On 16 Apr, 14:24, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Charles Ellson wrote:

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:38:23 -0700 (PDT), 1506
wrote:

Question: If Met. trains were to commence stopping at new West
Hampstead platforms, should they cease to call at Finchley Road?

If the numbers of people entering/departing the Met. at Finchley Road
are comparatively small (rather than changing trains) then that would
seem to be a possibility. Other passenger flows to be considered would
be e.g. those changing to/from bus services.

I think this not insubstantial - there are six bus routes serving Finchley
Road, i believe. There are three at West Hampstead, and the overlap with
Finchley Road's routes is minimal, so unless many routes were rearranged,
the journeys possible via Finchley Road would be lost. Finchley Road also
has the hugemongous O2 leisure/shopping centre (and a big Homebase), and
is generally rather more of a high street than West Hampstead.


I agree with all of that - in fact I'd say that Finchley Road is a
'proper' high street in the conventional understanding (albeit one
that also unfortunately serves as the main artery for traffic to/from
the M1) whilst West End Lane (outside West Hampstead station) is not.


Anyway, those entry/exit numbers in full (in MPax/yr):

Finchley Road 8.836
West Hampstead 6.892

I don't think that includes Met/Jub interchange at FR; it certainly does
include both Met and Jub passengers coming in and out there, and it's
impossible to know how many there are of each. Still, i'm surprised FR is
only two million higher than WH.


I'm a bit surprised by that - but bear in mind that whilst the numbers
at Finchley Road do not take into account Met/Jubbly interchange, at
West Hampstead the entry/exit figure include all of those who are
transferring from the Jubilee line to Thameslink and to the North
London Line (and vice versa), given that both of these are out-of-
station interchanges. And there's a good number of people who indeed
do just that (though I've no idea of an actual number or estimate).