Is Crossrail going to be a complete victim of its success?

[DynamicSpirit]

In the longer term I imagine that the ambition will be to extend all trains to Old Oak Common, where a similar arrangement to Abbey Wood may be used for terminating trains (with two terminating platforms sandwiched by the through platforms).

Ummmm, that's actually not the arrangement in Abbey Wood. It's two island platforms, the southern one for the SouthEastern (through) trains, and the northern island for the (terminating) Crossrail trains. The original plan was for the sandwich arrangement you describe, that that was scrapped to cut costs when Crossrail was reviewed when the coalition Government came in in 2010.

 

[D365]

Sorry, I was actually describing the plans for the Crossrail station at OOC and didn't make that clear. The "sandwich arrangement" at Abbey Wood added a whole lot of engineering risk to the project, and it isn't suitable for the different maintenance regimes.

 

[Taunton]

The "sandwich arrangement" at Abbey Wood added a whole lot of engineering risk to the project, and it isn't suitable for the different maintenance regimes.

Time was when major rail schemes were built for the convenience of future passengers, not of the engineers ...

 

[D365]

Time was when major rail schemes were built for the convenience of future passengers, not of the engineers ...

The passenger benefit would have come at a hugely increased cost, one which will effectively be neutralised if the Crossrail branch is to be extended anyway. Plus I think removing potential causes of unreliability is in the interest of punters?

 

[ScotGG]

TfL modelling suggests everyone will get a seat on Crossrail at Abbey Wood for long time to come as all the SE trains would need to empty out.

It depends which bit of the city you are aiming for; if Moorgate, Liverpool Street, Farringdon or Blackfriars/Temple then changing to Crossrail makes sense (at least in the am peak).

Also huge step forward in reliability as there are turn back options for SE services at Charlton or Plumstead if everything goes wrong at London Bridge or Cannon Street with Crossrail providing an alternative route to Docklands and Zone 1.

When was the TfL modelling done out of interest?

I wonder if it was before or after Bexley changed their housing plans, which add about 20-30k in the north of the borough around four North Kent line stations. This changed occurred in 2016 I believe.

I don't think it will be too long until all seats are taken at Abbey Wood on departure, so not everyone changing from SE coming from Kent gets a seat.

How many seats are on a 9-car 23m Crossrail train compared to a 10 car 20 metre carriage Networkers? Many are tube style. That alone may put some of changing. Looking at someone isn't as appealing for many as looking out a window?

 

[hwl]

When was the TfL modelling done out of interest?

I wonder if it was before or after Bexley changed their housing plans, which add about 20-30k in the north of the borough around four North Kent line stations. This changed occurred in 2016 I believe.

I don't think it will be too long until all seats are taken at Abbey Wood on departure, so not everyone changing from SE coming from Kent gets a seat.

How many seats are on a 9-car 23m Crossrail train compared to a 10 car 20 metre carriage Networkers? Many are tube style. That alone may put some of changing. Looking at someone isn't as appealing for many as looking out a window?

2014 from memory, modelling looked at end destinations, ultimately they reckoned the biggest issue was getting enough SE passengers from Further East to Abbey Wood was the limiting factor!

Seats - I'll check
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Depending where exactly in the city you're heading, Crossrail may mean a shorter walk between the station and work. (Or it may mean a longer walk, in which case you'd definitely be better off staying on the Cannon St. train )
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Running to Dartford would be difficult. Remember, of the 8 tph that run East of Abbey Wood, only 2 of those actually run to and terminate at Dartford. 2 go to Gillingham, 2 loop onto the Bexleyheath line, and 2 loop onto the Sidcup line. Replacing those with Crossrail trains would certainly cause some issues! Then there's the problem that you'd have to either convert that part of line from 3rd rail to overhead wires (disruptive and expensive) or make CR trains dual voltage (presumably, expensive).

There is an aspiration to extend Crossrail to Ebbsfleet, but that would most likely be in addition to the SouthEastern trains, and so I imagine would require 4-tracking Abbey Wood to Dartford, which isn't cheap. And I have to say right now the SouthEastern service over that part of the route seems to me more than adequate for demand.

The plans at the time of the original Crossrail act were dedicated CR tracks to Dartford (e.g. 4 tracking) and sorting out the other Dartford issues.
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In the longer term I imagine that the ambition will be to extend all trains to Old Oak Common, with two terminating platforms sandwiched by the through platforms.




Thanks for the additional detail.

The plan is for all CR services to be extended to OOC by 2026 for HS2 opening.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Sorry, I was actually describing the plans for the Crossrail station at OOC and didn't make that clear. The "sandwich arrangement" at Abbey Wood added a whole lot of engineering risk to the project, and it isn't suitable for the different maintenance regimes.

