Crossrail 2

[LE Greys]

East-West rail is still the worst in North London so any improvement there is hugely welcome!

The North really needs a tramlink of its own to fix the gaps though. To travel the 4km from Harrow to East Barnet takes 90min by bus, or 70 minutes by train via central London. God knows why people harp on about improving transport south of the river.

It's just as bad farther north. There is literally no way to go west from the ECML between Peterborough and Harringay (which involves a walk down the road and involves a station where only inner suburban trains stop).
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Given a fantasy pot of money, extend the DLR from Bank to Moorgate where it takes over the Northern City line to Finsbury Park and then extended onto a rebuilt Alexandra Palace branch via Highgate.

Realistically, the section north of Alexandra Palace would continue to be served by some NR trains (just as the suggested extension to Hertford East). A lot depends on whether TfL wants (part of) the Hertford loop to be incorporated into its network or not - either as Overground (as suggested by others here) or Crossrail 2.

Easily. I think you're reading a lot into a diagrammatic map to infer that the platforms at Ally Pally will be aligned E-W.

That does look like the Palace Gates line, although that ended up slightly farther east, terminating in part of Bound's Green.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filextract_of_1900_Map_showing_Palace_Gates_Line.png

 

[HSTEd]

If it really takes 90 minutes between Harrow and New Barnet by bus and its really 4km.... how about a pair of moving walkways in a subway tunnel between the two?

Would probably be cheaper than some sort of rail link.....

 

[mister-sparky]

If it really takes 90 minutes between Harrow and New Barnet by bus and its really 4km.... how about a pair of moving walkways in a subway tunnel between the two?

Would probably be cheaper than some sort of rail link.....

according to googlemaps directions:

9.9 miles by car, 27 mins.
1hr 10mins on the tube.
1hr 30mins by bus.

For such a short distance in London, those public transport times are pathetic.

 

[LE Greys]

according to googlemaps directions:

9.9 miles by car, 27 mins.
1hr 10mins on the tube.
1hr 30mins by bus.

For such a short distance in London, those public transport times are pathetic.

The fact that a motorway, multiple main lines and Totteridge Common are in the way may have something to do with it, but it is pretty rubbish. Essentially, there's a segment of sparse population (for London) with no east-west routes. There used to be a branch from the WCML at Harrow as far as Stanmore, but that's all. The Northern Heights plan might have resolved this if it had been allowed to extend from Bushey Heath down to the WCML, but that never happened either.

 

[tbtc]

according to googlemaps directions:

9.9 miles by car, 27 mins.
1hr 10mins on the tube.
1hr 30mins by bus.

For such a short distance in London, those public transport times are pathetic.

Pathetic? Is there really a huge demand to get from Harrow to New Barnet?

There are always going to be "suburban" routes in cities that rail based transport doesn't serve very quickly as the focus is on providing links to the centre. But does that mean that we should be trying to serve every such link?

There's already the North London Line and the GOBLIN - many cities lack any "orbital" rail based service that doesn't go into the centre.

 

[transmanche]

Pathetic? Is there really a huge demand to get from Harrow to New Barnet?

There are always going to be "suburban" routes in cities that rail based transport doesn't serve very quickly as the focus is on providing links to the centre. But does that mean that we should be trying to serve every such link?

Ah but then, was there really a great demand to get from Enfield to Watford before the M25? The arrival of the M25 (which was 'sold' to the populace as a series of local bypasses, rather than a strategic orbita motorway) allowed for journeys that weren't really practical before. People could commute to places that they wouldn't have been able to before. It created its own demand, so we have the congested motorway that exists today.

Or look at the North London line. From 2-car EPBs every 20 minutes 25 years ago to 4-car Capitalstars (and soon to be 5-car) every 7-8 minutes. Again, provision of a good service had created its own demand.

Now I'm not saying that billions should be invested in an outer orbital rail service now, but some improvements are needed; such as the oft-mooted West Hampstead interchange.

 

[HSTEd]

I make New Barnet railway station to Harrow and Wealdstone station at over 12,500m.... not 4km.

The other Harrow stations are even more distant.... its not really that slow when you look at the general speed of city transport.....

I would suggest my continually proposed Funitel but people always laugh... thank you Boris for killing off any chance of them being taken seriously as an urban transport system in Britain for 30 years..... (unfortunately that would take ~30-35m end to end depending on the number of intermediate stations, but it would ofcourse be completely independant of road conditions)

 

[The Ham]

I've just added a poll to get a rough idea of the support either way (although from the posts so far I can guess which way it more likely to go).

Of course it is much better to complete the consultation survey so that TfL/NR know:

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/crossrail/2

After nearly two weeks the poll shows a fairly large majority (84%) think that the Regional option for Crossrail 2 is the better of the two.

