On Thu, 13 May 2004, Dave Arquati wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

While we are at it put in a station interchange between South
Kenton/Kenton by the Metropolitan Line bridge near to Northwick Park
and we will all get home a lot quicker!

I'm glad i'm not the only person who looks at maps of the network and
wonders why there are so many lines crossing without stations. LU are
doing something about the Central/Picc at Park Royal, but there seem
to be equally daft near-misses at West Ruislip (Central/Picc+Met),
Kenton as you mention, several points along the NLL and GOBLin
(admittedly not LU's fault) and more than i want to think about in
south London (also generally not LU's fault; one exception, and my
particular favourite, is the Northern/Sutton Loop miss at Morden - the
far end of Morden tube depot is hard by Morden South NR station: how
hard could it have been to join the dots here?).

I think many such links are useful, but not useful enough to warrant the
extra costs.

Of course; my gripe (which i admit is mostly just for the fun of griping)
is that many of these could have been got right when the lines were built
in the first place.

Park Royal fortunately is being part-funded by developers; the crossing
at West Ruislip is in a highly residential (even partly rural) area, is
far too close to West Ruislip station and the journey opportunities it
would create are partly catered for by the Park Royal interchange
anyway. Saying that, having a Chiltern interchange there could be useful
for prospective Chiltern passengers to Uxbridge and Harrow.

A station there would have to replace the existing West Ruislip, i think
(and would admittedly be in a less useful place in the road network).
Anyway, i don't know what order those lines were built in, but whichever
was built later could have put a station at the crossing, that's the
thing.

Goblin interchanges are difficult because the Goblin carries so little
traffic compared to other lines; it would be extrememely difficult to
justify interchange costs e.g. at Leytonstone.

True, but the Goblin is absurdly underused. Not helped by the lack of
useful interchanges! The most frustrating thing is that all three of the
places where the Goblin crosses the West Anglia lines are close enough to
existing WA stations that building additional interchange stations there
would be absurd, and you couldn't close the old stations, because those
are now on the Victoria line!

The NLL on the other hand is pretty busy and would be even busier with
better interchanges - which is probably precisely why they *aren't*
being built, as the NLL needs a capacity increase first.

The NLL actually does alright for interchange at the moment; it misses the
Northern line, which is a real shame, and the Hackney/Hackney Downs
near-miss is unforgivable, but other than that, it's good. And, of course,
it completely fails to provide effective interchange with the Lea/Hertford
Union waterways at Hackney Wick .

Most possible interchanges have a whole host of problems associated with
them, mainly in terms of cost;

I'd pretty much assumed that. I mean, it's not like these things aren't
obviously a good idea if you forget about the money (mostly), so if
they're not being done, it must be a question of resources. And i'm not
saying TfL are wrong here; many of these bring disproportionately little
benefit.

the most feasible ones are often already planned and need funding more
than anything else, or are being lobbied for. For example, Park Royal,
Shepherd's Bush, Brixton (SLL/ELLX), Loughborough Junction (SLL/ELLX),
Tufnell Park, Brockley.

Brockley really ought to be easy. I have no idea how useful it would be,
though.

tom

--
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson.