Orbital goblins ahoy

[boyofbadgers]

It initially gladdened my heart to see this press release from TfL on Wednesday. ELL extension work to be brought forward! Proper through running from Highbury to New Cross by 2010! EIGHT trains an hour! Mr Livingstone fully understanding the needs of Islington residents such as myself to visit atommickbrane and mrs_leroy_brown in New Cross! Hurrahs all round! Yet after a bit of close reading I was left with a medium-sized qualm about the plans.

Ken has always liked the NLL. There was a medium sized beef about its inclusion on the Tube Map back in the old GLC days: Ken was in favour, LRT were not. He won at first, but after the abolition of the GLC it kept intermittently disappearing from the map. Much of this battle is documented in Underground Maps After Beck, written by the immensely pompous Maxwell J.Roberts. A lot of the stuff Mr Roberts says about the NLL and its sister lines is snobbish t0ss, but the one thing he is bang on the money about is the lack of connections to other lines.

Once the excitement of seeing the West London Line on a Tube Map wore off, the apparent lack of anything being done to address the this lack started to annoy me. Admittedly, some of the potential interchanges would be difficult or impossible to achieve. For example, I can't see how the Piccadilly at Caledonian Road or the Northern Line at Kentish town could be altered to allow NLL <-> Tube connections. But in other places, Something Should Clearly Be Done. The South London Line still travels right over the top of Brixton train and tube stations. Tufnell Park tube is right underneath the Goblin. In both these cases there was once a stop where the lines cross, and could easily be again. Similarly, if they are serious about all the lines in question being a coherent network, they should re-open the Primrose Hill section between Camden Road and South Hampstead, which would give a West Hampstead style change between Chalk Farm and Primrose Hill as well as allowing through journeys from NW to SE London. And I'm not even going to get started on the daftness of not building a new station where the ELLE and the Central Line cross.

Don't get me wrong. I am totally in favour of all the improvements to stations, and 8tph across the network will be blimming brilliant. But it would be nice if, once and for all, a real effort was made to integrate the London orbital lines into the rest of the metro system.

Comments

[rgl.livejournal.com]

I've probably missed something here, but I can't see anything in that press release about the ELL extension being brought forward. They were saying it was going to close in 2008 and reopen in 2010 for a while now, haven't they? At least, that's what I vaguely remember from the leaflets about Shoreditch station closing. The only new bit I can see is that the Dalston station will interchange with NLL.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. The bit that's been brought forward *is* the extension from Dalston Junction to Canonbury, which wasn't originally scheduled to take place until after the Olympics.

[rgl.livejournal.com]

Aaaah, that makes sense - I hadn't been paying attention to the timetable for that section of the line, because like you I'm mainly interested in being able to get from my house to New Cross, and I live just off Brick Lane rather than in Islington.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Cor! It goes right round through Peckham!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

cally road connection could be via A BIG SLIDE down the hill OR OR even better a DEATH SLIDE from the top of the new flats across the road down to CR&B NLL station.

also what of the poor people of North Woolwich and Silvertown??? how will they ever cope without their NLL stations???

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

North Woolwich and Silvertown will get to use the Docklands Tinpot RollercoasterLight Railway instead, which tbh will be a damn sight more useful than the half hourly service to Stratford they get now.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

butbutbut there is no north woolwich station anymore, so how will they manage that? ;)

apparently all the punters in stratford are LIVID that their ok houses that have two trains an hour going past the bottom of the garden will now have eight an hour...

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

there aren't that many houses that close to the tracks round there iirc - plus, surely they're all going to get bulldozed for the Olympics anyway?

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

An interchange between the NLL and North Acton station would've been EXTREMELY useful to me in the past. EXTREMELY. It was never really feasible but still.

[dogrando.livejournal.com]

Do you know alwaystouchout.com (http://www.alwaystouchout.com/)?

I suspect that the ELL extension may provide the fastest route between the appropriate parts of N1 and our bit of Bermo, Canada Water being a pleasant walk across the Park. If not the fastest, certainly the most pleasant at rush hour.

P.S. If you didn't see on morehardcrew, am listening to the new Magda record, what are teh ace.

Central Line Interchange (and other wibblings)

[blech.livejournal.com]

From the Always Touch Out project page on the "East London Line extensions" (http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/3) (it's now branded as the "East London Railway" (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/press-centre/press-releases/press-releases-content.asp?prID=922), fwiw):

"Potential does exist at Shoreditch High St for an interchange with the Central Line which passes underneath it - but Central Line platforms would be expensive and would increase journey times for all Central Line passengers between east London and the City. It could only be justified if anticipated traffic levels were high enough."

Is there that much advantage to changing at Shoreditch compared to Whitechapel + Bank?

I also notice that the 2010 Tube map has one of those big ugly wheelchairs* at Highbury and Islington. I wonder how that's going to be managed. Reopening the old liftshafts to the station on the north/east side of Holloway Road, perhaps?

I am much amused by your obvious derisory attitude towards the DLR, although if you treat it as a theme park ride it is the appropriate amount of fun, especially around the Poplar rollercoaster junction.

* I have nothing against disabled people, honestly, but couldn't they have used small red icons like the BR ones rather than dumping on vast squatting blue blobs that make every piddling DLR station look like it's Important?

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I really want the proposed extension of the Victoria Line to Northumberland Park, which is just over there, to happen - 10-15 minutes off my journey to work! An extra two hours a week of free time! Also, I imagine the value of my flat will go up if we suddenly have a tube station 400 yards away rather than having to get a bus to Seven Sisters.