It would be intresting to see why those that thought that the metro version was better, as that hasn't been the view prominent on the thread.

 

[hwl]

After nearly two weeks the poll shows a fairly large majority (84%) think that the Regional option for Crossrail 2 is the better of the two.

It would be interesting to see why those that thought that the metro version was better, as that hasn't been the view prominent on the thread.

I voted for the Regional option but my guess is that the Metro option votes might have mostly come from those whose current Waterloo suburban services will get diverted onto CR2 so they will then have to change at Clapham Junction / Wimbledon unlike today or Earlsfield users who are likely to get a lower service frequency when the suburban services are diverted (a point that hasn't been publicly addressed in the available CR2 material).

 

[gwr4090]

The Chancellor has confirmed today that there will be no funding for CrossRail 2 until CrossRail 1 is complete.

 

[jopsuk]

Whilst in a way that's sad, hopefully it gives them time to reconsider the routes.

 

[hwl]

The Chancellor has confirmed today that there will be no funding for CrossRail 2 until CrossRail 1 is complete.

It would take about 5 years do all the preparation work before construction could start and they weren't looking to start construction till the early 2020s so this is hardly a surprise.

(I assume smallish expenses like funding for the legal costs of safeguarding the revised route would be picked up by TfL or DfT in the interim and aren't included in Osborne's statement?)

 

[swt_passenger]

It would take about 5 years do all the preparation work before construction could start and they weren't looking to start construction till the early 2020s so this is hardly a surprise.

I think the chancellor's statement is just pre-empting any calls to advance the plan; everything I've read about either Chelney or nowadays Crossrail 2 had it starting after Crossrail (1) was finished.

I do think though that there've been suggestions about bringing forward the start of tunnelling to do with maintaining levels of work for the tunnelling contractors and their newly trained workforce, but of course HS2 will also have an effect on that now.

 

[hwl]

I think the chancellor's statement is just pre-empting any calls to advance the plan; everything I've read about either Chelney or nowadays Crossrail 2 had it starting after Crossrail (1) was finished.

I do think though that there've been suggestions about bringing forward the start of tunnelling to do with maintaining levels of work for the tunnelling contractors and their newly trained workforce, but of course HS2 will also have an effect on that now.

Agreed but the first of the CR1 TBMs finishes later this year so there will still be a bit of a gap till the next rail rail project HS2...
But Thames Water's super sewer project (Hammersmith to Beckton etc) will also help keep tunnellers employed.
Otherwise we would need to train even more to keep 3 major projects on the go at the same time if CR2 was brought forward.

 

[HSTEd]

Well the Regional option has to win hands down frankly.....

Which stations give up regional services... is it just Liverpool Street and Waterloo?

We are going to have a lot of free platforms between Crossrail 1 and 2.

 

[joeykins82]

Yeah CR2 regional option would see some Lea Valley and SWML metro services transferred out of Liverpool Street and Waterloo. I doubt that there'd be a full transfer of services a la CR1 because there are enough people living on the rail corridors concerned who work in the city and want to go to LST/WAT rather than through the West End.

 

[hwl]

Well the Regional option has to win hands down frankly.....

Which stations give up regional services... is it just Liverpool Street and Waterloo?

We are going to have a lot of free platforms between Crossrail 1 and 2.

Crossrail 2 "regional" = NR surburban services
I can see Waterloo still being very busy afterwards as more long distance services will be run using the capacity release by CR2. Liverpool Street will still handle lots of WAML services (more likely to remain mix of existing services and CR2 that certain routes to Waterloo which might swap entirely to CR2).

 

[HSTEd]

Well how many suburban services does Liverpool Street handle at the moment?
CR2 could easily draw off 16tph. (Depending on how many the other "spur" gets).

EDIT:

Using the Wiki Article as a guide (not a great idea I know) but ~16tph could easily take over almost all the suburban trains on the West Anglia Main Line.

We could have as "inner" suburban trains:
4tph Chingford
2tph Enfield Town
2tph Cheshunt
2tph Hertford East

Which is 10tph

If we are willing to go for a more Thameslink-esque service we can add:

4tph Stansted Express
2tph Cambridge (1 semi-fast, 1 slow)

Taking us to the full 16tph and reducing the WAML to 2tph from Stratford to Bishops Stortford and possibly a handful of trains to King's Lynn if those are to be retained.

 

[swt_passenger]

One of the issues at both Liverpool St and Waterloo is dealing with the sheer number of arriving trains - the limit on capacity is how quickly you can 'bounce them back out' as ECS during the height of the peak. So some of the RUS discussions suggest that a major use of the extra platforms will simply be to hold trains until after the peak, thereby avoiding having to send them back down the line to somewhere such as Clapham depot, or Orient Way sidings respectively...

