Richard J. wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:

Steve Peake wrote:

Hounslow council has begun pushing for an alternative routing for
crossrail.

http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/hm181104.htm#councilsubmits

Stable doors and horses come to mind, but I wondered if anyone
thinks this stands any chance at all?

I was always in favour of the Richmond-Kingston route, but the
Nimby's killed that one.

Way too late.

Note that it's an *additional*, not alternative, route to make use of
some of the 58% of the peak westbound trains that would otherwise
reverse at Paddington, which might be considered a waste of an expensive
tunnel through central London.

Fair enough; no-one really wants to see the tunnel "wasted", and
reversals at Paddington (or rather Westbourne Park) could create trouble
by themselves. But wouldn't it be quite expensive to extend just 4tph
through to an extra western destination?

Plus I doubt they want all the performance pollution
from the NLL and SWT infecting Crossrail.

But Crossrail seem happy to suffer pollution from SET and 'one'/Great
Eastern and still run 24 tph from the east. The Hounslow proposal is
4tph Crossrail sharing the line with 4tph NLL or 4tph SWT. Crossrail
would still have 10tph reversing at Paddington, which could help to soak
up any performance pollution from other TOCs.

The performance pollution isn't as much from Great Eastern as they take
over the majority of the stopping services on that line. SET could be a
problem, but a significant number of trains on that branch terminate at
Abbey Wood.

Wasn't one of the problems highlighted in the Montague report that it
was unrealistic to expect 24tph from different branches to arrive at the
Crossrail/Network Rail interface on time for the appropriate path?
Removing the Richmond branch significantly reduced that problem,
allowing a more reliable frequency through the central tunnel. With the
Hounslow branch, Crossrail is interfacing with both Silverlink, SWT, and
quite a number of freights too (I think - do they use that section or do
they just use the WLL?).

I think proposals to improve NLL frequency to 6tph would also have an
adverse effect on both NLL and Crossrail performance if they shared
tracks. NLL performance is bad enough as it is, even on Sundays at 2tph.

On the other hand, central Acton could do with a decent rail service to
central London, and I'm sure the denizens of Hounslow and Brentford
would enjoy direct services to Tottenham Court Road, Liverpool St and/or
Canary Wharf. But there must be implications for SWT Hounslow Loop
services - for example, a decimation of passenger numbers to the City on
those services might cause SWT to divert some via Richmond instead,
lowering frequency on the loop and causing the non-Crossrail stations
like Kew Bridge and Chiswick to lose out.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London