Our journey down the Brighton Line has now got as far as South Croydon. Not only do we look at the station but also at the five track section between East Croydon and South Croydon. There we ask whether it is practical to add a sixth track and, if so, consider whether it would be worth doing. Finally, we take a brief look at BML2’s plans for South Croydon.
The importance of South Croydon – or otherwise
In terms of passenger numbers, South Croydon station is not really that important. Although it is a junction station, no-one would use it to change as it makes far more sense to do so just up the line at East Croydon. Similarly, many potential passengers who could start their rail journey at South Croydon prefer to make their way to East Croydon instead, as it is served by frequent fast trains to central London.
South Croydon station looking south
Far more significant than the station is the junction just to the south of it. It is here that trains to Oxted (East Grinstead and Uckfield services) join and leave the main line. As such, not only is it an important junction, but also a source of delays – for there is no grade separation. Although not actually at East Croydon, the junction is regarded by Network Rail as part of the East Croydon problem and believes it should not be considered in isolation.
Reference is often made to “East Croydon and the Selhurst triangle” in an attempt to identify the critical area that needs investigating in order to improve the Brighton Main Line. To fully understand the complexity of all this though one also needs to take into account what happens just south of South Croydon station. Effectively the fast Brighton lines, the slow Brighton lines and the Oxted lines are all funnelled into East Croydon. Then there are also fast and slow lines from East Croydon and double track from West Croydon. These need sorting out to get trains to or from the fast or slow lines to London Bridge or Victoria.
History
Development of lines through South Croydon
As with many main lines into London, the section between East Croydon and South Croydon has a history of having tracks added. Unusually, this has resulted in five tracks. This is almost certainly because it was designed first for two and then four tracks and then, when it was realised it was less than ideal and more tracks were desirable, it was only easy to add a single extra track.
Contrasting styles of bridge just south of the station
Until 1984 the fast lines were served by platforms 3 and 4. Platforms 1 and 2 then served the slow tracks to and from Purley. This had the considerable advantage that the trains from Oxted could easily join the fast tracks. Indeed it would have been very awkward for them to join the slow tracks as this would have meant crossing the fast tracks. It was also much more convenient for passengers if the slow lines called at platforms 1 and 2 as access to platform 1 did not involve using the narrow subway. Nowadays it is rare for a train to stop at platforms 1 or 2.
1984 onwards
Current layout at South Croydon
From 1984 onwards the lines were swapped with the fast lines being on the western side with the lines at East Croydon being swapped a couple of years later. The opportunity was taken to organise the remaining three lines in a much better way with a reversible middle track (track 4) between East and South Croydon. The junction was made much more complicated to allow for flexibility in use.
The disadvantage with the arrangement from 1984 at South Croydon was that the trains to and from Oxted, which are fast north of East Croydon (and rarely call at South Croydon), had to use the slow lines. As we saw in our look at East Croydon this is far from ideal. Even if the current proposals for East Croydon get implemented they will still mean conflicting movements for fast trains from Victoria that continue via Oxted. The latest published East Croydon scheme does, however, mean that it is only these services that will be a problem north of East Croydon. This means that radical grade separation at South Croydon, possibly involving the fast lines, if it ever had been considered and believed possible, will be much less of an issue if the East Croydon scheme gets the go-ahead. Indeed an emerging theme of re-organising East Croydon is that, if you sort things out properly north of East Croydon, there is much less that needs doing south of it.
The future impact of changes at East Croydon
Things have moved on a bit since the final version of the Sussex Route Study was published. Network Rail now think it may be possible to almost totally eliminate delays due to conflict in a northbound direction north of East Croydon. If this is true then this would be a real game changer as far as the morning peak flows at South Croydon are concerned. A slow train from Purley could travel via platform 3 at South Croydon to the new platform 5 at East Croydon and beyond. Independently, another train from the Oxted lines could travel via platform 4 at South Croydon to the new platform 6 at East Croydon and beyond. This would be much better than the present situation, as both trains currently have to call at platform 4 at East Croydon, which inevitably delays one of them.
Providing a reliable service as described would mean that up trains would take priority over down trains at South Croydon Junction, but that should not be too much of a problem in the morning peak. In any case, down trains to Oxted and beyond travelling via platform 5 at South Croydon would be unaffected by the ups. The only trains that may be delayed would be the down slow trains travelling via Purley and calling at Purley. If they do not call at Purley then they can travel via the fast lines and avoid South Croydon Junction altogether. Even if they do need to call at Purley then, providing they are not also calling at South Croydon and Purley Oaks, there will be the alternative of switching from fast to slow tracks just north of Purley – though this does mean crossing the up slow.
If Network Rail’s current ongoing analysis of future train movements is correct and their East Croydon proposals come to fruition then in the morning peak it should be possible to run a much more intensive peak period service than today without too many issues. There are also a couple of tricks they could employ to minimise the problem of down services in the morning peak. One is to slightly delay the return service from London so it is at not quite the same intensive frequency, although this has its limitations. The other is to stable some of the trains in the depot at Selhurst after their long distance inward journey to London, so that they do not impede on critical Selhurst/East Croydon/South Croydon junctions.
Because the southbound configuration over the whole Selhurst/East Croydon/South Croydon area will not be as flexible and conflict-free as the northbound service, this suggests a more intensive service could be operated in the morning peak than the evening peak. This should not cause too much of a problem as the evening peak is generally less intensive, but longer-lasting, than the morning one. Such a situation would not be unique. Southeastern metro services run on a 20 minute cycle in the morning peak and a 22 minute cycle in the evening.
East Croydon to South Croydon
We have briefly mentioned this section of track before in a previous article. It is critical because if anything goes wrong here then there is no realistic diversionary route of any kind – and it is not in the sort of area where you want to be running replacement bus services. The two Croydon stations on the Brighton Main Line (South and East) are only about a mile apart along a straight section of track, but a suitable road route would be longer and journey times unpredictable.
Indeed, perhaps tellingly, East Croydon to South Croydon is probably the only section of track along the Brighton Main Line that never seems to have a planned closure for engineering works. Instead there are complicated engineering arrangements to keep some tracks open whilst working on others. A fairly recent innovation has also been to try and make the fast and slow lines completely independent of each other (as regards power supply etc.) to minimise the possibility of all the lines being affected by a single failure.
East Croydon to South Croydon might not close for planned works but there is always the possibility of an unexpected event that cannot be mitigated against – most notably the Thames Water leak of August 2011 that shut the line and caused considerable problems. More recently and more implausibly it nearly got shut because of a deer that was believed to have been on a steep railway embankment near East Croydon station.
A five track railway
Diagram showing number of tracks from Windmill Bridge to South Croydon
Currently there are six tracks just south of East Croydon but these reduce to five after a short distance to the south of the station. There remain five tracks all the way through South Croydon station. There the line to Oxted (two tracks) diverges off whilst four tracks continue towards Purley.
The deep cutting between East Croydon and South Croydon looking north from South Croydon
It is hardly surprising that it is often suggested that six tracking from East Croydon would be a good idea. Unfortunately the line is in a deep cutting for most of the distance between these stations so that would not be cheap to do. Worse still there are already retaining walls on both sides. It’s also the case that having “only” five tracks is not currently a major problem and there are far more important restrictions on capacity that need addressing first – notably East Croydon.
Just north of South Croydon station looking north
Not surprisingly there were responses to the Sussex Rail Study suggesting an additional track through South Croydon and even beyond to Purley. More surprisingly, rather than being dismissive, the Network Rail response was:
The final approaches to East Croydon station see the Down Slow-side in a high walled cutting whilst structures can be found close to the line on the opposite side. The existing proposals in the Route Study would allow some more services to operate through this section without additional tracks – though it is noted and agreed that in the long term either a signalling technology solution or an additional track could be required on this section.
Not stated, but fairly obviously, there really is not much point in having six tracks north of South Croydon if you do not have six tracks through South Croydon station itself. Having got that far south, the junction to Oxted is almost on top of you so the tracks would have to continue to it.
