On Fri, 28 May 2010, Willms wrote:

Am Thu, 27 May 2010 18:55:59 UTC, schrieb allantracy
auf uk.railway :

I don't know why we bother with Europe, the whole thing is flawed, we
would be much better off with the dollar and become the 51st state and
we could go back to Imperial measurements far better than all this
foreign muck that no one wants.

Just as George Orwell layed out the basis of his "1984".

We were an airstrip in that, not a state.

If we did join the US, i'd hope we wouldn't be a state - with twice the
population of California, we should be at least two. We wouldn't get our
fair share of senators otherwise. In fact, this could be the great day of
devolution: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could all join as states
completely separate from England, and England could split into North and
South. Or perhaps revert to the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms?

tom

--
Also, thinking about that Velociraptor thing, I think -- what with having
trained on turkeys, guineafowl, geese, large chickens, swans and peacocks
as a child -- that I could take a Velociraptor. I'd need a large hessian
sack, some baler twine, and a hook to hang it from. And gloves. Not to
forget the gloves. -- cleanskies

On Sat, 29 May 2010 12:31:41 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Fri, 28 May 2010, Willms wrote:

Am Thu, 27 May 2010 18:55:59 UTC, schrieb allantracy
auf uk.railway :

I don't know why we bother with Europe, the whole thing is flawed, we
would be much better off with the dollar and become the 51st state and
we could go back to Imperial measurements far better than all this
foreign muck that no one wants.

Just as George Orwell layed out the basis of his "1984".

We were an airstrip in that, not a state.


Sounds a bit like our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On 27 May, 15:40, Mizter T wrote:
[x-posted to uk.transport.london]

On May 27, 3:23*pm, kev wrote:



Slasher Hammond to strike again?

From
http://www.building.co.uk/crossrail-...ed-by-a-third/...

Central London station and two spurs face the axe as project team
works to cut £5bn from budget

The government is considering making £4-5bn of cuts to the £16.9bn
Crossrail scheme, as the scale of capital spending cuts starts to
emerge.
An internal Crossrail team, under instruction from ministers to save
money on the scheme, is understood to be considering dropping either
the planned Tottenham Court Road or Bond Street station.

All the options under consideration include:

Dropping one of the planned central London stations
Dropping or reducing some spurs outside central London, including the
link to Canary Wharf and Abbey Wood in the east, and Maidenhead in the
west
Reducing the trains from 12 to 10 carriages, thereby minimising the
size of stations
Wide-ranging value engineering for the rest of the project.
A source close to the process said: “The team is being asked to look
at the whole scheme. If you took out both spurs and reduced the
platforms and stations then they’re looking at £4-5bn of cuts.”

London mayor Boris Johnson last week said Crossrail had to mount a
“Stalingrad defence” to guarantee funding for the original scheme.
Stephen Norris, former Tory MP and Transport for London board member,
said he believed axing a central station and the spurs were being
looked at. “The government needs to understand the difference between
the kind of spending that fills ad pages in the Society Guardian and
genuine investment in the country.

“If you’re going to cut Abbey Wood or Maidenhead you might as well
shelve the whole lot. It only makes sense to dig the tunnel if you do
the whole scheme. It’s like planning to buy a new car without an
engine.”

A Crossrail spokesperson said the organisation “constantly makes
efforts towards value management and value engineering to achieve
maximum value for money”, but declined to comment on specific
cutbacks.

It is not known what impact a decision to drop Tottenham Court Road
station might have on the £250m upgrade of the tube station, currently
being undertaken by Vinci and Bam Nuttall.

If cuts that deep are really on the cards, then as Steven Norris says,
they might as well not bother.

they managed to produce the victoria line pretty cheaply. I don't see
why its such a struggle to produce another line cheaply.

They could have had the chelsea-hackney line built by now if they'd
done it on victoria line levels of cheapness.

The amount of money they've wasted demolishing much loved places like
the Astoria, when its not in the way of anything (check the detailed
plans in the westminster planning brief - there is nothing to be
constructed below the Astoria at all) is ridiculous.

They could cut out all the secondary ticket halls for a start. They've
already controversially demolished a load of buildings that had made a
"positive contribution" to the local environment, if they'd had the
decency to wait until it was necessary, they wouldn't have wrecked the
townscape for no reason.

They should just use big versions of the Leslie Green design - that's
out of copyright, or if it isn't, TfL must own it anyway, and its
pretty - that must work out much cheaper than the massive vacuous
wastes of space they had planned for the ticket halls.

"lonelytraveller" wrote

they managed to produce the victoria line pretty cheaply. I don't see
why its such a struggle to produce another line cheaply.

Too much on the cheap. Kings Cross was left as a fire trap. Several
stations, notably Victoria, Oxford Circus and Kings Cross were too small for
the number of passengers using them, and are having to be expensively
enlarged. Brixton needs three platforms to turn back the whole service, but
only has two. While there is good cross-platform interchange at Stockwell,
Oxford Circus, Euston, Highbury & Islington and Finsbury Park, interchange
at other stations, particularly Vauxhall and Green Park is as bad as it is
possible to make it.

Peter

On 27 May, 18:36, Paul Terry wrote:
In message
,
Mizter T writes

It is not known what impact a decision to drop Tottenham Court Road
station might have on the £250m upgrade of the tube station, currently
being undertaken by Vinci and Bam Nuttall.

It's very unlikely to result in significant savings, if any, given that
a lot of the work is already well under way
The only thing under way is demolition of existing buildings, sorting
out local utility diversions, and preliminary works for the tube
station upgrade. None of the big tunnelling or restructuring is yet
taking place. Its easy to scrap both (although it now leaves a big gap
where the Astoria used to be.

the entire sites of some ticket halls would have to be changed, leaving abandoned works and
creating more rounds of compulsory purchases with associated massive costs.

