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Old March 26th 08, 07:29 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london,misc.transport.urban-transit
Mr Thant Mr Thant is offline
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Default Crossrail could bankrupt London - says Ken Livingstone

On 26 Mar, 18:53, Tom Anderson wrote:
Right. And how is Crossrail going to relieve that? By letting people on
the North Kent line from east of Abbey Wood change there? That's not
exactly a huge fraction of the Jubilee's passengers, is it? And don't they
already have the option to do Greenwich - Docklands by DLR? Not that
that's exactly a high-capacity route itself.


But if you're coming from Finchley or wherever, you can easily switch
from using the Jubilee at London Bridge to Crossrail at Moorgate. I
think the same applies to passengers coming from most places west of
Docklands.

Entirely agreed. But the point i was making in the text that's been
snipped is that the Crossrail project doesn't deliver significant
increases in capacity outside central London, and none that couldn't be
provided much more cheaply.


I don't disagree.

Liverpool Street isn't limited by platform capacity, it's limited by
capacity through the station throat. Rebuilding that is entirely possible,
although of course not trivial. I don't know about Paddington, i have to
confess. But since all we're talking about is lengthening trains, why do
we need more platforms?


Crossrail is expected to release significant capacity at Liverpool
Street for other services, even if its own route isn't seeing a big
increase. And there's quite a few more trains west of Paddington
planned, which would require platforms Paddington doesn't have.

If you're going into Oxford Circus to get on the Victoria line, this isn't
going to make any difference whatsoever. The new bit being added, however
enormous, will only decongest the existing station to the extent that they
can abstract passengers away from the Central line.


Again, it depends where you're ultimately going. Yes Crossrail is
useless if your destination is actually on the Bakerloo and Victoria
(except Paddington of course), but if you're changing to some other
line than there's possibly a way to do the same journey using
Crossrail. Farringdon in particular is going to have direct trains to
places you might currently reach from Victoria or King's Cross, as
Thameslink 2000 will be complete.

U

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