Crossrail 2 Consultation

No options - but a suggestion of 4tph (peak) to each of \Hampton Court, Chessington, Shepperton and Eposm, with an extra 2tph on the latter two from waterloo (presumably to Dorking and back to waterloo via Twickenham respectively). A further 2tph to Hampton Wick (!?) and a further 2tph unallocated.

The Balham Bulge looks even more ludicrous than the Tooting Twist.

What an absolute mess! The whole thing is just utterly messy. How do they expect to run 30tph with the amount of inter-running and junctions the thing will encounter both north and south of the river? The kinks reduce it something on par with some of the fantasy threads and are just an obvious clue as to project creep and political greasing. Not to mention the bizarre amount of nearly-but-not-quite duplication north of Angel.

Your final sentence sums up the paradox of how London is approaching Crossrail type lines. They are an inevitable compromise which means they're neither one thing or the other. They have to run at almost Metro type frequencies in the central area in order to add capacity but the further you go out the harder it gets to run services at 2 min headways. You can argue that's no different from the longer tube lines because they have multiple branches and also turn trains closer to the centre. It all boils down to what is economic.

One of my problems is that the "hype" is all about the core level of service which then misleads people to expect the same at Chessington or Shenfield or Maidenhead. The reality is that none of those places will ever get really high frequency services. With Crossrail 1 people are still going to be waiting 10 mins for a Shenfield train off peak or 6-8 mins for an Abbey Wood train. How does that compare to a Jubilee Line train from Canary Wharf that's probably twice as frequent as that off peak. It's no different from now for Shenfield line passengers. Clearly there will be other advantages with new trains, upgraded or new stations and hopefully quick journey times.

I assume that additional infrastructure will be put in place at T Hale and Wimbledon. Wimbledon is clearly going to see a massive rebuild with large parts of shopping centres having to be demolished. There's no clarity as to what will happen north of T Hale - presumably because it's not clear what the 4 tracking scheme will look like. I'm a tiny bit sceptical as to whether there is now enough land for a 4 track alignment *and* some sort of turnback facility. On the assumption the slow lines are on the outside then it's even harder to see how you can turn 3 tph if they have to cross the fast tracks which will have a high peak frequency. I suppose they might do something clever with dive unders to remove conflicts?

Eh? CR2 will stop at Northumberland Park and will have a vastly more frequent service. Look at a map of the proposed line. Perhaps your navel fluff is in need of attention?

Snoggle
Mea Culpa

Thanks

Ben - there is an interactive scalable map on the CR2 consultation page. It shows the route alignment placed on a street map that shows other rail routes, parks, streets etc. It does NOT show tube line alignments but I suspect many people on here know broadly where they run so that's not insurmountable.

Having been to a presentation on this, it appears that 10 or 12 x 12-car tph are being planned along the Lea Valley line, and that the quadrupling might be concluded by 2025, well ahead of the tunnelling. Prior to the big hole opening; early 30s, there would be a shortage of terminating points in London, so Stratford, even Chingford etc might come into play. I wonder if anyone has thought of relaying Tottenham N Jc-South Tottenham- so these trains could run back via Seven Sisters? All level crossings would have to be replaced by bridges, the ground being unsuitable for underpasses. This would mean demolition of premises nearby. Most stations rebuilt.
12000 seats per hour would be a massive stimulus for the Lea Valley and would revolutionise the settlement pattern in places like Broxbourne, Waltham Abbey, Cheshunt etc. It would be a case of infrastructure preceding building such as we have not seen since the 1930s and in the same area, the GER Edwardian Churchbury and Fairlop loops, which were so unsuccessful at first.
Land for a depot is being earmarked at the site of the old CEGB Rye House sidings, but curiously, no station is planned at Hoddesdon, the major town in the area.

Nazeing would be a good place to buy a house, folks. Near the line but far from any demolitions!

Agree with Phil on this one. Besides, New Southgate is likely to be 'a mess' anyway if the 'Boris Tunnels' go ahead, as the North Circular would be taken into tunnel around that point, which would lead to further construction work. New Southgate would benefit from much needed regeneration.

As for Balham, this is not an 'option' as that's not what Crossrail 2 are consulting on. If you look at the regional map, you'll see that the key indicates that the Tooting alignment is labelled 'Route Previously Consulted on' (which indeed was safeguarded); the Balham alignment is the proposed alternative. The consultation will not be asking you to vote for which 'option' is better, but you have every right to argue the case for Tooting over Balham in the questionnaire. As you point out, Tooting Broadway's construction methodology is complex/expensive.