The passenger benefit would have come at a hugely increased cost, one which will effectively be neutralised if the Crossrail branch is to be extended anyway. Plus I think removing potential causes of unreliability is in the interest of punters?

Would the original sandwich arrangement have reduced reliability? Offhand I can't see why, since the Crossrail and SouthEastern tracks would still have been completely separate. I think there is an issue that the 'sandwich' plans (which would've put CR between the Southeastern tracks) would have caused more disruption to SouthEastern when building them, but that's somewhat different. I understand your point about the increased cost.

The obvious advantage of the sandwich arrangement would be that people changing trains would have a 50% chance of a cross-platform interchange (perhaps higher if CR trains alternated between platforms and people were willing to wait for an extra few minutes for the train from 'their' platform. That's not insignificant, but possibly not worth a huge cost increase. At the time I seem to recall talk that the sandwich arrangement would have made it easier to extend Crossrail to Dartford in the future, though it's not clear to me how it would have been simpler, so I'm a little sceptical of that claim.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Changing the arrangement at Abbey Wood would have just meant moving the transition from paired by use to paired by direction further east. If the line is eventually going to be extended there's no need to increase costs now to give no long-term benefit. In any case, a second footbridge is being added so that transfer walking times are reduced.

It's really important to remember that the engineers who designed Crossrail had to consider huge numbers of different factors, many of which might not immediately be apparent. For instance, while cross-platform interchange might seem like an excellent idea in all respects, it can cause problems when the two lines weren't designed to work together in the first place. Cross-platform interchange at Custom House, for instance, could induce large numbers of Crossrail passengers to switch to the DLR if their destination is closer to the DLR station than the Crossrail one (e.g. offices to the south of Canary Wharf). Allowing a few commuters to save a few hundred metres of walking might cause serious capacity problems for commuters who don't have that choice, and it only takes a small percentage of passengers on an Elizabeth line train to overwhelm a DLR one. By making transfers slightly less convenient it's possible to engineer passenger flows for maximum overall efficiency

 

[Ianno87]

When the "sandwich" arrangement was proposed, there were no plans for the stabling and maintenance facility to be provided at Plumstead (as is the case now) so the Crossrail tracks could be in the middle of the Kent tracks without any problem.

If they were still in the middle, there would now need to be a whizzy (expensive) flyover arrangement to connect into the Plumsted facility - switching both the Crossrail tracks to the north side of the formation now makes access to this much, much simpler.

 

[JamesRowden]

How they are going to deal with terminating services at Paddington with 2.5mins per train is curious. Only way to keep the lines moving is not to check the trains. Why the idea of running them all to Old Oak Common and terminate there (in a fur platform station) is far more sensible.

I think that TfL already terminate Hammersmith and City Line services at Barking by sending trains to/from a depot to the east of the station. The services terminate in the same platform as the every 5 minute District Line services run through. Hammersmith and City Line services used to use the bay platform but that changed in the last few years. Perhaps someone saw the idea of the system to be used at Paddington and thought that it would be a good idea to implement it at Barking so that west bound Underground services depart from a common platform.

 

[Taunton]

For instance, while cross-platform interchange might seem like an excellent idea in all respects, it can cause problems when the two lines weren't designed to work together in the first place. Cross-platform interchange at Custom House, for instance, could induce large numbers of Crossrail passengers to switch to the DLR if their destination is closer to the DLR station than the Crossrail one .... By making transfers slightly less convenient it's possible to engineer passenger flows for maximum overall efficiency

I bet all those using the Victoria Line, with its multiple easy cross-platform interchanges, are glad that the design engineers of the 1960s weren't allowed to come up with such thin excuses.

The 21st Century rot on this really set in with the JLE, which at places seems designed to make interchange as inconvenient as possible. Look at West Ham between Jubilee and District, where there are two island platforms virtually on top of one another at right angles. But it takes 3 escalators and about 7 minutes walking to get between the two. This is a regular one for me. I wonder what "overall efficiency" I've missed seeing there.

I suspect the designers getting design awards from fellow architects/engineers at this year's Beano in the Grosvenor House on Park Lane is easier for distinctly different stations than where it's just woven into an existing facility.

 

[NSEFAN]

The 21st Century rot on this really set in with the JLE, which at places seems designed to make interchange as inconvenient as possible. Look at West Ham between Jubilee and District, where there are two island platforms virtually on top of one another at right angles. But it takes 3 escalators and about 7 minutes walking to get between the two. This is a regular one for me. I wonder what "overall efficiency" I've missed seeing there.

He does have a point, you know. Journeys can end up taking longer if you create pinch points where everybody wants to change trains. Forcing people to walk short distances helps to spread them out and can reduce such pinch points.

The Victoria line on the other hand was specifically created to create connections between as many places as possible, and during a time when tube usage was lower than it is now.

