Clive Page wrote:
Yesterday I took one of the public tours of the Crossrail station at
Canary Wharf which was somewhat interesting. Many of the escalators and
lifts were working and they were starting fit out the platforms and to
run test trains through, apparently. The appearance wasn't all that
different from many of the Jubilee Line stations except for the use of
yellow, "canary yellow" they said, to customise parts of this station.
What colours they would use for the other stations wasn't divulged.

What I had not realised was that there is to be no easy interchange with
the Jubilee Line. When I asked a question about this the project manager
person said that they didn't see Canary Wharf as an interchange station,
but as a destination in its own right, the implication being that they
really didn't want the public changing trains there.

It seems to me that people coming from that branch of Crossrail such as
Woolwich and wanting to get to say London Bridge or Waterloo might well
want to change lines there. You will be able to do this under cover,
but the connection will involve two sets of ticket barriers and being
forced to use lots of escalators to go up to the surface and down again,
and also pass a host of shops on the way. The latter are, presumably,
the main justification for the feature. It's sad that at so many new
stations passenger convenience is being sacrificed to the interests of
the owners of these retail opportunities, just as in the Thameslink station at St.Pancras.

Yes, the CW Crossrail and JLE stations are built in different parallel
docks, with the main skyscrapers between them. The DLR has less than ideal
connections with both.


As to the absence of a station serving London City Airport, well that has
always seemed barmy to me.

Presumably no-one was prepared to pay for it. And that's probably still the
case. LCY can commission feasibility studies all it likes, but it will
probably have to pay for it if it wants a new station. TfL or NR certainly
won't pay.