On Tue, 12 Aug 2014 04:10:14 -0700 (PDT), Piatkow
wrote:

An earlier suggestion was a tunnel from OOC to somewhere south of Wembley
Central. Crossrail would take over the DC lines from there, with the
Bakerloo and Overground services terminating in new platforms on the east
side of Wembley Central station (there's already tracks there).

That makes no sense -- Crossrail needs to be on the slow lines to get to
Tring, not the DC lines, which will also be accommodating the Met to
Watford Junction.

Presumably the earlier suggestion was to terminate at WJ providing a proper metro service from the north west suburbs into Crossrail.

That would have been some years ago, before the Met planned to go to
WJ, and before the Overground. I don't think Crossrail would have
provided a better service on the DC lines than the Overground and LU
combination.


This is a problem with public projects that you start with a perfectly good idea, in this case a fast metro service from the inner home counties, and then every two bit local politician wants a finger in the pie and we get some serious scope creep. Then we get the complaints that its not suitable for the purpose that it wasn't originally designed for and yet more money has to be spent adapting things. (How long before they decide that half the new rolling stock must be reconfigured for long distance use?)

I think Crossrail had always been planned to go further out than WJ,
and it's long made more sense for it to go to somewhere like Tring.
It's been discussed here in the past, and even Tony Polson agreed it
was a good idea.

But, yes, people are already suggesting long distance trains through
the tunnel, but as it's a TfL project, I don't think that demand will
get very far.