. There's nowhere to do anything sensible with the rail infrastructure there or to expand the station to cope with the impact of the Bakerloo reaching there. You might run on to Catford but is there the land there for a station plus a depot / sidings? I'm not inviting proposals here just making an observation.

Ms Dedring said TfL were reviewing the role of National Rail services across London because the tube will soon be physically full and incapable of expansion beyond the next generation of upgrades / delivery of 36 tph capability. This means all NR routes are being looked at to achieve closer to a "Metro" style operation. There are no plans at the moment but a strategy document is in preparation. It is also worth noting that there was significant concern about poor links from SE London to East London / Docklands. Ms Dedring even briefly suggested the Bakerloo Line might go via or to Canary Wharf but she accepted that could upset SE London stakeholders - like Southwark council!! I think Southwark are getting ahead of themselves but I understand their need to appear positive and supportive and to keep plugging their preferred two route option. They won't get two routes and they certainly won't get a tram line as a "bonus" on the non tubed corridor.

I fear the scale of demand rises that TfL are identifying means that even tube style improvements may not be enough on some corridors. Mike Brown even hinted at "Crossrail 3" having to be considered for SE to NW links. I know this basic concept is very old and dates back a very long way but it gives a tiny hint about the scale of solution being thought about. Of course we are decades away from that but I get a sense the "transport landscape" is shifting in ways that most people have no awareness of.

Not even bothering with the extension because the "go-to destinations", which are the very raison-d'être for the demand, can't cope is a poor excuse. Doubly so given the amount of money being spent currently upgrading a lot of them.

Regardless of all this, I do think the Bakerloo should be extended to Camberwell as this is a defnite traffic centre and has faily poor other altrnativbes.

Well yes I understand those issues. I've never been convinced about serving Bromley by tube and if the politicians won't be persuaded and the residents (seemingly) won't force the hand of their elected representatives then they can remain off the tube map. I take your point about the potential line loadings and have long agreed with you about overloaded central area stations. I think there is a fair amount of evidence that shows that every new bit of rail infrastructure that links into the tube network at some point just adds to the strain in Zone 1. Even some of the Overground improvements are merely feeding more people into Zone 1 through Highbury, Whitechapel and Canada Water despite the relief offered by the orbital links.

I come back to the fact that TfL and City Hall appear to be having second thoughts about what is needed to properly bolster capacity to provide the level of mobility that a growing populace and increased economic activity require. That's why I'm wavering a bit about what role the Bakerloo Line extension could play.

I wonder whether the modelling allows for the introduction of driverless cars on the one hand and population increase on the other.

Based on the limited comments from Ms Dedring in front of the Committee I think the issue is that 2050's demand is now expected to be 2035's demand level. That's a game changer and has massive implications for the scale of interventions, their timing and the associated funding requirements. Even the 2050 Plan had pretty amazing implied funding levels but an acceleration of schemes would vastly increase those demands in the short to medium term. Thinking out loud I wonder if the desire to intensify NR service levels is considered to be quicker than dragging through 5 years of planning, 3 years of TWA process and then 6 years of tendering, construction, fitting out and commissioning before an extra seat is made available. Buying lots more trains, extending platforms and targeted infrastructure improvements to release pinchpoints could probably be done in about 5-8 years depending on how difficult and involved the infrastructure stuff is. Before our Enfield resident gets overly excited this was mentioned much more in the context of railways south of the Thames where there is no tube network.

This may also explain the switch in thinking from actually taking over parts of franchises to simply incrementing the specification and having an ongoing programme of improvement right across the franchise term and possibly into the next year to give continuity of planning and delivery. If faster delivery is the thing you want then incrementing franchise in a longer term programme makes more sense - *provided* you can be certain about the competence of those doing the delivery and that you're getting value for money relative to risk. One fundamental issue, though, is how you square the funding into the franchise if you have no direct call on the resultant increases in fare revenue. That's not an issue where TfL take over the franchise and it's run as a concession rather than a revenue risk bearing franchise. I suppose DfT could be persuaded to adopt a repeat of the TSGN franchise where Govia are simply a contractor and revenue goes to DfT simply because of the project related risks over the franchise term. Interesting times ahead I think. Sorry this is a bit of a diversion away from the Bakerloo Line per se but it fits in the wider sense of how London's rail capacity will be increased.

I doubt that TL and South eastern would notice much difference - they have bigger fish to fry further out. And I don't think it was the Piccadilly that did for the Palace Gates branch - the GN always provided a better service to the area long before the Picc came on the scene. And indeed the GNR originally promoted the Picc as a way of getting suburbanites from Finsbury Park off its trains to allow more space for the more lucrative longer distance traffic.

So that they spend their money in Bromley rather than the West End?

I think even this under-estimates things. We just heard earlier this year that London breached its all time population peak reached in 1939. Well, the extent of London has not changed much since 1939 for this very reason. The outer suburbs were generally built either Victorian times or during the 1930s and these represent the city limits, beyond which we have Greenbelt, and the tube and rail network shrank since then. Not only that, but some lines had higher frequency services probably due to more relaxed approaches to health and safety.

