On Sun, 3 Apr 2011, 1506 wrote:

On Mar 28, 10:57 am, Robin9 wrote:

In my opinion a properly extended Chelsea/Hackney line would be far more
beneficial to London than Crossrail.

Maybe, but the perceived need, and it is a real one, is relief of the
Central Line.

Yes. I read the various east-west studies a few years ago, and the common
theme was congestion relief in the Essix [1] - City - Oxford Circus
corridor. The current plan won't do much for congestion east of Liverpool
Street, because it adds neither track nor trains (alright, it adds track
between Liverpool Street and Stratford - but is there any plan to use the
capacity released on the surface line?), but it should help enormously
between Stratford and Oxford Street.

Where things are a bit woolier are what happens west of Oxford Circus. If
relieving congestion was the priority, the route would echo the Victoria
line going southwest, as that's the most congested corridor on the other
side of Oxford Circus, and then take over some of the SWML services into
Waterloo, which are again highly congested. It's easy enough to look at a
map and see sensible stops along the way - Victoria, Clapham Junction,
perhaps Hyde Park Corner, perhaps somewhere along Queenstown Road.

However, that route was rejected in favour of Paddington and points west.
I've never been able to find a really good justification for this; the
studies consistently indicate a higher benefit to the southwest route. I
suspect that it's been driven by a regeneration agenda, which has induced
a certain amount of fudging in the studies (eg IIRC, one study costed the
southwest route as going in tunnel all the way to Wimbledon, when i don't
think it needs to go much further than Clapham Junction, making it look
rather more expensive than it needed to).

Still, if we do eventually get Crossrail 2 / Chelsea-Hackney, then that
will presumably go in that general direction.

tom

[1] The part of London between the City and the M25. As opposed to Essex,
which is a county which lies between the M25 and the North Sea.

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