London Banter - View Single Post - DLR: Big push for Dagenham branch to be constructed ahead of 2012

Dave Arquati · April 13th 06, 10:08 AM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:
Paul G wrote:

Transport for London (TfL) had been exploring ways to fund construction
of the Barking Reach route, but London Mayor Ken Livingstone now seems
to have secured the cash needed to accelerate the project.

You've got to hand it to the DLR bods, they're pretty good at getting
cash for all these extensions. The Woolwich Arsenal one is already
well under construction, with the eastbound platform at WA about to
shut for a few months to enable construction to take place.

I know the DLR is cheaper to build than the tube, but surely something
like the Bakerloo to Camberwell could have been built for near to the
same price as three new DLR extensions (King George V, Woolwich
Arsenal, Barking)? The Bakerloo tunnels are already halfway down
Walworth Road, and the remaining distance to Camberwell Green can't be
much longer than the DLR river tunnel to Woolwich.

I guess studies have been done about which extensions to the network
will offer more benefit to more people, etc. but it seems to me that
the DLR system is becoming ever more bitty and complex, possibly at the
expense of more coherent additions to the tube network.

I think the key thing about the DLR is that it is being extended to meet
significant forecast growth in the area - both in high-density
employment on the Isle of Dogs, and in housing and medium-density
employment in the Royal Docks and around Barking & Dagenham. The
buzzword of the day is regeneration - DLR extensions primarily underpin
regeneration efforts rather than serving existing areas of high demand.

I have no doubt that a Bakerloo extension to Camberwell (at the least)
would have decent levels of demand, but it would probably be expensive,
as you say. The benefits could well be high too (particularly if a bus
feeder hub were developed at the terminus, as with Brixton), but it's
usually the ratio of benefits to costs (the BCR) which is used in
planning decisions rather than the absolute magnitude of those benefits.

I suspect that the DLR schemes have quite high BCRs (making them a good
return on public investment) compared to a Bakerloo extension, even if
the magnitude of the net benefits of the latter would be larger.

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