Yes it would be duplicating the Southern service - but the same charge can be made between Wimbledon and Clapham Junction (SWT), Victoria and Euston / Kings Cross (Victoria), Euston - Severn Sisters / Tottenham Hale (Victoria)

Stopping at Balham could potentially relieve the Northern line just as well as Tooting, but would also allow passengers from Southern services to change onto CR2 earlier than the overcrowded Victoria and Clapham Junction stops. It would also mean passengers connecting between suburban Southern and SWT services could do so at Balham rather than adding to volumes at Clapham Junction.

As regards Dalston - I doubt it would be renamed as a single station, particularly as Dalston Junction and Dalston Kingsland serve different destinations (though they will both serve CR2). Besides we still have the officially separate Bank and Monument stations despite all the connecting corridors below ground, plus Moorgate and Liverpool Street stations (plus the Farringdon and Barblican pairing) will remain separate stations for non CR1 services even though the CR1 station serves them both.

One obvious reason is your suggestion makes providing reversing facilities more difficult - having both CR2 platforms side by side allows the provision of a central reversing siding either end of the station (as at West Croydon) plus the easy provision of the necessary crossovers close to the platforms thus minimising the time (and thus the delays to other services) a reversing train blocks the platforms (or their approaches).

Another reason is the potential problems it would cause if either the SWML required a closure for maintenance tasks* - the layout at Abbey Wood was deliberately reconfigured to have CR1 and the Noth Kent line run side by side rather than one inside the other for this very reason allowing maintenance and renewal activities on each line to be undertaken separately, particularly given the different power supply modes (OHLE and Conductor rail impose very different limitations on work sites).

As for Balham that has only come about because ground conditions along the 'safeguarded' leg via Tooting make construction difficult. Yes I agree, in an ideal world following the SWML and replacing Earlsfield station makes more sense from a 'National Rail' point of view BUT the CR2 project, as with CR1 is very much a TfL one. Hence the focus on keeping these lines as short as possible (the opposite of Thameslink) and the desire to use the Crossrail lines to relieve tube lines wherever possible. This is why we have got he dog leg via Tooting / Balham rather than any significant desire to serve either of these two places specificity at the outset.

Finally creating a Balham spur would require a fundamental rethink of a project that is already well on the way to being finalised. Do you terminate at Balham or continue further south to connect to the BML? If so where do you send services to terminate given that unlike the SWML there are no convenient sub end branch lines to take over. Once you start sending CR2 services to the Selhurst / Norwood Junct / Croydon triangle you then hit the problem of all those junctions that need rebuilding - and as with CR1 and Reading**, CR2 then ends up having to contribute to sorting out a mess that is not of its making. There is also a big question over whether linking the BML service patters (which is dominated by having to ensure Thameslink services hit their slots in the core on time) with yet another tightly times cross London service is wise as the repercussions of a delay could extend to half of London if you do.

*Note CR2 will be powered by 25KV overheads as far as Wimbledon.

** Note before the GWML electrification was planned, taking CR1 to Reading would have meant CR1 would have had to stump up the cash to replace ALL the signalling from Naidenhead - Reading as the 1960s era kit was not AC traction immune. Hence CR1 were adamant they would not go further than Maidenhead and it wasn't until the GWML electrification had resignalled the Reading area with AC compliment signalling that they changed their mind.

Why do the fasts have to be in the middle? Given that no fast services stop before Surbiton, we could remove the flyover (which will be nearly 100 years old by 2030) and have the fasts run on the north side of the formation all the way to Surbiton, The slow lines can then follow their original route on the south side of the formation (the Kingston line still has two parallel underpasses under the main line) all the way to the cutting east of Surbiton statin, where there is headroom for a flyover to switch to paired by direction.

Or - radical thought - instead of going to the expense of a cut and cover station under the existing platforms at Wimbledon, why not divert the fast lines underneath? No more tunnelling involved, and a much easier station to operate. I would suggest cross platform interchange between terminating services and slow Waterloo ones. People won't need to transfer between terminating and through CR2 services people transferring between through CR2 services and ex-Waterloo services can change at Raynes Park.

So:

up waterloo/CR2 (divergence east of station)
PLATFORM
terminating CR2 (one or two tracks)
PLATFORM
down waterloo
w/b CR2 (convergence west of station)
PLATFORM
up Thameslink
down Thameslink
PLATFORM
.........

Snoggle,

According to this map from Crossrail it will not carry on to Northumberland Park. So a change at Tottenham Hale, like now, will still be required. Perhaps someone will bring the coffee to the Crossrail planners and they could have a 'light bulb' moment

Here is the link

crossrail2.co.uk/the-route/

At a meeting with NR/TFL rep present, it was confirmed all CR2 trains would be metro style, i.e. stopping at all stations on the LV line. Presumably this was thought the best way of separating out the fast trains (StEx, Cambridge, etc) on the new fast lines

BUT that IS NOT what you outlined in your idea for Wimbledon - there are no easy / quick turnback options with CR2 either side of the SWML