On the presumption that there is no point in providing an additional track for the fast services, as there isn’t a problem here and it would achieve nothing, if there were to be six tracks then it would make sense for there to be two up slow, two down slow and two fast lines. The slow lines would use the existing island platforms and the up fast platform, now rarely used, could be sacrificed if necessary.
Fast train passing platform 1
It looks as if it would be fairly simple to demolish the up fast platform to provide a new up fast line. The current up fast could become the down fast and that would leave the two island platforms for the four slow lines. The station buildings would probably need to be rebuilt, but it is arguably due a comprehensive rebuild anyway as it has multiple deficiencies at present. There is plenty of space available in the car park, which uses the space vacated by the former carriage sidings.
Even without grade separation at South Croydon Junction or an extra track northwards to East Croydon, four platforms for slow lines could potentially improve the situation at South Croydon Junction. A slow train waiting to continue southwards towards Purley could sit in the current platform 4 whilst a following train to Oxted and beyond could pass it via the current platform 5.
Note that Network Rail has no plans for six tracks through South Croydon and its positive response in the route study to the suggestion was really a case of keeping their options open, rather than any plans to do it. They are convinced that considerable improvements can be made at South Croydon through a limited amount of resignalling and that is currently what they intend to do.
Six tracking all the way between South Croydon and East Croydon would be a nice-to-have, but it would involve major engineering due to the steep embankments and is probably even less likely to happen than six tracking at South Croydon station itself. Theoretically it does seem possible, however. There is a good reason for establishing that is the case, to which we will come later.
The alternative to six tracks
It is likely that Network Rail don’t think six tracks will be necessary. With an extra slow platform at East Croydon it could terminate more trains there. The three slow tracks between East and South Croydon, together with a re-organised East Croydon could work very effectively.
Below is an illustration of how services could be organised in the peaks with the minimum of conflict at South Croydon.
Possible scenario for peak working on the assumption work proposed at East Croydon goes ahead.
South Croydon station
South Croydon is not the busiest of stations but it is well used in peak hours. This can be accounted for by the fact that the off-peak service to central London isn’t that good (2tph slow to Victoria, 2tph slow to London Bridge) and peak period figures are boosted by Whitgift School being nearby. Outside peak hours, if not starting one’s journey very close to the station, there is a considerable incentive to catch a bus, or possibly walk, to East Croydon instead.
Narrow subway
The station itself is also hardly inviting. The fast platforms (1 & 2) rarely see a train stopping there as, amongst other things, this would considerably reduce the capacity of the fast lines. Meanwhile the remaining three platforms are accessed by a very narrow subway. The platforms themselves are also low, meaning a large step up is needed to get to the train. Those trains are also restricted to 8-car length, although some peak period 10-car and 12-car trains are timetabled to call there and use selective door operation (SDO).
In the off-peak period the three “slow” platforms have to accommodate the four stopping trains an hour in each direction. They also have the trains to and from East Grinstead and Uckfield passing through and there are various trains that run fast between East Croydon and Purley. There is also an hourly train from Milton Keynes via Kensington Olympia that terminates there.
Mirror at south end of platform 5 with SDO notice
South Croydon – Milton Keynes
One must not be misled into thinking that, in general, the train from Milton Keynes terminates at South Croydon for any reason related to convenience to passengers. It is simply a case of not wishing to block the platforms at East Croydon and terminating at South Croydon was decreed to be the most practical way to achieved this, especially when taking into account the need to avoid more rolling stock being required for the East Croydon – Milton Keynes service than was essential. Terminating at South Croydon also has the benefit of not adding to the conflicting moves at South Croydon Junction.
On the left of the picture is the crossover installed for Milton Keynes terminators
As a result of the decision to terminate services from Milton Keynes at South Croydon, the necessary terminating facilities (a crossover and revised signalling) were installed a few years ago. In the late morning peak one of the trains from Milton Keynes is well used at its southern end by pupils going to Whitgift School – as Southern Railway found to their cost earlier this year when they, for a very short period, terminated it at East Croydon to assist with reliability of the problematic Southern timetable. Its continuation to South Croydon was very quickly reinstated.
The difficulties of any South Croydon Junction improvements
As already established, the junction immediately to the south of the station is South Croydon Junction. Here trains for East Grinstead (4tph peak/ 2tph off-peak) and Uckfield (2tph peak/ 1tph off-peak) join and leave the Brighton Main Line. It would be ideal if these joined the fast lines at South Croydon but they don’t, because they are literally the wrong side of the tracks. If East Croydon gets rebuilt this will be less of an issue, as up trains on the slow lines will then have a conflict-free route to both London Bridge and Victoria. In the down direction the route from London Bridge will be almost conflict-free and it will only be in the down direction from Victoria that things will really be less than ideal.
Joining the Brighton Main Line slow lines from Oxted in the peak periods is not too bad at present, as four of the six trains per hour in each direction start from or continue to London Bridge. Whilst the route to London Bridge (fast) is not conflict free, the route from London Bridge is and, if the tracks around East Croydon get rebuilt, the route will be conflict-free in both directions. Based on the current timetable, only two of the trains will be routed to and from Victoria on the fast lines.
Public footbridge at north end of platforms
The space available for grade separation at South Croydon Junction is extremely limited. The two lines south of the station divide immediately, a road bridge is crossed and the routes diverge quite rapidly. A public footbridge that crosses the station prevents grade separation to the north. The road below the bridge at the south of the station rules out a diveunder so the only possible way to grade separate the junction would be through the use of a flyover. Apart from the technical difficulties it would be difficult to see this being acceptable in such a suburban area.
Bridge taking railway over Croham Road
South Croydon Gateway
As many people know BML2 is a proposed suggestion, not endorsed by Network Rail, to use the Uckfield Line, the disused line from Selsdon to Coombe Road, the existing tramlink line from Coombe Road to Elmers End, the current Hayes Line and a new tunnel to create an alternative route to the Brighton Main Line, to Canary Wharf and Stratford and onward to Stansted.
The attitude of transport professionals to BM2 so far has generally been to try and avoid mentioning it in polite (or particularly excitable) company. The consensus has seemed to be that it’s a distraction that would be unbelievably expensive and disruptive and they thus hoped it would go away and be forgotten about. They have been unsuccessful in this quest.
In the early days of BML2 proposals one of the biggest objections was that it avoided all the places that people actually wanted to go to – in particular East Croydon. To counter that the BML2 supporters have proposed a Croydon Gateway station just to the south of the existing South Croydon Station. This seems to have become an essential ingredient of the scheme.
The idea is somewhat mindblowing. The proposal can be found on their website at the bottom of the relevant page. If it ever gets as far as being independently costed it would be interesting to see how it compares with the East Croydon scheme. The idea is that trains from either Brighton or Lewes via Oxted can continue to either London via East Croydon or Canary Wharf and Stratford via the Hayes Line route.
To quote the website:
[T]here will need to be a cross-connection to enable BML trains to cross over onto BML2 and reach Canary Wharf. East Croydon deals with huge amounts of people switching trains and would benefit by having a far larger and purpose-built interchange station at this location currently occupied by light industrial units. It might well be desirable to amalgamate Sanderstead, Purley Oaks and South Croydon stations into Croydon Gateway which would obviously be connected to Tramlink.
One of the problems is that the idea has not been costed and clearly also relies on other parts of the scheme being feasible – parts which haven’t been established and are clearly not costed either. Another problem is the presumption that the service would be willingly used, with no research to establish what demand there would be so far apparent. In other words would “huge amounts [sic] of people” really be willing to change trains at South Croydon Gateway?
BML2 in general
As far as BML2 in general – and South Croydon Gateway in particular – go, it is safe to say that the general consensus at LR Towers is they seem to be rather large leaps of faith. Unfortunately, like women in lakes distributing swords, this is not a sound basis for governing and making decisions. This, of course, doesn’t mean it is definitely a bad idea, just that there is currently no real evidence for it being a good one. On that basis it is hard to see why it is given more credence than any of the many other similar blue-sky schemes regularly suggested by interest groups and others.