 

[jopsuk]

I appreciate this would be tricky, but my "north" end of CrossRail 2 would, from Euston Kings Cross St Pancras, dive across to Shoreditch (station), rise up to Bethnal Green and use the existing tracks from there. At Hackney Downs, I'd have the current Cambridge/Stansted lines stay separate, diving down into a tunnel running through to emerge at a wholesale rebuilt Tottenham Hale (twin island layout), then running fast up the Lea Valley on a centre pair of tracks with no platforms (Crossrail 2 platforms on outer lines) as far as Broxbourne, with ideally the fast lines continuing to Harlow Town. On the approach to Harlow I'd have the slow lines dive under to be in the centre, with turn back sidings to the north- so that the northbound platform for WAML would interchange with the terminating Overground, and the southbound with the departing.

This would allow the WAML/Stansted Express to operate entirely separately to Crossrail 2. I'd run services from the core to terminate at Enfield, Harlow via Tottenham Hale, Hertford via Seven Sisters (easy interchange at Broxbourne or Cheshunt, keeps the service pattern predictable) and Chingford. Stratford services would call at the new Lea Bridge station, Tottenham Hale, Broxbourne, Harlow Town and all stations to Bishops Stortford. Cambridge trains would be Liverpool Street, Tottenham Hale, Broxbourne, Harlow Town, Bishops Stortford- and then either all stations or semi-fast (currently the "slow" is all stations from Cheshunt to Cambridge).

I'd keep Stansted Express and Cambridge services terminating into Liverpool Street. Indeed, with the other services out of the way and platform space freed up, allied to signal improvement, junction de-conflictions etc there would be scope for additional services. Crossrail and Crossrail 2 would have essentially removed the "metro" services from Liverpool Street, allowing the it to better serve passengers to and from destinations outside London

 

[joeykins82]

What happens to the people who live on stations served by the Lea Valley lines who deliberately moved there because they work in the city? You've just sent them in to the West End and caused them to have to use the already chronically overcrowded Bank branch of the Northern Line to get to work from Euston.

 

[jopsuk]

Hmm. with a bit more of a wiggle to the line, the Shoreditch station could have its western end very close/interchanging with Liverpool Street. Yes, construction would be a challenge. But as it stands, Shoreditch High Street station is about 400 metres from Exchange Square (the development on top of Liverpool Street). I'd certainly make sure there was a City station.

 

[joeykins82]

True, I often forget how close Shoreditch is to the city so that one is possible to overcome.

The other issue though is that not running the northwest branch to Alexandra Palace doesn't give any scope to relieve the northern section of the Piccadilly line; Wood Green to Finsbury Park is hellishly busy with trains regularly arriving at Manor House (my former local station) already unable to accommodate any more passengers.

 

[jopsuk]

I'm not convinced CR2, especially in the "regional" version, is the right project to solve that problem

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I direct RER style link between the lines into Waterloo and the lines out of Liverpool Street would probably be more useful, but there isn't a lot of room to do that under London now unless you go very deep indeed, with all the problems that would bring with it.

 

[jopsuk]

That's sort of what both the official CR2 and my idea are- but there's considerable call for it to connect to Euston Kings Cross St Pancras as well, improving connectivity for lines from the North to the lines for the South West.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

...we also ideally need a Chatelet style central interchange somewhere don't we?

 

[edwin_m]

...we also ideally need a Chatelet style central interchange somewhere don't we?

That would be Tottenham Court Road for Crossrail, or EusPanCross for Thameslink (and Farringdon for Crossrail/Thameslink). Probably better not to have a single interchange for all the regional metro lines as that would be a very busy station and probably result in some central areas being less well served.

On the question of TBMs, Crossrail will have smaller tunnels than HS2 as it isn't European gauge and doesn't need to allow for aerodynamic effects of high speed operation. So the TBMs from one won't be reuseable on the other. The regional variant of Crossrail 2 would presumably have the same size tunnels as Crossrail 1.

 

[els]

With the proposed regional route on the TfL website, I can see the value for connectivity reasons in linking up the southern end of the Northern Line at Tooting Broadway, but as a result won't Earlsfield (and perhaps also Vauxhall) lose a lot of their services?

This talk of freeing up space at Waterloo for longer distance services (which wouldn't call at these stations) implies it will be existing trains diverted into Crossrail 2, not additional suburban services for places like Chessington South, Epsom and Guildford.

 

[D365]

Once again, with up to 32tph 12-car if built to Crossrail standard, there's plenty of capacity to take over and enhance service. Plus there's the abandoned Waterloo International if and when the need arises, of course.