Tokyo-style through services possible for London?

[plcd1]

There were various proposals in the late 1990s when Railtrack proposed cancelling Crossrail and running a whole variety of services via the Circle line (and other sub-surface lines). It even delayed the SSL PPP contract.

You can read about some of them here: http://www.lurs.org.uk/articles13_htm_files/03 CROSSRAIL VIA THE CIRCLE LINE.pdf


This article actually says it was so close to happening that only the Paddington rail crash stopped it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/471250.stm

"If it hadn't been for the rail crash last week the government was due to announce on Wednesday that it was going to give the control of the District and Circle Lines to Railtrack"

I was working for LU on PPP at the time and was involved in "reviewing" this Railtrack idea. You would simply not believe some of the rudimentary issues we had to explain to very highly paid consultants who saw no issues with a Virgin Express train arriving at Baker Street tube Platform 5 at 1730 and being "alighting only" - I kid you not. Having to explain to them that the trains wouldn't fit and that it is beyond ridiculous to try to tell commuters that they couldn't board a train on a tube platform at the height on the peak was just one of many such highlights. I am sure others had other more pressing insights to share.

Having been to Tokyo twice I would say that the through running works purely because it was pretty much designed in from the early days and the Japanese spend the money and have the rigorous and meticulous approach to operation that is needed. The fact that the Greater Tokyo area is so huge means people tolerate really horrific travelling conditions and fairly basic stock on through services. I am really not sure it would translate on to longer distance NR lines where people are used to somewhat plusher rolling stock. The system is also immensely complicated - I never really worked out what services ran through on what line. You just get used to boarding different shaped and coloured trains in the central area and hope it goes where you want! I never worked out that I could have caught the Fukutoshin line from Ikebukuro to Yokohama until I got back to Ikebukuro having changed trains at Shibuya on the way out and somewhere else on the way back.

I've no great issue with Metro style rolling stock on inner suburban / very high demand routes where you need to crush people in. Not sure it necessarily translates to travelling to Didcot or Southend or Bedford if you were to start at Green Park and then expect to travel all that way on whatever replaces the 73 stock (to take an entirely random and nigh on impossible example). You only need to look at the never ending debates and rage about seat design, seat spacing, alignment with windows etc etc that fill forums and other places to see that imposing tube type stock on very long through services would be controversial to say the least.

 

[jopsuk]

it's worth noting as well that the article in the first post does note that attempting to do more through-running has been leading to disruption.

 

[JamesT]

I think it is fair because our rather shortsighted government put the stop on a through linkage from (what I personally think is a white elephant) HS2 to HS1, which would have provided the ability to run from anywhere on the EU mainland which is able to provide trains that can run on the LGV tracks to the Chunnel to Birmingham, Manchester and future destinations on any extensions to it.

You just know what's going to happen sometime in the future and that will be they'll want to link it directly into HS1, but instead of it being an intrinsic part of the HS2 project, it will mean that it will be another major project and cost far more to do and take a lot longer than what it would have done had it been a part of HS2 initially.

Paris/Brussels have through running to a limited extent and I'm trying to remember where else has it, a big beautiful & impressive station either in Belgium/Netherlands or Germany. They do it, so why can't we?

Naivety, stupidity, political dogma or just penny pinching?

The difference is Schengen. Which even if we weren’t leaving I wouldn’t imagine would be on the cards for joining.

So if you were to bring in through running, where would you do the border checks? Every station it stops at? Would you have some sort on on-train segregation between domestic and international passengers?

Or would you bring in a version of the Lille shuffle where everyone gets off and back on? Which rather defeats the point of through running...

 

[Ianno87]

The difference is Schengen. Which even if we weren’t leaving I wouldn’t imagine would be on the cards for joining.

So if you were to bring in through running, where would you do the border checks? Every station it stops at? Would you have some sort on on-train segregation between domestic and international passengers?

Or would you bring in a version of the Lille shuffle where everyone gets off and back on? Which rather defeats the point of through running...

IMHO, for a fraction of what the HS1-HS2 link would've cost (for a long, low-capacity single line that would've also taken some capacity off the North London Line) with some local redevelopment you can create a fantastic piece of public realm to really connect Euston with St Pancras (rather than the current congested Euston Rd or dingy back streets), with an exit from Euston pointing directly at St Pancras. 5 minutes max to walk between the two if you did that.

The first piece is already open, with the public access now available alongside the south side of the Crick Institute.

 

[MarkyT]

IMHO, for a fraction of what the HS1-HS2 link would've cost (for a long, low-capacity single line that would've also taken some capacity off the North London Line) with some local redevelopment you can create a fantastic piece of public realm to really connect Euston with St Pancras (rather than the current congested Euston Rd or dingy back streets), with an exit from Euston pointing directly at St Pancras. 5 minutes max to walk between the two if you did that.

The first piece is already open, with the public access now available alongside the south side of the Crick Institute.

Fully agree with that. In fact a few years ago I did a couple of sketches illustrating some variants of the idea:
http://www.townend.me/files/kxlink.pdf
http://www.townend.me/files/north-passage.pdf

It is notable that for all the through running examples cited in Japan, one case of a deliberate separation of services is the Shinkansen services at Tokyo station. Here two separate standard gauge high speed networks from opposite directions terminate at dead end platforms adjacent to each other. There is not even an emergency or engineering track connection between the two networks. There are various factors contributing to this, not least that separate companies provide services today although that was not the case when built originally and elsewhere different companies in the JR group interrun on parts of the Shinkansen network anyway. There is also an electrification issue as different parts of Japan have different mains supply frequency depending on whether European or American companies were involved in electrification, hence one network runs on 60Hz while the other is 50Hz. With no through running across Tokyo, any delays or disruption on one part cannot be exported across the city, important for such a long distance network, yet by sharing the same station easy interchange between the high speed services is afforded as well as with the huge number of conventional lines and metros also connected via the same complex, some at distant platform groups accessed via long passageways.