The BML2 argument seems to rely on many presumptions that are, at the very least, disputable. It is perceived by its supporters as not only a solution to a problem but the best solution. For example, it presumed there is a requirement for a tunnel from south London to Canary Wharf and that the BML2 solution is the best way to provide it.
Sauce for the goose
One common thread in all the BML2 literature seems to be that the Brighton Main Line is full up and the situation cannot be rectified. In fact, as the evidence seen so far in this series has shown, there is an awful lot of extra capacity that can be made available – almost certainly at a fraction of the cost. If a sixth track were to be added between East Croydon and South Croydon, as indicated is possible, then there would appear to be nothing to prevent extra trains from the Uckfield Line going via East Croydon and onward to New Cross Gate. By allowing a two minute interval on the fast line to London Bridge north of East Croydon you should be able to get in an extra 6tph.
BML2 already proposes a tunnel from Lewisham to Canary Wharf. If instead you had an equivalent tunnel from New Cross Gate to Canary Wharf you could achieve the same objective without having to try and reinstate a disused railway, displace a well used dedicated tram route, attempt to have frequent trams and trains sharing a section of two track railway formation and interwork with either the Hayes rail or even Underground service.
This is not to suggest that there should be six tracking between South and East Croydon. Nor that a tunnel should be built between New Cross Gate and Canary Wharf. It is merely intended to demonstrate that, without commenting on the BML2 proposal south of Uckfield, the BML2 proposals within the GLA area seem somewhat over the top. The fact is that if a route from Uckfield to Canary Wharf were that desirable an objective, it probably could be achieved by much cheaper means. Most of the work at East Croydon would be necessary anyway regardless of whether any aspect of BML2 came to fruition or not.
East Croydon – the problem or the solution?
BML2 claims that East Croydon is “a bottleneck and a significant barrier to growth”. The most recent two parts of this series help show that, while this is currently true, there is no reason why East Croydon need be a bottleneck in future. Far from being a barrier to growth, it is seen locally as a potential catalyst for it. Whatever the merits of BML2 may be, avoiding East Croydon in the future because it is a bottleneck today seems an extremely dubious basis for the proposals made.
Next time we will probably look in detail at the lines to East Grinstead and Uckfield, including a reference to the idea of reinstating the old line from Uckfield to Lewes. However, this will be largely limited to how this and other potential enhancements impact on London’s rail services.
With thanks to ngh for the diagrams of South Croydon
“If Network Rail’s current ongoing analysis of future train movements is correct and their East Croydon proposals come to fruition then in the morning peak it should be possible to run a much more intensive peak period service than today without too many issues. ”
Sorry, but after the London Bridge fiasco surely any modelling by NR has to be taken with a pinch of salt…
Re Hmm,
NR said the max that could run was 22tph, Southern tried to run 24tph and join and split services in London Bridge. Southern have now listened to NR run 22tph and don’t join or split services at London Bridge and services are now operating pretty reliably.
South Croydon Jn – Also worth noting that many of the points and crossings have speed limit of 20mph so rebuild of the junction might improve performance.
Up Sanderstead to P3 or 4 20 mph
P5 to Down Slow 20mph
Down Sanderstead to P4 20mph
Else 40mph on the East Grinstead/Uckfield Branch and 60mph on the main line slows.
I agree with much of the article and think its a good overview of the area. Couple of points though.
“On the presumption that there is no point in providing an additional track for the fast services”
A third fast track could be useful, if it allowed trains from Redhill to reach East Croydon without conflicting with the direct quarry line (that avoids Redhill). Possible, but certainly not easy, given the distance over which the extra track would be needed.
“By allowing a two minute interval on the fast line to London Bridge north of East Croydon you should be able to get in an extra 6tph.”
Bear in mind that the recent trend has been growth of 6% per year. That is roughly the equivalent of needing to add 1tph per year. Thus in the kind of timescales of rail planning, 6tph extra can be seen as simply not enough. (And note recent populaton increase projection too).
As such, it is entirely reasonable to be asking whether the Brighton Main Line (and others like the South West and Anglia main lines) really need an additional pair of tracks throughout in the 15+ year timescale, with the “tinkering” of another 6tph being in place to get everyone through until then. In that light, some of the ideas of BML2 are really not that unrealistic. Where I disagree with BML2 is that there is no need to serve Croydon at all. Once you have a new route, heading via a different town centre such as Bromley makes more sense to open up new connections. Its not like Croydon is ever going to be underserved.
A few typos
[All corrected, thanks! LBM]
Could the nice coloured track diagram in the “Alternative to six tracks” section enlarge when clicked on rather than get smaller? it would make some of the text more readable.
Feel free to delete the above once sorted.
I think I detected a tiny tiny amount of scepticism about BML2 and a desire to never ever discuss it again once people have poured forth their views in this “once in a lifetime” opportunity. 🙂 🙂
I’d noticed that BML2 was being promoted in the latest edition of RTM … they seem to believe that a Gatwick – Stansted link is urgently required (which makes no sense to me). I also don’t see pax at Purley Oaks or Sanderstead being happy to walk to new combined station at South Croydon. So back to realistic options …
It’s a great pity, I suppose, that the grade separation via a flyover can’t be placed *north* of South Croydon station where, because it is in a deep cutting, nobody will complain about the view. Indeed, side supports could be used. But if there is no room for a sixth line there is no room for a climbing turnout.
So, sorry for my ignorance here, but this piqued my interest. I am very surprised to learn that the slow and the fast lines used to be reversed at South Croydon. Why was this changed? How was it changed (since it’s implied that there aren’t platforms on the fasts at Purley, how was this dealt with when those were the slows)? To what extent where the fasts and slows reversed — the whole line, or just to East Croydon, or what? It just seems to me like that line was built for the (current) fasts to be the fasts and the (current) slows to be the slows, and it surprises me to learn that it was once backwards.
The point about six-tracking between South and East Croydon is the simplification it offers of two dedicated fast lines, two dedicated slow lines and two dedicated Oxted Line lines, and if the Oxted line is to be used more heavily that might be needed. In turn that suggests a different layout for East Croydon and Windmill Junction than presently planned. It’s why I believe a full Sussex strategy needs to be developed before changes to East Croydon and Windmill Rd are considered.
Muzer – before the current setup, the four unidirectional lines between East Croydon and Coulsdon North had mixed usage – there weren’t dedicated fast and slow lines. The eastern pair (now the Slows) were called the Through lines, leading to the LBSCR Quarry Line and Coulsdon North; and the western (now the Fasts) were the Local lines, leading to the SER Redhill line and Caterham/Tattenham Corner branches – see http://www.wbsframe.mste.co.uk/public/pdf/South_Croydon_1955.01D2.PDF.
Fast services generally used the Up Local line through South Croydon’s platform 1 and the Down Through through platform 4, with stopping trains on both pairs – 94 Victoria-Coulsdon North on the Local lines, 01/93 Charing X-Caterham/Tattenham Corner on the Through. With the closure of Coulsdon North, all stopping services were concentrated on the Through (now Slow) lines.
Purley has platforms on all lines.
Great, now I can finally have my say on BML2! 😉
Having gone through their website and proposals, it is my impression that BML2 is a ‘front’ for frustrated Wealden Line campaigners trying to improve the BCR for the Lewes – Uckfield line (+/-the Tun Wells West line) by incorporating it into some grand, megalomaniac scheme to relieve the BML. Clearly they have not come to terms with the (admittedly flawed) negative feasibility study a few years ago which killed off any hope of reopening those lines in the very near future.
Whatever the merits of their proposals for reopening the lines in Sussex and improving the Uckfield line (and there are many), their proposals within London strike me as misguided at best, and just plain deluded at worst! Attempting to displace Tramlink and transform the Hayes line into a main line (which might well require four-tracking) is never going to happen in a month of Sundays, and their other plans within London are probably as likely as a future ‘Boris Island’ airport.