 

[rebmcr]

The difference in capacity between a Victoria line train and a Bakerloo line train is pretty insignificant. Between a DLR train and a Class 345 is an enormous jump, so the comparison just falls on its arse.

The JLE and Crossrail have had to insert their infrastructure into an already-crowded subterranian landscape, there simply isn't enough room in many places to physically fit adjacent interchanges any more, certainly not at Moorgate nor Waterloo, for example.

West Ham's platform locations date from the original EC&TJR and LT&SR designs — the LT&SR (District/c2c) platforms in particular are the cause of the current transfer distance but they've been in continuous use for over 100 years and never moved. Deciding to move their perfectly functional modern iterations 100m further towards each other (at great cost) just to make it slightly more convenient to interchange would be lunacy. What really needs to be done there is staffed enforcement of the walking routes' "Keep Left" rules.

This isn't the result of 21st century attitudes, either. Edgware Road, Euston Square, Earl's Court, and Kings' Cross St Pancras are all terribly configured for interchange and date from a lot earlier than even the Victoria Line!

 

[TheKnightWho]

I bet all those using the Victoria Line, with its multiple easy cross-platform interchanges, are glad that the design engineers of the 1960s weren't allowed to come up with such thin excuses.

The 21st Century rot on this really set in with the JLE, which at places seems designed to make interchange as inconvenient as possible. Look at West Ham between Jubilee and District, where there are two island platforms virtually on top of one another at right angles. But it takes 3 escalators and about 7 minutes walking to get between the two. This is a regular one for me. I wonder what "overall efficiency" I've missed seeing there.

I suspect the designers getting design awards from fellow architects/engineers at this year's Beano in the Grosvenor House on Park Lane is easier for distinctly different stations than where it's just woven into an existing facility.

What on earth on you on about? So because they're ensuring maximum system efficiency by discouraging pinch-points this is "rot" and apparently only done to win awards?

At one point you even state that you don't even understand the concept of what they're trying to achieve. Words fail.

 

[rebmcr]

Oh, and the JLE was designed, built, and opened just inside the 20th century, regardless of whether that's defined as starting with 2000 or with 2001...

 

[D365]

He does have a point, you know. Journeys can end up taking longer if you create pinch points where everybody wants to change trains. Forcing people to walk short distances helps to spread them out and can reduce such pinch points.

The Victoria line on the other hand was specifically created to create connections between as many places as possible, and during a time when tube usage was lower than it is now.

After the lack of investment in the 80s and early 90s, London Underground are barely keeping on top of renewals. There has to be a point where the customer can't always be put first.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

On the topic of interchanges, does anyone know what the reasoning was behind having Crossrail stop at Custom House, but not at Canning Town? Canning Town looks like it would have given a massively greater set of possible connections (including buses).

 

[swt_passenger]

On the topic of interchanges, does anyone know what the reasoning was behind having Crossrail stop at Custom House, but not at Canning Town? Canning Town looks like it would have given a massively greater set of possible connections (including buses).

Canning Town would have probably been unbuildable due to the rules about platform gradients, once they had decided to come to the surface and then re-use the existing Connaught Tunnel.

Had they stayed at deep level it might well have been different, but another full scale deep level station would have had to be built under Canning Town and presumably partly under Bow Creek. If they'd still wanted to serve ExCel another underground station would probably have been needed, or a double ended station that served both. Relatively much more expensive than the choice made.

 

[D365]

Relatively much more expensive than the choice made.

Interesting sentence

But yes I agree. And I imagine that a Crossrail station might risk overloading the existing; Canning Town is well served by the Jubilee from Canary Wharf and DLR from Poplar/Custom House/Woolwich.

 

[jopsuk]

On the topic of interchanges, does anyone know what the reasoning was behind having Crossrail stop at Custom House, but not at Canning Town? Canning Town looks like it would have given a massively greater set of possible connections (including buses).

The route doesn't really pass under Canning Town, it's a fair bit to the south, just north of the A1020 Lower Lea Crossing. You can see the Limmo Peninsula construction access shafts here- realistically that would be where the station would be. It would be a pretty long walk from the DLR/Jubilee line platforms and the bus interchange

 

[hwl]

On the topic of interchanges, does anyone know what the reasoning was behind having Crossrail stop at Custom House, but not at Canning Town? Canning Town looks like it would have given a massively greater set of possible connections (including buses).

Custom House costs hundreds of millions less than a Canning Town station (who wants to build a station under the river Lea?) and increased journey times on the Abbey Wood Branch because of greater line curvature and slower running speeds. Also possibly not able to reuse the Connaught tunnels without massive residential demolitions.

Canary Wharf - Custom House is just over the ideal minimum 2km Crossrail type station spacing for operational /capacity reasons (Canning Town isn't).

Canning Town already has good connectivity and Custom house creates another transport hub that doesn't load up the Jubilee line even more.

