Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:
wrote:
He (Ken Livingstone) added: "Simply bidding for the Games has
brought forward a host of transport improvements - with the East
London Line extension, the new £400m ticket hall at King's Cross,
and the £91m package of improvements to the North London Line all
given added momentum." What are the improvements to the NLL? £91M
doesn't seem to by much these days so it can't be much of an
improvement.
It should be for:
- signalling enhancements
- improved power supply
- new "resilience measures" to counter late-running freight services - I
think this just means a new/reinstated freight loop
- platform extensions for 6-car trains where necessary
- frequency doubling to 8tph
I'm not sure how they are squeezing the £91m for those measures, but
that's what it's for.
Are they actually planning to increase the length of trains, where
will the extra trains come from, also for increased frequency.
Incredible for a line that 30 years ago BR would hve quite happily
confined to the waste dump (passenger services anyway). I have always
thought the 3 car trains from Euston to Watford Junc needed extra
carriages when you see the overcrowding so would have thought that
this should take priority over the NLL.
The same could be said about the trains on the WAGN lines. I really
don't get Ken's infatuation with the NLL; it's just not serving a
corridor with heavy demand, so why give it so much attention?
It's something he can actually do something about. Silverlink Metro will
be the pilot project for more TfL direction over London railways. It
doesn't suffer the terminal capacity problems that the radial railways
have (which are very expensive to solve - for example, capacity is being
improved at Liverpool Street as part of a cost of £10bn...).
And it may not have the extremely heavy demand of the radial routes like
the West Anglia, but demand is still pretty high. It should also help
improve orbital journeys somewhat, which becomes important when
combating rising car usage outside the very centre. Oh, and it connects
some areas targeted for regeneration - Willesden Junction, Hackney and
Stratford.
Mind you, 91 million isn't exactly a lot.
Correct. I'm not entirely sure how that will be stretched to provide
what it's supposed to, but I'm just a messenger.
--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London