On 14/05/2010 20:44, Jamie Thompson wrote:

I've always thought that reinstating/building a line from Broxbourne
to Rickmansworth would be worthwhile.

Heading west, first improve the Hertford East branch, then reinstate
Hertford East to Cole Green. Next, swing south to be able to run
through Hatfield Station. Reinstate Hatfield to St Albans, with a bit
of realignment south of St. Albans Abbey to enable a through route,
then improve the Abbey line to Watford. Add an underpass to the DC
lines, then run/take over the Croxley Link and Watford branch of the
Met to Rickmansworth.

All of that would be viable for operation using Oyster (as it would
run between the outer boundaries of its validity), perhaps with
Rickmansworth(CML), Watford(WCML), St. Albans(MML), Hatfield(ECML),
Hertford North(ECML) and Cheshunt(WAML) in zone 9, and the lines
between them in a zone 10. Perhaps these major stations could be in
zone 9+10, but having them separate is a practical way of extracting
more (multi-zone) revenue from those using the lines for longer
journeys, whilst having the local fares low enough to encourage use.
More likely, I suspect, more zones would be required to hike the fares
for distance travellers though. I'd be interested what other could
come up with that worked in a fairer way.

I also looked into the timings, and I think you could happily travel
between each of the major stations in about 16 minutes, so end to end
would be about 16+16+16+16+16 = ~80 minutes. To do said trip currently
would take, (according to NRE), 113 minutes, go through zone 1, and
cost £15.70, which I'm certain could be beaten by Oyster-ised prices.

So not only are you planning to build a railway that no-one will use,
you've already worked out a price structure to make sure that even if it
was full it wouldn't cover its running costs.