Colin McKenzie wrote the following in:


Tom Anderson wrote:
Agreed - this would be a repeat of the exercise in futility that
is the ELL extension, only far worse. Lines really need to give
people access to central London; once they have that, you can
think about orbital routes.

Actually, a considerable amount of central London tube congestion
- and much suburban road congestion - is caused by the fact that
the quickest public transport route for many suburb to suburb
journeys is via the centre. This includes suburbs essentially on
the same side of London - e.g. Greenford to Richmond.

Indeed. I think the idea that access to central London is a line's most
important feature is extremely flawed. A large number of journeys
currently involve central London not because the person wants to go
there but because they have to in order to get from one outer London
area to another.

Buses are one way of making an orbital journey at the moment but they
aren't really very good for the longish journeys that would be made
easily possible by an orbital rail link. An example of that sort of
thing, the North London line, seems fairly heavily used with the trains
often being uncomfortably packed at busy times. I know I go on about
this all the time, but I think it would be even more heavily used if a
more frequent and reliable service was provided and the stations were
done up a bit. The ELL as it currently is gets quite a few passengers
and I expect it would get quite a few more if it had more interchanges
and served more destinations, as it will when (if?) the extension is
finished.

This brings me to another point, which is that a line doesn't have to
go to central London for it to be useful to people wanting to get
there. People can use an orbital line to get from their local station
to an interchange with a line going into central London, for example
Highbury and Islington on the NLL or Canada Water on the ELL.

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