Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 4 Apr 2006, Aidan Stanger wrote:
John B wrote:
MIG wrote:
Peter Smyth wrote:

According to the Hendon Times, Mill Hill East services will be
reduced to a shuttle to Finchley Central off-peak and weekends from
October 2006.

And closure following closely no doubt. Yet another service reduction
disguised as "reliability", even though for the time being there will
still be through services at the busiest and potentially most
problematic times.

If the result is to make a substantial reduction in total Misery Line
misery, which it should be, then it seems like a good plan...

It would be a good plan if they did it right! There's no excuse for
sticking with a pathetic 15 minute frequency. What's the advantage to
having the train waits at the terminus for most of the time???

The MHE branch doesn't go far enough to be of much use to many people,
and having some trains go to Mill Hill East does make the service less
reliable. Converting the branch into a shuttle service makes sense, but
they should double the frequency (or better still, if as you say the
main service is every 4 minutes, run the MHE train every 8 minutes).

If they could do this reliably, so that every other mainline train made a
really good connection with a shuttle, this would be excellent.

There's presumably room to throw in a passing loop halfway along the
branch; that would cost money, but be cheaper than doubling, but would
allow the frequency to be doubled, so that every mainline train could link
up with a shuttle. Making this work reliably would be a challenge, but on
such a short and lightly-loaded line, one that could be met, i imagine.

It could if the passing loop were long, though it would be harder to
coordinate the service to connect with southbound trains as well. But
the biggest problem would be getting it to connect properly in the peaks
when trains run more frequently than every 4 minutes.

If they shortened the train length proportionally, it wouldn't even cost
any more to run.

What's the train length got to do with it? Going from 15 to 8 minutes
would be done by cutting down waiting time, not running more trains, AIUI.

Shorter trains use less electricity.

The interesting thing to consider is how the MHE branch can be made more
useful in the long term. One idea I put on my website is to have it as a
branch of Crossrail Line 2, and extend it to Watford Junction via MHB,
Edgware and Stanmore.

Is that on the old Northern Heights Alignment?

Partly.

This would mean that nobody in North London would have to detour to
Euston to catch a train to The North,

Er, provided they can get to the High Barnet branch of the Northern line,

No, it would interchange with the other lines as well.

and they don't want the ECML or MML!

If they did, they'd be detouring to Kings Cross or St.Pancras, not
Euston. However there would be a stop at Mill Hill Broadway to connect
with the Thameslink service, so some MML passengers would also benefit
albeit not to the same extent as the WCML passengers.

There's no GNER equivalent of Watford Junction. Stevenage is too far
out, and they couldn't get planning permission for their Hadley Wood
proposals. Potters Bar might be a better location, but their trains
don't stop there yet. If they, or their successors, ever do start
stopping their trains there, it might be worth considering extending the
Jubilee Line there. But it's not going to become as important a station
as Watford Junction any time in the forseeable future.

and more passengers would be attracted to the outer ends of lines, where
there's plenty of spare capacity.

Not sure i get that bit - anyone at Watford is going to catch a fast train
to Euston, not sit on a tube train that stops at a dozen places on the
way.

Wrong! Not everyone at Watford is going to Central London. Millions of
people live in North London, and detouring to Euston would be more
expensive and in many cases slower and less convenient. By interchanging
with the ELL, GN, Victoria and Piccadilly Lines, two branches of the
Northern Line, Thameslink and the Jubilee Line, it would serve most of N
London.

Does anyone else have any other ideas for it?

Extend the parkland walk .

The trouble with resurrecting the Northern Heights plan is the green belt;
the intention was always to drive development of new suburbs in the north,
as the Met did for Metroland, but post-WW2 planning policy has put the
kybosh on that. If the illustrious Mr Prescott or his successor waves a
wand and lets the golf courses and subsidy sinks of Bushey be buried under
an avalanche of Barratt boxes, this plan might regain wings.

It wouldn't require that. There's enough of Bushey not already served by
rail to justify a station. The main destination's Watford.

However, linking it to the ELL would be folly, IMHO; better would be to
link it to the GN electrics from Finsbury Park to Moorgate. A graded
junction at Moorgate would allow this to be done without conflicting with
mainline traffic to KX; the branch to Moorgate itself might need some
upgrading to cope, but the frequency would be well within the capability
of modern (ie early 20th century signalling systems). Of course, this all
comes to pass anyway under my glorious plan to drive the tunnel further
south from Moorgate, under the Bank and the Thames, to link up with the
lines at London Bridge ...

Where would you link them up?

I also wondered whether that line could be extended. There's nowhere
around London Bridge to surface, but some passengers would get a much
more direct journey if it ran straight to Denmark Hill and surfaced
somewhere around Dulwich or Tulse Hill.

I also wonder whether rather than being extended from Moorgate it could
be extended from Old Street to Liverpool Street to give better
interchange, then run under Gracechurch Street to London Bridge.

--
Aidan Stanger
http://www.bettercrossrail.co.uk