London Banter - View Single Post - Petition to stop overcrowding on public transport

John Rowland · July 19th 08, 01:11 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:
On 19 Jul, 02:28, "Jonathan" wrote:
Public transport has always been awful; and over the past couple of
years I've noticed that more and more often I'm squashed inside a
bus or train, with hardly enough room to breathe, because the
company decided to cancel earlier buses or trains without notice,
and without making any alternative arrangements.

If there was a decent tube system in south london some of the pressure
would be taken off the overground trains. But the amount of overground
lines has always been used as an excuse for not further extending the
tube south of the river rather than thinking the services could
complement each other. The its-difficult-to-tunnel excuse no longer
holds water in the 21st century so I guess the only obstacle now would
be money as it ever was - we have tight fisted victorians to thank for
the piddly mainline loading gauge meaning we can't have double deck
trains , and the frankly farcical loading gauge on the deep level tube
lines.

It still doesn't make sense to build Tube lines in South London though,
because that would involve expensive wheelchair-accessible stations which
would leave the existing surface stations underused or closed. I think it
would be cheaper to build underground express lines from the edge of
London - say from east of Esher to south of Tottenham Hale via new deep
platforms at Kingston, Earls Court/West Brompton, Bond Street, and
Euston/Kings Cross ( and possibly four-track the line from Tottenham Hale to
Cheshunt) for through dual-voltage services from Portsmouth etc to Stansted
etc. - and then hand the existing surface lines to LOROL and flood them with
6-30 tph metro services.