Camden Town redevelopment

Full-depth windows are getting boring - they seem to appear with nearly every new development that I have seen to date.

There was an interesting Twitter discussion before Christmas on the theme of "Render vs Reality", where artists impressions of buildings from the planning stage were compared with what was actually built. Needless to say few of the renders looked like what ended up being built!

Regis at 59, Clarendon Road, Watford is the only building I've ever seen that actually looks in real life what it probably did in the artist's impression.

Interesting reading. Seems a generally good proposal in terms of minimising disruption to the existing station while works are carried out. It's not clear how passenger flows will be managed - "no entry" passages and a one-way system for people to ignore, or just a general free-for-all?

The suggestion I've added to the consultation is to consider having a set of escalators which go direct to the southbound platform level. Having to cross paths with northbound passengers at the intermediate level just seems like a recipe for further congestion.

also 2 lifts isnt enough for busy station - 4 express lifts would be ideal - like one found in NYC station at Lexington Av / 63 - which has 4 large elevators serving both levels - but more simllar idea for automatic lifts at heathrow temerial 5 which has 4 lifts there serving three levels

but if 2 elevators served both elevels could be busy because there no direct escalator down to lower level

I was by chance at T5 yesterday, and I was right about tube arrivals to airport arrivals using a different route - able bodied passengers use escalators direct to the arrivals level (up the equivalent of two floors). Those heading to airport departures get the lift the equivalent of 5 floors up. The lift then goes down three floors to arrivals and two more floors to the tube. This is inconvenient for a disabled person who wants to go from the tube to arrivals or from arrivals to departures (the latter is uncommon for other than airport staff) but not too bad. At Camden, the levels could be called 0 (ground), -7 and -8 (roughly, based on there being 96 steps between the higher concourse level and ticket hall), so anyone wanting to interchange between the two lower levels (a very common thing to want to do) would go much further out of their way - when they will typically have less time available than they would at an airport.
With just one train arriving at any one time at Heathrow T5 the system can know when lifts will be needed on that level and move empty ones there. At Camden with two trains per level and much shorter, irregular* intervals between them this would not be possible to realistically do. Automatic lifts work very well for the environment at Heathrow, but would not work at all for the very different environment at Camden.

*There is a minimum time between consecutive arrivals into the same platform, but all platforms are essentially independent of one another.

It's interesting how little they say about splitting the Northern line - only that "there are currently no plans to split the Northern line into two different lines."

In this document from 2015 TfL talk of plans to "deliver a fully separated Northern line offering between 33 and 36tph by April 2023" - but dependent on the Camden Town upgrade.

Good. A split at Camden would be a bad idea, making a mockery of the complex work undertaken in the first place to link the two lines. Surely it is not beyond the ability of technology to deliver a line with such a junction that can run ~32tph on all branches.

Although Camden is a grade separated junction, there is no way it could handle 32 tph with trains going to / coming from alternate branches. The trains would have to arrive at the junction precisely in sync with those on the other branch. Even the tiniest hold up would cause chronic delays because with a 32 tph service there would be no slack in the timetable.



Thighs are useful things, but untested in terms of supporting high frequency services . . . I

Is the Camden Town station reworking really a precursor to splitting the northern line services or just incidental?

If we briefly ignore the potential line split, the valid question is then whether or not the current Camden Town station platform infrastructure really contributes to enhanced dwell time - ie do the platforms and cross platform tunnels create a service bottleneck rather than the actual junction and related signalling and point-work?

I am not aware of any evidence to suggest the current PLATFORMS at Camden Town are causing any greater delay than arises at an equivalently busy platform elsewhere on the line. Over many, many trips on the line, I think the "delays" are more correctly associated with in tunnel delays at the junction with trains basically waiting for the onward route to be available.

I accept it would definitely help the passenger experience if the cross platform tunnels were enlarged. Especially if it allows more space for people to get past the usual crowd of passengers clogging up the link passage whilst they watch the "next train" screens to determine what platform to go to for the next southbound service on whatever route they are wish to travel on.

However if you just split the line without upgrading the cross platform capacity, you are basically exchanging a minor jam up of people lurking by the "next train" screens, for a far worse crowd management problem as presumably the arrival of pretty much every southbound and northbound service will trigger a mass exodus to the other platform by all the people no longer able to choose a direct service.

Currently I suspect a lot of people do their "route lurking" at stations all along the route. Certainly I and many others are happy to wait for a direct train provided it is only a few minutes behind, rather than faced the hassle of changing at Camden Town. If however the lines are completely split, then you pretty much guarantee chaotic scenes at Camden Town with all platforms having to handle large numbers of passengers trying to alight and equally large numbers trying to board. That risk seems more than likely to push up platform dwell times significantly and may totally offset any potential frequency gains that might be attributed to operating the Northern as two separate lines.

In short there is an unspoken trade off is between increasing service frequency which enhances line capacity, and passengers losing the convenience of having direct trains on two central london routes without a need to change trains.

Assuming passenger flows from the Edgware and High Barnet branches onto the two central london routes are roughly similar, then simply splitting the line will upset a lot of commuters, especially those commuting from the extremities of the line who currently enjoy a seat for whichever central route they want, at least for their into town journey.

Inherently I think the current Northern service pattern through Camden Town is close to optimal and splitting the line could be a really bad move.