BML2 should serve as an warning to all at LR of crayonism writ large i.e. what can happen when a group of crayonistas with some money and a fancy website go out of control…..
Walthamstow Writer,
Could the nice coloured track diagram in the “Alternative to six tracks” section enlarge when clicked on rather than get smaller? it would make some of the text more readable.
Unfortunately, clicking doesn’t enlarge a picture or map. It makes it page size, or nearly page size. Or more strictly the size of the window the application is in. So if it is already bigger than your page it gets smaller.
On most browsers right clicking on it will give you the option of opening in a new tab. Do that and you can then click it to magnify it to full size an scroll (and see any the imperfections in the diagram as we didn’t think anyone would bother to do this).
Alternatively just click here.
Muzer,
Mike has answered your question better than I can regarding about swapping the lines around. It certainly makes East Croydon station work better and I think you have to get East Croydon right then work everything else around that.
A very balanced article – thank you for the research and clarity of the analysis. A small point – the rumour mill has it that the MK-S Croydon service is likely to be cut back to Watford again to release paths at Bletchley for E-W.
@Anonymously – extremely well said! Money is never an objective to enthusiasts and zealots.
Re Mike,
But the Redhill (“Through” [SER built] now slow) and Quarry (“local” [LBSCR built] now fast) lines cross.
The Quarry lines are joined to the western lines at South Croydon and the eastern lines south of Earlswood where the 2 pairs lines rejoin with.
Re Kate,
As PoP has hinted the current Windmill Bridge proposal has improved as regards the slows lines from that in the Sussex report (see part 9 drawings) (combined with a review of whether a down fast to slow flyover at Stoats Nest is also worth while).
According to the 1914 “RJD” only the lines through Selsdon & the Oxted line were joint – all the rest were LBSC of various dates.
( Diagram near head of article )
Here for picture
And, for the further complications, a little further south: Here, too
ngh
Yes – restructuring the S Croydon point-layout for 40/50 mph for all directions would make a really significant difference, wouldn’t it?
Anonymously
Yes – and – No.
BML2 is a “castle in the air”, but re-opening Uckfield-Lewes + re-double-tracking as an alternative route, is not, IMHO.
I have a very strong suspicion that the BCR for the re-opening is wrong & too low, probably by the operating parameters/initial conditions being set wrongly (i.e. the question may have been “loaded).
I think I’ll leave it at that, on this sub-subject.
[Thank you. If only because it attacts so much interest, we will try and provide a future opportunity fo all to freely give their views on Uckfield-Lewes – if only because, for some reason it attracts so much interest. Meanwhile… stick to topic PoP]
@Mike
QUOTE The eastern pair (now the Slows) were called the Through lines, leading to the LBSCR Quarry Line and Coulsdon North; and the western (now the Fasts) were the Local lines, leading to the SER Redhill line and Caterham/Tattenham Corner branches UNQUOTE
I am getting confused here. (Trust not due to my age).
Surely this should read The eastern pair (now the slows) leading to the Caterham/Tatt. Corner,Redhill Line, and LBSCR Quarry Line (via now lifted connection to the east of Coulson North station: and the western (now the fasts) leading to Coulsdon North station and Quarry Line.
Re Steven T,
Don’t worry you aren’t getting confused – you’re right…
(See mine at 0953 too)
Re Greg,
As a civil engineer I know quipped, the plain tunnelled distance on BML2 is equivalent to that on HS2 phase 1 so if the cost is any different for BML2, BML2 have got their costings wrong…
Kate,
I suspect that what you are wanting is actually happening. There is a person in overall charge of looking at Brighton Main Line upgrades and what is needed and when. Fairly obviously that person and his team are concentrating an awful lot on East Croydon.
The thing is, as I point out in the article and as ngh points out, you have to initially consider whole line but when you go into detail about individual schemes you may find an opportunity at one location means a change a different location miles away. This is what is currently happening.
I think part of the problem of perception of the issue is that this investigation is actually an ongoing process whereas the route study was a report that had to be published at a particular time. So the report can only give a snapshot of the current thinking at that time with the details that were then available. We ourselves had not fully appreciated that point until recently.
That overall thinking has not fully been developed and our reporting of East Croydon is already slightly out of date as regards intentions. Also, they can only start to involve local councils with rebuilding bridges etc. once they have published their initial plans. It is all an iterative process.
The point about some of this is that it does not matter much what you eventually need to do at South Croydon or elsewhere, the work at East Croydon will still be necessary so you might as well just get on with it. Work at East Croydon may affect what happens elsewhere but not vice versa.
@ Kate, @ PoP 10.41
The East Croydon article, shows 4 fast tracks and 2 slows to the north of East Croydon going under Windmill Bridge, so even with a 6 track section at South Croydon (2 fast lines, 2 slow lines and two 2 Oxted Line lines), the Oxted lines would need to join the fast lines at some (ideally grade separated) point.
Hence the opening statement: “Although not actually at East Croydon, the junction is regarded by Network Rail as part of the East Croydon problem and believes it should not be considered in isolation.”
I do wonder how everything managed to function back in the 70s when you had services from all 3 lines (Hayes branch / Addiscombe / Sanderstead) converging on Lewisham/Lewisham avoiding, and then onto London Bridge(?)
Not to mention you still had the through Bromley North services back then…
Am I missing something or is Thameslink the elephant in the room?
With the benefit of hindsight, I think that BR’s closure of the W&SC was unnecessary -however I do note that there was never a connecting chord between the BML and W&SC which may have proved its worth as a diversionary line (e.g. in the event of the line through East Croydon being blocked, as per PoP above)
Believe there were minimal peak services to and from London from Addiscombe or Sanderstead, usually they were shuttles from Elmers End, the latter being peak only in the end. It’s also possible that the overall service was less intense (Hayes line was certainly just 2tph in the mid-late 80s), or that services from Bromley North avoided Lewisham or took the place of one that now runs out to Orpington or Sevenoaks perhaps.
The pre-1980s map is not quite right. The eastern most track was reversible then and Oxted line trains frequently used P6 at East Croydon in the up direction in the peaks.
It seems to be that the BML2 proposal is based on the assumption that eventually the only way to create significant new capacity to the volume required 30 years from now is at least 2 new tracks from somewhere in the region of South Croydon.
The problem with that assumption is that once you reach this conclusion, sending Brighton line passengers on a roundabout route via Uckfield seems an unneccesary part of the plan to create these 2 extra tracks.
You just return to the tunnelled new line for fast services from Purley area that Network Rail floated a few years back.
Whether that new line heads for Canary Wharf / Waterloo / Victoria may be up for debate but it seems to me that it would definitely want to serve Croydon Town Centre on its way north which the BML2 proposal manages to completely bypass.
“A slow train from Purley could travel via platform 3 at South Croydon to the new platform 5 at East Croydon and beyond. Independently, another train from the Oxted lines could travel via platform 4 at South Croydon to the new platform 6 at East Croydon and beyond. This would be much better than the present situation, as both trains currently have to call at platform 4 at East Croydon, which inevitably delays one of them.”
Not true. Currently an up Oxted Line train could run up the reversible from South Croydon and call at P5 at East Croydon thus avoiding an up Purley slow altogether south of East Croydon. The fact that it doesn’t happen in practice doesn’t mean it can’t.
Altnabreac, it’s not so much that they want to send Brighton line passengers via Uckfield, it is acknowledging that a reinstatement of Uckfield to Lewes by itself won’t make a business case, thus integrating it into a bigger scheme. If we can’t build two tracks from Three Bridges to Brighton, or a whole new line from London to Brighton, using an existing corridor is a reasonable alternative. Also plenty of passengers don’t want to get off at Croydon and do want the Docklands area. I’ve got my doubts about the route via Tramlink/Hayes line, but what the scheme does create is an alternative to the main line during disruption, the possibility of useful Weald-Brighton links via Eridge (or even via a reopened link to Tunbridge Wells) and a helpful all day service to a deprived Newhaven.
