On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Sir Benjamin Nunn wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...

I'm also surprised the split was that far North - it only saves you
four stops (taking Victoria as somehow level with Waterloo). Balham, i
tell you, it should be Balham!

I think the motivation there was that Tooting Broadway was the most heavily
used station on the southern end of the line (and indeed I believe it still
is today)

I'm surprised to hear that. Never thought of it as much of a place. Here
are today's numbers (total annual entry + exit, in millions, from TfL [1],
with rank in this list):

Morden 5.493 7
South Wimbledon 3.119 12
Colliers Wood 4.391 10
Tooting Broadwy 10.567 1
Tooting Bec 6.039 6
Balham 9.466 2
Clapham South 6.682 5
Clapham Common 7.482 3
Clapham North 5.022 8
Stockwell 6.924 4
Oval 4.580 9
Kennington 3.196 11

Interesting. Why is Tooting Broadway so busy? Bus feeders, or just a
really densely populated area? St George's hospital and Wimbledon dog
track?

and so having the express stop there was considered important. On that
basis, having another stop just two stations up the line (Balham) would
be too close for it to be an express service.

That makes perfect sense.

According to the numbers above, Clapham Common is the third busiest
station on the southern Northern line, so that's definitely the right
place to put the split (if you were doing it now) - give those seven-odd
million passengers two lines to hop on.

I still don't get why the express tubes would have run to Morden, though.
Maybe it was thought essential to be able to run trains from the express
tracks to the depot without going back up to Clapham Common, and it was
cheaper to extend the tunnels and have portals on the surface than to
build an underground junction at Tooting Broadway.

tom

[1] http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/...load=entryexit

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