They haven't started construction work in any major way on any ticket
hall site except Canary Wharf (which is actually at Westferry).

The only abandoned works would be the plots they have now demolished
the buildings on
-Astoria
-Denmark Place (north side)
-Dean Street (north end, west side)
-Cardinal House (tower block near Farringdon)

Apart from Cardinal House, the loss of these buildings is a tragedy,
but they would have done that anyway. The loss of Cardinal House is a
positive benefit to the local environment.

All of these are key sites in central london, and developers will be
keen to snap them up if they can. They are so central that even
constructing buildings designed to last less than 5 years would be
profitable, if put to the right use.

On 29 May, 14:39, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"lonelytraveller" wrote



they managed to produce the victoria line pretty cheaply. I don't see
why its such a struggle to produce another line cheaply.

Too much on the cheap. Kings Cross was left as a fire trap. Several
stations, notably Victoria, Oxford Circus and Kings Cross were too small for
the number of passengers using them, and are having to be expensively
enlarged. Brixton needs three platforms to turn back the whole service, but
only has two. While there is good cross-platform interchange at Stockwell,
Oxford Circus, Euston, Highbury & Islington and Finsbury Park, interchange
at other stations, particularly Vauxhall and Green Park is as bad as it is
possible to make it.

Peter

And Warren Street.

But before being too critical, the interchanges are still a helluva
lot better on average than the Jubilee managed. Apart from Baker
Street (the original Jubilee, using a Bakerloo platform), they are all
terrible.

The inclusion of a lift that can carry one or two disabled people
seems to be an excuse for sending thousands of everyone else all
around and up and down at all new interchanges.

On 29 May, 14:39, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"lonelytraveller" wrote



they managed to produce the victoria line pretty cheaply. I don't see
why its such a struggle to produce another line cheaply.

Too much on the cheap. Kings Cross was left as a fire trap. Several
stations, notably Victoria, Oxford Circus and Kings Cross were too small for
the number of passengers using them, and are having to be expensively
enlarged. Brixton needs three platforms to turn back the whole service, but
only has two. While there is good cross-platform interchange at Stockwell,
Oxford Circus, Euston, Highbury & Islington and Finsbury Park, interchange
at other stations, particularly Vauxhall and Green Park is as bad as it is
possible to make it.

Peter

In a choice between having the Victoria line, and not having it, which
would you prefer?

On 29 May, 14:49, MIG wrote:
On 29 May, 14:39, "Peter Masson" wrote:



"lonelytraveller" wrote

they managed to produce the victoria line pretty cheaply. I don't see
why its such a struggle to produce another line cheaply.

Too much on the cheap. Kings Cross was left as a fire trap. Several
stations, notably Victoria, Oxford Circus and Kings Cross were too small for
the number of passengers using them, and are having to be expensively
enlarged. Brixton needs three platforms to turn back the whole service, but
only has two. While there is good cross-platform interchange at Stockwell,
Oxford Circus, Euston, Highbury & Islington and Finsbury Park, interchange
at other stations, particularly Vauxhall and Green Park is as bad as it is
possible to make it.

Peter

And Warren Street.

But before being too critical, the interchanges are still a helluva
lot better on average than the Jubilee managed. *Apart from Baker
Street (the original Jubilee, using a Bakerloo platform), they are all
terrible.

The inclusion of a lift that can carry one or two disabled people
seems to be an excuse for sending thousands of everyone else all
around and up and down at all new interchanges.

To be fair, they wanted to build the Waterloo platforms near the
Northern Line ones, but that involved putting them on a slight curve
(so that the line didn't have to turn sharply to reach Southwark). And
Health & Safety laws, in their infinite wisdom, regard that as
illegal. Just like its down to them for forcing the new Park Royal
platforms to avoid being close to the ones on the other line that
crosses it - the line has a slight slope where the crossing is.

lonelytraveller wrote on
29 May 2010 14:49:11 ...
On 27 May, 18:36, Paul wrote:

the entire sites of some ticket halls would have to be changed,
leaving abandoned works and creating more rounds of compulsory
purchases with associated massive costs.

They haven't started construction work in any major way on any ticket
hall site except Canary Wharf (which is actually at Westferry).

It's at West India Quay, about half a mile east of Westferry DLR station.
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

"Paul Corfield" wrote

There is a real fallacy in building assets that will last for over 100
years for about 10 years worth of projected demand. People complain
about the scale of somewhere like Canary Wharf JLE station but it can
handle huge numbers of people very effectively - it's in complete
contrast to somewhere like Victoria or Kings Cross which jam up or else
send people round corridors for 10 miles to spread the passenger load
out.

Or do what was done with the DLR, the ever-expanding railway, and design it
so that it can be expanded. Easier to do with a surface railway than
underground, though at least they built Bank long enough for 3-unit trains,
and even then they're now having to use SDO (at the 2nd Island Gardens
station and Elverson Road), and announce a train (from Bank) as 'all
stations to Lewisham, and then, as it's passing West India Quay on the new
spur advise that it won't stop there.

Perhaps what's needed is not building for 10 years and throw hands up in
horror when demand overwhelms capacity, nor build for what might be needed
in 30 years, but to build for 10 years with passive provision for expansion
so that increased capacity can be provided affordably.

Peter
(memories of a DLR fleet of 11 units, with manual PIS which could be rotated
to display destinations of Island Gardens, Tower Gateway, Stratford, or
Poplar)