Tim,
Pre 1976 services went from London to Addiscombe and Sanderstead simply because there was a lengthy block section from Elmers End to Hayes severely limiting capacity. Post 1976 it was possible for all trains to run to Hayes – which is where the demand was – and reduce the Addiscombe and Selsdon/Sanderstead services to a 2-car shuttle. So the number of trains to and from London was roughly the same.
Although the line through Bingham Road had the potential as a diversionary route it was very rare indeed for this to happen – certainly not even once a year I am pretty sure. Probably more like once a decade. In any case it would probably only have worked by cancelling another train to provide the train path.
The direct Bromley North trains were replaced by a better service to the coast. This was Hastings in particular once the line to Hastings was electrified so no reduction in trains to London.
I don’t think Thameslink has any relevance in this context.
Anonymous 16:00,
I will investigate.
Anonymous 16:05,
Maybe I wasn’t careful enough with my wording. Yes platform 5 at East Croydon can be used for northbound services and occasionally is – such as when a train terminates there. However this rarely happens for trains in passenger service for two reasons:
– The first reason is that it could mean passengers having to switch between platforms 4 and 5 which is undesirable.
– The second reason is a problem with “overlaps” that has been a pain at East Croydon for many years. I forget the exact details but think it is that if a train is signalled to depart from platform 5 northbound then you cannot put a train into platform 4. Hence my addition of “and beyond” to the descriptions. Network Rail have look at this problem a number of times and each time they come to the conclusion that there is no solution without a derogation of the signalling rules (which they cannot get) or a major rebuild.
If the real ‘problem’ is the final two track railway between Brighton and three bridges (or where ever it is). Would it not be easier to just build a new express line to Brighton from that point, with some connecting loops to the more important stops. Keep it near the A23 and it won’t be through unspoilt countryside.
Seems to me if they do need extra track it might as well be by the shortest route.
HS2 shows that building new rail lines are no longer impossible to imagine.
And ‘if’ current population growth rates continue then the UK will grow by another 10 million in 25 years. That’s tomorrow in transport planning terms. I can see the need for new express lines to Ipswich, Reading and Southampton before very long (i.e. 20 years or so) .
Passenger rail use grew between 1997 to 2006 by an average of 3.1% That’s a doubling time of just 22 years. Currently we are seeing 7% to 8% growth rates (hopefully just post recession bounce back).
I wonder if the recent surprisingly rapid push on CR2 is a dawning realisation of what might be needed. Wishful thinking probably, just the coincidence of a chancellor who like infrastructure and pork barrel politics.
I do wonder about the wisdom of giving the BML2 people the oxygen of discussion. The scheme seems to me to be more full of holes than old Nick’s colander. I think that GTR driver has put his finger on it when he refers to Uckfield, and the lack of a business case for reviving the Flyer. But when there is no business case for something, and if the BML proponent has actually grasped this, then how does he suppose that anyone will swallow adding in a whole trunkload of other stuff, for which there is even less of a business case?
Did BR divert Portsmouth services in the 1980s to run via East Croydon rather than via Sutton? Could these services revert to running via Sutton (to free up capacity at EC) or would that simply create a whole new set of problems?
“More tea,Vicar….?”
Richie. 1978. Leaving aside the lack of capacity at Sutton, Epsom, and lack of power between Dorking and Horsham, it would also really annoy all those from the Arun Valley, Horsham and Crawley who want to get to Gatwick and Croydon.
[Comment about Uckfield-Lewes snipped. Be patient. Your opportunity will come. PoP]
It does worry me slightly that the BML2 lobby group has got the ear of local MPs down in Sussex as well as the chancellor, hence this new BML2 feasibility study. When you combine the Treasury’s miserliness with the chancellor’s apparent appetite for infrastructure spending (which I support, IF channeled in the best way), who knows what answer they’ll come up with?
@GTR Driver….Most of the benefits you list from a reopening could be achieved *without* any of the barmy work which is proposed at the London end. Sure, you wouldn’t bypass the bottleneck at East Croydon, or create a new link to Docklands……but shouldn’t we be looking at other options for tackling these (as PoP has done so well for Croydon)?
@Graham H….thank you! 🙂
@Richie
1 – No (it was 1978)
2 – Possibly (but see 3)
3 – Almost certainly
This is one of those subjects, like extension of a certain teal-coloured Tube line or the Hall Farm Curve, which come up very often, but on which there is really little left to say.
ST – thanks for the correction and clarification, and apologies for some silly unchecked over-editing making a confusing situation appear even more confusing.
It is remarkable that mid-nineteenth-century LBSCR/SER railway politics were still being reflected in railway operating practices over 100 years later!
@mike
“It is remarkable that mid-nineteenth-century LBSCR/SER railway politics were still being reflected in railway operating practices over 100 years later!”
A very obvious example of that was the regular appearance, until fairly recently, of Central Division units at Charing Cross. This was because the Caterham/Tattenham Corner branches were built by the SER, which used its running powers over the London & Croydon to get to Spa Road, from where the L&C and SER both ahd running powers of the London & Greenwich (albeit the L&G was owned by the SER by the time the branches were built) to London Bridge, from where they could continue over SER tracks to CX. This practice continued well into BR days, albeit the rolling stock was provided by the Central Division, but what little capacity there was for routing trans from the Forest Hill line into the through platforms at London Bridge was needed for Thameslink services and the Cat/Tat services ceased to operate to CX at the end of 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju-Zgl49YcA
@Mike – 20:50
Thanks for acknowledgement.
Slightly off at a tangent – I still remember going on the last train to Coulsdon North all those years ago. The train was announced at East Croydon, correctly as `the last train ever to Coulson North.
Anonymous 16:00
You are correct. Prior to the signalling changes in 1984 the down relief line had been converted to be reversible. I have added a note to the diagram to reflect this fact.
@Altnabreac Seems sensible in that context to talk about whether long distance is ultimately better provided for by surface rail, and metro by tunnels, or vice versa.
At a guess, the surface rail capacity in the Clapham/Wimbledon corridor freed up by CR2 will be used for more fast-ish trains to places beyond the reach of CR2.. assuming, of course, there hasn’t been so much population growth by then that both CR2 and the suburban surface trains will be bursting at the seams.
So in the context of big, enormously expensive and therefore unlikely-to-happen tunnels stretching from central London to Purley, is it not worth considering whether to build it as a high-frequency Crossrail-like beast, thereby freeing up some surface capacity for longer distance trains, versus building it as a dedicated line for the fasts? The former, being a self-contained system, could perhaps be built with less disruption to existing services; what it can’t provide, of course, is the no-changes connection to the eastern side of central London which commuters from outside the M25 presumably want.
Would it make sense e.g. for one of the two four-track surface railways running north from Croydon be repurposed as all-fast, with the stopping trains replaced by new Tube lines running underground along roughly the same corridors?
Hilltopper
Studies show that while tunneling is an expensive business, what is far more expensive is putting stations on them with all their circulation spaces, connecting passages and larger platform tunnels.
Thus if you are tunneling all the way from Purley it makes far more economic sense to keep slow traffic on the surface where it can use all the existing stations – and keep the tunnels for fast services.
If South Croydon is configured so there are six lines, including dedicated up and down lines on the Oxted route, as is suggested as one option (by removing platform 1 at SC), would that build the case for double-tracking / electrifying the route down to Uckfield as there would then be capacity from SC northwards to accept more trains from this route?
That in turn might divert passengers from the BML onto this route, creating capacity growth on the BML without introducing further trains or track improvements. At present there must be a proportion of BML passengers that head to Haywards Heath, Three Bridges, etc from the east because of the far better level of train service, increasing pressure on BML capacity.
It must be easier (and maybe cheaper) to double track / electrify the Uckfield route that to find a way to 4-track the southern pinch points on the BML?
If passengers from Lewis and Eastbourne could somehow then utilise the improved Uckfield route, then some train paths might become available on the BML too, perhaps for additional Brighton or Gatwick services.
