On Sun, 03 Apr 2011 19:26:05 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

Where things are a bit woolier are what happens west of Oxford Circus.
If relieving congestion was the priority, the route would echo the
Victoria line going southwest, as that's the most congested corridor on
the other side of Oxford Circus, and then take over some of the SWML
services into Waterloo, which are again highly congested. It's easy
enough to look at a map and see sensible stops along the way - Victoria,
Clapham Junction, perhaps Hyde Park Corner, perhaps somewhere along
Queenstown Road.

However, that route was rejected in favour of Paddington and points
west. I've never been able to find a really good justification for this;
the studies consistently indicate a higher benefit to the southwest
route. I suspect that it's been driven by a regeneration agenda, which
has induced a certain amount of fudging in the studies (eg IIRC, one
study costed the southwest route as going in tunnel all the way to
Wimbledon, when i don't think it needs to go much further than Clapham
Junction, making it look rather more expensive than it needed to).

At one stage in the Crossrail plans there was going to be a Richmond
branch. This was bitterly opposed by the locals, hence the large number of
trains planned to go no further west than Paddington.

Colin McKenzie


--
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Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.