 

[Taunton]

The last set of excuses I read about why Custom House (another regular point for me) couldn't have been designed for cross-platform interchange was that it would have been extremely disruptive to the existing DLR service to have done so.

Now, with the Crossrail structure there pretty much complete, it has been suddenly announced that the DLR station there is to be closed for the WHOLE of 2017 to complete the works, despite that the two lines continue on their separate locations. This was never announced at any previous stage in the plans.

 

[rebmcr]

The last set of excuses I read about why Custom House (another regular point for me) couldn't have been designed for cross-platform interchange was that it would have been extremely disruptive to the existing DLR service to have done so.

Now, with the Crossrail structure there pretty much complete, it has been suddenly announced that the DLR station there is to be closed for the WHOLE of 2017 to complete the works, despite that the two lines continue on their separate locations. This was never announced at any previous stage in the plans.

Closing one station for upgrades (with Prince Regent less than 1km away) is a bit different than shutting down an entire line to be rerouted.

 

[D365]

Closing one station for upgrades (with Prince Regent less than 1km away) is a bit different than shutting down an entire line to be rerouted.

Yep. And I highly doubt that the DLR platforms would be suitable for conversion to Crossrail anyway.

Seems like some are just trying to find any old reason to attack Crossrail plans.

 

[tbtc]

Seems like some are just trying to find any old reason to attack Crossrail plans.

^ This ^

Reading this thread I have learnt that the Abbey Wood branch will be full from day one but that the time penalty for using it means that nobody will swap from the SE services but they should have built Crossrail to Dartford anyway.

Plus the rest of Crossrail will be too slow but should have more intermediate stations but also it'll be too busy.

Oh, and the route will be too complicated and prone to delays, given the two branches, but should also be extended and integrated onto existing routes.

tl;dr - some enthusiasts think it'll be bad but they've not agreed on why it'll be bad, they just know they don't like it.

 

[Taunton]

I think it's ingenuous to just say that because we discuss the design we are attacking the Crossrail plans. It will give a tremendous advantage to me (just like the JLE did), but that is not to say that the conceptual design is perfection, nor that we can identify what could have been an improvement. And I am getting sick of architects receiving design awards for new stations with poor passenger flow - every single station on the JLE was trumpeted in some industry award or other, some with notably poorer layouts than traditional Underground concepts.

Closing one station for upgrades (with Prince Regent less than 1km away) is a bit different than shutting down an entire line to be rerouted.

I would have been quite happy to do a design for a cross-platform Custom House within its narrow confines, with a construction plan for multiple staging to avoid closing the DLR, and within the current budgets. I'll bet the Excel Centre are pretty hacked off about the sudden announcement of it's closure for all of next year.

 

[jopsuk]

Excel will just have to make more use of Prince Regent station. At the other end of the building. And Royal Victoria, all of 600m walk away.

Cross platform at Custom house would have required two DLR flyovers, a not insignificant additional cost.

 

[rebmcr]

I would have been quite happy to do a design for a cross-platform Custom House within its narrow confines, with a construction plan for multiple staging to avoid closing the DLR, and within the current budgets.

Just so you can get an architectural award?

 

[D365]

And I am getting sick of architects receiving design awards for new stations with poor passenger flow - every single station on the JLE was trumpeted in some industry award or other, some with notably poorer layouts than traditional Underground concepts.

Hasn't stopped the footfall though. And have you ever heard of a JLE station needing capacity enhancement works, or additional escalators needing to be installed?

 

[Ianno87]

I bet all those using the Victoria Line, with its multiple easy cross-platform interchanges, are glad that the design engineers of the 1960s weren't allowed to come up with such thin excuses.

The 21st Century rot on this really set in with the JLE, which at places seems designed to make interchange as inconvenient as possible. Look at West Ham between Jubilee and District, where there are two island platforms virtually on top of one another at right angles. But it takes 3 escalators and about 7 minutes walking to get between the two. This is a regular one for me. I wonder what "overall efficiency" I've missed seeing there.

I suspect the designers getting design awards from fellow architects/engineers at this year's Beano in the Grosvenor House on Park Lane is easier for distinctly different stations than where it's just woven into an existing facility.

It wasn't all so sunny and lovely on the Victoria Line.

The original plan was for the line to surface and terminate at Wood Street with a cross-platform interchange with the Chingford branch. This was dropped to save money.

Seemingly, so much money was spent on cross-platform interchanges there wasn't much money left for much else, such as sizing stations properly. Just ask anyone trying to enter Victoria station at about 0830 on a typical weekday morning... Now many, many millions of pounds being spent sorting it all out.

Meanwhile, it's pretty safe to say the JLE or Crossrail won't have significant station capacity issues for many, many years to come. The high point to point speed of these lines far, far outweighs the time associated with non-cross-platform interchanges being necessary to access these lines.