@Anonymous
I recall reading the comments section of a 2011 article on here about SWML capacity, I can’t remember the exact name. Anyway one of the commenters (possibly timbeau) suggested constructed fast lines above the existing lines on a new decking. I have always wondered what the cost of that could be in relation to tunnelling. I would not be very surprised its more expensive than tunnelling out to Three Bridges. Perhaps on a very flat route that is mostly at grade like the WAML or West Coast Mainline out to Watford that may work.
New lines on decking over existing lines. Some problems: Overbridges. Noise. Visual intrusion.
Under what circumstances is it desirable to get East Grinstead / Uckfield trains onto the fasts at South Croydon rather than north of East Croydon? In an ideal world, there would be no crossing movements between East Croydon and Gatwick Airport at all. That would leave the service for the southern part of the BML on the fasts and Redhill / Caterham / Tattenham / Oxted line services on the slows.
It should be possible to set up a timetable with the current three tracks to get the services correctly flighted to allow for the stops at South Croydon and Purley Oaks, for the crossing movements at South Croydon to be paired – indeed the East Grinstead trains do pass at South Croydon junction xx13/xx43 but the Uckfield trains don’t – and for some stopping trains to be overtaken between East Croydon and South Croydon.
The December 2015 off-peak timetable does remove the crossing movement at Stoats Nest Junction in the down service to Redhill with all three services in each half hour on the slow lines at East Croydon. It is a shame (for general robustness of the service) that this can’t be organised in the up direction. I assume this is because no use is made of the reversible line in the up direction.
@Miles
I would have thought that decking over an existing line for any distance would be extremely disruptive to the line underneath whilst the work was going on – not to mention the need to reconstruct every single overbridge.
(It will probably turn out now that it was my idea)
Just to chip in: Surprisingly, I’m not a fan of BML2 either, though I actually think it’s various constituent parts have merit, just not necessarily all put together. As echoed by the many voices above, there are various concerns with the scheme as a whole. That said, the general principle of reinstating Uckfield-Lewes and Eridge to Tunbridge Wells is sound on a regional level (it’s a horrible journey, even by car), just not as a London mainline one, IMHO, given the route is somewhat roundabout-the-houses, so to speak.
[Should really have waited until we covered the Oxted lines in future article. PoP]
On the general subject of “BML2”, I proposed an alternative back in part 7 (which was discussed in great detail), but for those not wanting to click though the summary is basically …
[Extremely long summary snipped. PoP]
What’s the significance of frequencies on Southeastern?
timbeau – that’s precisely the example of which I was thinking, but even more so: while both Coulsdon North and Cat/Tatt were nominally both Central Division services, in slam-door days the Coulsdon trains were SUBs as elsewhere on the division but Cat/Tatts were EPBs, presumably to avoid SUBs in an otherwise all-EPB (and DD) Charing X. The split between the LBSCR and the SER lived on 50+ years after their demise, including timetables: up trains to both Victoria and Charing X departed from Purley, Purley Oaks and S Croydon at almost the same time, using the resources required for a 15-minute service to provide effectively a 30-minute one.
Minor correction: the Caterham branch was built by its own company, albeit SER supported, and the story of its trying to connect with LBSCR trains at GodstoneRd/Purley is a fine example of the sheer bloody mindedness at which railways south of the river were so good.
GTR Driver
I will await PoP’s Lavender Line follow up but BML2 still looks like a solution seeking a problem to me…
Re Brockley Mike,
Significantly cheaper fares and season tickets on the Uckfield Branch already have already achieved this over the last decade – lots of Passengers already head there especially if they have to get in the car to get to a station any way. Sorting out East Croydon and Windmill Bridge Jn will also provide several far faster equivalent extra Haywards Heath via Quarry lines without having to upgrade (double / electrify) Uckfield.
The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Orange
What’s the significance of frequencies on Southeastern?
I was merely using it as a good example to show that you don’t need to run such a frequent service in the evening peak as in the morning peak. So even if the “down” solution is not as good as the “up solution it might be good enough.
I don’t know of any other TOC that handles the peak disparity in quite the same way as SouthEastern by running the same service interval pattern but slightly less frequently so chose it as the best example I could give although there are alternatives.
The DLR extends trains from Stratford to Lewisham rather than Canary Wharf in the morning peak but not the evening peak so that is somewhat similar. TfL Rail and its predecessors operate a slightly different, more intensive pattern in the morning peak.
I imagine many TOCs serving suburban London adjust the number of carriages between morning and evening peaks to adjust better to the different types of demand (intensive and relatively short or less intensive but longer lasting).
[I snipped most of this because I have got time to mess about picking the bits that are acceptable and those that are not. PoP]
Brockley Mike
It must be easier (and maybe cheaper) to double track / electrify the Uckfield route that to find a way to 4-track the southern pinch points on the BML?
Probably – this is one of my suspicions about the BCR for this scheme – but NOT in this thread?
@poP/Orange
“you don’t need to run such a frequent service in the evening peak as in the morning peak. ”
The morning peak is much more concentrated than the evening one – the schools start to chuck out as early as 3:30 whilst many 9-to-5-ers stay on in town after work in the evening from time to time, and people making long-distance trips are also likely to return later than the main 5-6:30 pm rush. On my line we get crush-loading in the morning, despite the off peak 4tph service being augmented by two PIXC-busters. In the evening the only concession we get to the rush hour is an extra two cars added to the 1757.
@Mike
“in slam-door days the Coulsdon trains were SUBs as elsewhere on the division but Cat/Tatts were EPBs, presumably to avoid SUBs in an otherwise all-EPB (and DD) Charing X.”
My recollection was somewhat later, when EPBs were ubiquitous in all three divisions. However, the Cat/Tats were always recognisable at Charing Cross and London Bridge as being Bulleid-type 2EPBs (56xx), which were exclusive to the Central division – until they moved to the North London Line. As you say, the Eastern section had no SUBs by that time, but it did have all the BR-type 2- and 4-EPBs except the ex-South Tyneside units whose lower seating capacity meant they were confined to the Hounslow Loop, which was a bit of a backwater in those days (how times have changed!)
Miles @ 23:24: The suggestion of double-decking existing lines does get a brief mention on page 58 of the route study:
Just realised another reason why the cat/tats were rarely SUB formations. They were usually formed of 2x2EPB, joining and splitting at Purley. You can’t do that with a single 4SUB, and 2x4SUB would have been overkill!
Of course Eridge to Tunbridge Wells is still an operating railway…
The premise of BML2 is to relieve the BML without 4 tracking the existing line to Brighton, and thus avoiding the vast expense of :
1) a couple of miles new tunnel under the South Downs
2) approx 17 miles of new tracks alongside existing rail lines
3) rebuilding East Croydon
To save this expense, the BML2 proposal is to spend the money instead on:
1) a couple of miles of new tunnel under the South Downs
2) approx 17 miles of new tracks alongside an existing rail lines
3) rebuilding South Croydon
Oh, *and*
4) a tunnel underneath South London
5) underground stations in London / Canary Wharf
6) electrification of 18 miles of existing route, and, finally,
7) reopening a line in rural Sussex
Meanwhile it can miss out insignificant locations like Haywards
Heath, or the continent’s 9th busiest airport, for example.
The irony.
@VTB2 – 🙂
[Off topic comments snipped. LBM]
IF you had flyover junctions where the Quarry/Redhill lines cross over each other, would an UUDD layout be better between there & E Croydon, or do we want to retain UDUD + the extra track(s) N of S Croydon? The Cat/Tat services will complicate this mix, of course, so a rebuild of Purley might turn out to be necessary, which might be an extra unwanted expense.
Um.
@John Elliot, Thank you for sharing that. That is very interesting, very interesting indeed. I maybe one of the youngest readers here on LR so I might, might live to see the day that day of vertical hexdrupling through South London.
But back to life back to reality..
