London Banter - London Waterloo international

wrote:
In article
-septembe
r.org, (Recliner) wrote:

wrote:
In article ,
(e27002 aurora) wrote:

After TfL's Northern Line reaches Battersea, will Queenstown Road
still be needed?

An interesting question.

It is a pity the tube could not have reach Battersea Park.

Isn't passive provision being made for a future extension?

I think so, but there's probably at least three reasons why it's unlikely
to happen:

1. Who would fund it? The cost would be in the hundreds of millions.

2. Would the Battersea Power Station developers who've agreed to co-fund
the extension be so willing to cooperate if they knew the six-car tube
trains would arrive at their shiny new station already packed?

Would a short extension fill trains up that much?

Yes, as it would connect to the main line to Victoria.

3. Could the Northern line handle that extra level of demand? At the very
least, the further extension would have to wait till the current Northern
line was split into two separate lines.

The way the Battersea extension will operate will make it in effect a
separate line, surely? The only combination with the Northern will be north
of Camden Town, I thought.

Yes but Camden Town is the problem. More trains could run on both the Bank
and Charing Cross lines if each central section's trains were sent to a
single northern branch, with no use of the crossovers. But that requires
the redevelopment of Camden Town station, to make line interchanges easier
and to increase capacity. There's a plan to do upgrade the station, but
only after that's completed could the lines be split:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/overhaul-planned-for-camden-town-station-so-it-can-cope-with-120000-people-each-day-a3571316.html

This document discusses the extra trains and depot capacity that will be
needed:
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/fpc-20150730-part-1-item12-jnl.pdf