So we are stacking and racking them. My suspicion is that the 1939 peak was actually breached long before the official statistic, with the take off of London property prices relative to the rest of the UK after the 2008 crash suggesting pointing to the real acceleration and the figures telling us that London is now at capacity. But what happened in 2008 marks the shift, because Britain, with its independence, could launch a serious scheme for stabalising the banks, etc. and rather than go Greek, devalued. That devaluation caused Europeans to flood over and pick up bargain properties, bolstered by the relative confidence in the economy that the Chancellor was capable of providing. Meanwhile, many European countries have struggled to resolve anything. So with Greece, and goodness knows what next, we may see that 2008 marked the beginning of a trend towards Britain being more stable, lower taxed and more of a dynamic economy, whilst having open borders with a floundering European Union that will continue to flounder because it lacks a debt, fiscal or political union, like that found in USA.

The issue is, that Greeks are now taking their cash and lives to London's safe ports as occurred to Cypriots during that crisis, as will occur in the next string of events that follow, and meanwhile, sentiment has firmly shifted in favour of London, with young people all over Europe, often very smart, ambitious folk, particularly those suffering high youth unemployment at home, gagging to get on a plane and pick up their first proper job. Also, despite political impasse with TTIP, it is clear that Europe will open up more to USA, and where will Americans move to on masse? You guessed it, London.

So the question is, when did we really breach the prior 1939 population peak? A hint, it was long before early this year. Where is the population now? A hint, much higher than the official numbers. Where is it going? And this is the kicker, there is no way of predicting, because we have never been here before, and the European instability causing this shift appears to be a slow burn. I suspect that the one place where the figures are difficult to hid is in TFL ridership statistics. However, I do have a suspicion that many of new residents are being counted as tourists, with record "tourist numbers" actually being house hunters and settlers.

pridley - not sure I agree. At some point the house price inflation will cause London to implode because ordinary people earning average or below average earnings simply will be unable to afford rents or mortgages. Future generations will have no stake in the City and will move to where they can afford to buy a home. At some point things become unsustainable even if London remains superficially attractive in terms of employment for bright, clever people. However you still need people to run hospitals, clean offices, sweep the streets, repair the roads etc. A dirty, smelly city with declining public services won't attract people nor will it attract external investment. We've been here before and it's perfectly possible we could go back to a sorry state of affairs unless something very fundamental changes. It all hinges on the next Mayor and what they can do. Even then they will struggle in a four year term to make any substantive impact because it'll take a new Mayor at least a year to formally change strategies, plans and then have the Boroughs respond to those changes. The Mayor will need 8 but more likely 12 years to make a substantive change to housing supply so that the market adjusts. No Mayor has yet achieved a 12 year term so there's an obvious difficulty there. Government policy is also likely to cause complications. Their laissez faire approach to planning rules is the antithesis of more co-ordinated planning that City Hall and TfL now appear to be espousing. That clash of philosophies will affect transport investment like the Bakerloo Line extension (he says desperately trying to get back on topic ). Still it won't take terribly long before the contradictions and unexpected consequences emerge with impacts as likely in Tory boroughs as Labour ones. Fun times ahead - unless you wish to buy a property from scratch.

I've been saying this for ages. It's pointless attempting to increase public transport in London whilst unrestricted population movement is allowed to flourish there. All the authorities ever seem to do is spend money playing catch-up to a utopian scenario that is galloping out of sight over the horizon. I've read various reports that Crossrail (when it opens) will be immediately saturated and that the population increases between now and then will mean that the routes it is intended to relieve will still be as they are now, if not worse.

There needs to be a serious effort by government to encourage employers to move to other areas of the country, well away from London, nearly all of which are far more affordable for basic and Middle wage earners. The quality of life is so much better when you don't spend half of it squashed together with all the other poor sods.

Now, if anybody knows how to squeeze a gallon into a pint pot, please enlighten me. 

But you assume that the plan is to resolve transport issues. Tony Blair made it clear that the plan was to alter the British culture forever.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

Obviously, Cameron shares that opinion, because despite the rhetoric, is has clearly bought in. We have been here before, USA was settled by folk from all over Europe, all with different cultures, but over a couple hundred years they developed an "American" culture, and now it is difficult to tell apart those with German, British or Dutch descent. That is what they want here, and so the minor issue of infrastructure is irrelevant to the end aim, as was the expansion of New York during the development of USA.

Clearly, they are developing a United States of Europe, and seek a pan-European culture. Britain has clearly agreed to act as an escape valve for European refugees to support a "Common Purpose".

There is no intention of solving the crisis, because for the European project, filling London to the brim is part of the solution.

It is not that the missed the nail with the hammer, it is that they wanted to hit the log.

The transport strategy is evolving to meet the planned 20% population increase. Without regard as to whether the latter itself is readily sustainable, desirable or affordable.

This has nothing to do with Blair, it goes back to Docklands & the City. They are assuming the successful regeneration of Docklands can be repeated in several development areas across London, so they can house more and more financial services workers. The City stumped up for Crossrail to get workers to the 50,000 new jobs they promised in Canary Wharf, they didn't stump up to build them all new houses out in the sticks.