To be fair VTB, BML2 proposes ONE tunnel to get from the Uckfield line to the Lewes-Brighton line, now that the alignment that reaches Lewes facing in the right direction has been lost. To quad track the existing line involves new tunnels at Balcombe, Haywards Heath, Clayton and Preston Park, not to mention spanning the Ouse Valley, where I’m sure plenty would be said about spoiling the view of the viaduct. There is also the far from small matter of accommodating extra tracks thorough Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill and Hassocks. I’ll leave a fuller comment for the right discussion but I don’t feel I can leave that particular post unchallenged!
@Greg
“IF you had flyover junctions where the Quarry/Redhill lines cross over each other, would an UUDD layout be better between there & E Croydon? The Cat/Tat services will complicate this mix, of course,”
Pairing by direction between Quarry and Croydon would make for some operational convenience – not to mention the potential for cross platform interchange at East Croydon – but a switch back to pairing by use would be needed at some point before reaching Victoria. (The Forest Hill line is paired by direction, but the most southerly of the four tracks on the Bermondsey Diveunder will, at last provide a conflict free conversion to paired by use on the London Bridge approaches)
The crossover point is seen here
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2959281,-0.1522196,3a,15y,16.5h,85.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s8BUmGilsl8hRfqbul73PkQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
(looking north along the Redhill line, with the Quarry Line crossing on the skew)
There certainly seems to be space to do as you suggest, and the height difference is relatively small.
A new ramp would be needed on the west side of the formation to connect the existing up line from Redhill to the existing Quarry Line towards London
A xsecond new ramp would be needed between the lines north of the crossover to connect the existing up Redhill line towards Croydon (now repurposed as the down fast) to the down Quarry line at the crossing point.
Near the crossing point, up fast trains from the Quarry line would be slewed onto the existing down Quarry (which would become the up fast north of the crossing point)
The fact it’s not been done suggests there are problems with his plan, but I don’t think the layout at Purley is it. Note that the tattenham Corner line runs parallel to the BML for more than half a mile before diving unbder it, so laying in a connection from the branch to what would now be the up slow would be very straightforward. Not so easy would be getting Caterham and Oxted line trains onto the new up slow. Two flying junctions between Purley and South Croydon might be too much – but rationalisation in the Whyteleafe Valley might solve that one – cue rival claims as to whether Kenley or Riddlesdown station should be closed!
@GTR Driver
Fair challenge. Granted that the total length of the four tunnels is 2.3 miles. The length of the BML2 tunnels to Lewes is 1.5 miles, so yes less tunnelling in Sussex. Although I think a new, complementary viaduct across the Ouse at Balcombe would be received with slightly less approbation than a new viaduct over the Ouse flood plain at Hamsey. And as I’m sure you know, you don’t need new tracks through Haywards Heath as there are already four.
And apart from the line to Uckfield, locations further down the Brighton Main Line will be a topic in due course – inasmuch as how they affect London anyway. So we really don’t want a discussion here about Balcombe tunnel, the Ouse Viaduct, Keymer Junction, Haywards Heath or anywhere else. Scissors are being sharpened.
@ Greg
If the lines were paired by direction UUDD north of Star Lane (the Quarry line/Redhill line flyover), there would be a problem serving Coulsdon South. Its two platforms would both be served by Down Trains and there would be no station from which to catch an Up train! Unless, of course, I have misunderstood your suggestion.
@ Timbeau
The Caterham/Tattenhams used to be formed with BR style 2EPBs and South Tyneside units used to appear from time to time, until around 1971/72. I take a personal pride in the fact that I made a Staff Suggestion (remember those?) pointing out that as the stations on the branches were unstaffed, it was impossible for the guard to pass through these trains to issue/check tickets, as the BR 2EPBs contained a number of compartments. By switching to the older Bulleid style 2EPBs, with open saloons, PayTrain operation would be easaier and BR could start to collect some avoided revenue.
I seem to recall that I was paid £5 for the suggestion and the BR stock was transferred away from the branches at the next timetable change.
@Petras
That’s very interesting. I only really knew the South London network from around 1977, but I certainly remember the Tattenham Corner branch being operated on the paytrain principle the one time I had occasion to use it!
With the exception of the South Tyneside units, I only ever saw BR-style EPBs on the SE Division – the BR-type 2EPBs were of course built specially for the SE 10-car scheme, after the less-than-entirely-successful double-deck experiment. The SR-type 2EPBs were actually newer, built around 1960 in true Trigger’s Broom/Theseus’s Ship (according to your cultural reference points) on frames which had built in the 1930s, originally to take wooden bodies that had themselves started out as hauled stock. No doubt some of their traction motors are still whirring away under class 455s.
And some Wimbledon-based 455s are being retractioned, so continuing the saga.
The 455 fleet also include two cars recycled from the class 210 diesel units and, rather more obviously, 43 cars from 508s, giving an irregular roof profile reminiscent of the pre-war 4SUBs with Bulleid-style “augmentation trailers” or the “tadpole” diesel units
http://www.southernelectric.org.uk/news/swt/img/cpce5711tonbridge290208.jpg
Seems that with the new timetable from Sunday 13 December there will only a a solitary Milton Keynes train starting from South Croydon Mondays-Fridays and none at all at weekends. They will terminate at East Croydon.
PoP – that link also says (on p8) that Thameslink Three Bridges trains will stop at South Croydon…. Don’t think so!
Mike,
Nor does the National Rail website. I don’t suppose they will call at Coulsdon Couth [sic] either. The presentation does seem slightly sloppy with station names often, but not consistently, entirely in lower case.
PoP
Ah, that explains something.
It’s obvious that, of course, the TOC’s have long had copies of the new (12th Dec onwards) timetable, but the general public are not permitted to view it, yet, at any rate.
It is to be hoped that we don’t get a re-run of this spring’s change, when the full “NRtt” didn’t appear until very close to the due date?
Greg,
The TOCs may have “long had copies” but that is not the same as Network Rail declaring that the latest version is the absolute final version. But there does seem to be a discrepancy around. I suspect it is a lot easier for someone like c2c or Chiltern to be pretty confident their timetable is not going to be affected at a late stage by some outside influence.
@Mike
“Thameslink Three Bridges trains will stop at South Croydon”
Where does it say that? The Saturday service shown on page 8 says the same as the weekday service on page 2 – calling at all stations between Redhill and Purley – but no mention of South Croydon.
The full timetable may not have been published yet, but the times have been available in online journey planners for about six weeks now – ever since the twelve-week horizon passed the December implementation date.
timbeau,
Try the top of page 6 or simply search for “South Croydon”
“Intermediate stops between Redhill and East Croydon (Merstham, Coulsdon Couth, Purley, Purley Oaks, South Croydon) will be served by the Thameslink Three Bridges to Bedford service.”
So it does – so on page 6 it says S Croydon will not be served by the Victoria services, and on page 2 it says the Thameslink won’t serve it either (by implication – it doesn’t say it will).
Well, closing South Croydon would make a lot of space for the flying junction that’s been suggested!
The journey planner for a random date in January shows no direct services between Redhill and South Croydon – change at Purley or East Croydon (the same fare is quoted so presumably backtracking is allowed)
Typo in article: “make sense for their to be two up slow”
[Fixed. Thanks. PoP]
I was going to stay away from all this, preferring instead to self-harm, but Sad Fat Dad’s comment of 3 November 2015 at 19:02 “Leaving aside the lack of capacity at Sutton, Epsom, and lack of power between Dorking and Horsham, it would also really annoy all those from the Arun Valley, Horsham and Crawley who want to get to Gatwick and Croydon” cannot go unchallenged. The majority of travellers from Horsham and the Arun Valley do not want to go to Gatwick. This is a very common error. And for once, I’m totally in agreement with Malcolm when he said on 3 November 2015 at 17:10
“I do wonder about the wisdom of giving the BML2 people the oxygen of discussion”.
Well said Malcolm, I agree. Some schemes continue to get air time, others are forbidden, although I personally would have considered routes south of West Croydon to be “on piste”.
@Castlebar. I never said that the majority of passengers on those lines want to go to Gatwick and Croydon, however many do. And reducing their opportunities to do so would not be popular; indeed, assuming they were to go this way to release capacity on the BML for other services (as otherwise Three Bridges, Gatwick and East Croydon would lose frequency) it would imply reducing the frequency of service at Crawley altogether.
Another reason why it is difficult,is that spare peak paths through the Sutton – Streatham Jn corridor are pretty scarce, certainly if they were to be non stop to maintain journey times. And then they have to get on to the BML proper at Streatham Jn via a single line chord to the fasts (except there would be no paths) or the slow lines (which are, err, slow). Going via West Croydon would be even slower.
So not much going for it, sorry.
@Castlebar – they might not want Gatwick or Croydon, but do they really want Dorking, Epsom and Sutton? I’d imagine that the BML stations would be more popular than the Mole Valley line ones, and for the key locations (Clapham Junction and Victoria) at the end of the route, both routes are pretty much the same in journey time (assuming fewer stops on Mole Valley trains).
It’s not as if there isn’t space for these trains on the BML north of Three Bridges – as the Article says (about diverting services away from East Croydon to the east, rather than the west as you propose):
And with devolution agreements to hash out, with a balance between metro and longer distance trains sharing tracks needing to be found, then pathing issues would scupper additional, fast, trains on the Mole Valley.
BML2 would have similar issues without a tunnel from Coombe Road to Lewisham – which is what completely kills the idea.
There has been some recent discussion on the generally-discouraged topic of how many of the services between points west of Brighton and London go via Gatwick. Moderators are tolerating it for the moment, and we would prefer it to conclude naturally, without snips or rancour, without strenuous attempts to “have the last word”, and with (if necessary) agreement to disagree. But it remains something about which we do not want to see too much more discussion (mainly because already well covered). Please do all try to help us out here.
In addition to that SF Dad, even if we double track the fast spur, down trains from Vic to Sutton via Epsom would block up and down fast while they crawl their way up to the Portsmouth line. And block both Portsmouth lines actually. So as you say, not great. Now, if they were going from London Bridge instead…
[Clearly this comment was started before Malcolm issued his decree so, on that basis, we will let it stay PoP]
[Comment snipped in its entirely as it was on the subject of the Arun Valley line. No worse than any others but the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you want to have a discussion on this please do it elsewhere. PoP]
[Further clarification. My request was intended to permit (only) responses along the lines of “I see what you mean but I do not agree”. (Not that I am asking for such a response, but someone might have felt compelled to make one). timbeau’s snipped remark here was not along such lines, and as such I obviously concur with PoP’s action. In fact to save moderator effort, even this exemption is probably ended now. Malcolm]
Just on the history bit: the article mentions “carriage sidings” at South Croydon – no, it was a goods yard. The then reversible (‘down relief’) through platform 5 was used to relieve the other tracks of up peak hour trains off the Oxted route, normally the East Grinstead ones and there was a crossover from the up from Selsdon to the down and over to the reversible before the actual junction. Very useful that facility was, too, as it continued beyond platform 6 at East Croydon towards Norwood Junction. There was also a set of crossovers just north of South Croydon from the eastern track pair (excluding the reversible) to the western pair (looking northwards).
I *knew* that the main Milton Keynes service reversing at South Croydon wasn’t going to last long; I could never see the sense of stopping and reversing a train on one of the busiest parts of the four tracks of the BML. Trouble is, whether reversing at East or South Croydon, Sanderstead or Smitham (“Coulsdon Town”), it was taking up a path of a former, popular service between East Croydon, Norwood Junction, Crystal Palace, Tulse Hill and London Bridge, especially the path through the Windmill Bridge area.
Since the Mid-Kent has been mentioned, it was always thought that it could have been used as a relief route for the Oxted route via Elmers End but certainly in my era it wasn’t (my uncle never kept the semaphore signal lamps alight during the summer months along the route because nothing would be passing after the evening peak when it was still light). Mind you, I have been on a steam train through Elmers End, Bingham Road and Selsdon…. (had to tell someone).
Most Whitgift School boys using South Croydon tended to travel southwards on trains serving Purley, Coulsdon and beyond, so I am a tad surprised about any fuss made coming from the north of South Croydon.
Graham Feakins,
Just on the history bit: the article mentions “carriage sidings” at South Croydon – no, it was a goods yard
If you get out your copy of East Croydon to Three Bridges by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith – which I know you have got – and read the pages on South Croydon you will see:
– Item 14 “The two carriage sidings are on the right”
– The map show two long dead end tracks. These look far more appropriate for carriage sidings than a goods yard which would tend to have shorter but more sidings that would fan out
– Item 15 “In the carriage sidings of this much earlier view are two close-coupled 3rd class four-wheelers”. This is accompanied by a picture of said carriages in the carriage sidings.
There are no pictures of a goods yard and there is no text giving any indication of a goods yard.
In any case why on earth would you have a restricted goods yard at South Croydon when there was a large one at Selsdon less than half a mile away – and masses of goods facilities at Fairfield Yard (which was where Fairfield Halls currently stands and less than three quarters of a mile away), East Croydon and Norwood Junction?
Graham Feakins,
Most Whitgift School boys using South Croydon tended to travel southwards on trains serving Purley, Coulsdon and beyond.
That may have been so in the past and they may still make up the majority but if you listen to them when having a conversation at East Croydon (I use the word “listen” in the loosest sense since sometimes you can hardly help but hear) then it is clear that some travel some distance from places like Clapham and Wandsworth.
so I am a tad surprised about any fuss made coming from the north of South Croydon
Ah yes but we are in the online social media era where such things quickly snowball on Mumsnet etc. even though the numbers may be relatively small.
@PoP – “……In any case why on earth would you have a restricted goods yard at South Croydon….?” I don’t know but the vans and the like I used to see on those rails beside the access road didn’t look like carriages to me. It’s rather like asking why anyone should stop a Brighton semi-fast train with an extra couple of coaches on marked “Reserved” at South Croydon to pick up a load of schoolboys to take them to Reigate but it happened regularly – and we had the same to return us after our escapades around Reigate Hill. I doubt if many in BR(S) argued because their forebears did name a locomotive after the school after all, so we were treated accordingly. Mind you, stopping a Milton Keynes service there would have beyond any Whitgift pupil’s dreams of those days…
Re South Croydon:
– H V Borley’s Chronology of London Railways (RCHS 1982) has an opening date for passengers, but none for goods (and it’s hard to see where there would have been room for any goods handling facilities)
– also according to Borley, S Croydon opened on 1 September 1865, the same date that that the 3rd edition of Joe Brown’s London Railway Atlas gives for the E-S Croydon quadrupling, rather than the 1899 date in the History diagram at the top of the article – the latter date would have been when four-tracking was extended southwards, across Croham Road.
@Mike – Thanks for that – all I am saying is that there were sidings there, maybe just two at maximum extent, and they were used every so often and accessible from the minor road beside. Locally it was referred to as the South Croydon goods yard but perhaps folk thereabout hadn’t ventured even as far as the Metropolis (Central Croydon).
Just looked at M W G Skinner’s Croydon’s Railways; it makes no mention of South Croydon in its freight section, and it says that the fifth (down relief) line E-S Croydon opened in 1896, probably on 28 July, rather than 1907 as shown on the History diagram above.
My memory is not as good as it was, but I recall that there was a footpath rather than a minor road alongside the sidings, in much the same position as the current footpath alongside the carpark, which took the sidings’ place in the 1960s (or so).
Excellent article
The thing that gets me is that they are leaving all the trains crossing from slow’s to fast’s around East Croydon reduces the capacity of the lines and if train planners took some harder decisions (i.e. that might upset some) than try to keep to Historical train services they could improve the situation. So my almost non-crayonista thoughts on changing the timetable.
For example taking all Oxted route trains and Cat/Tat to London Bridge (or Victoria slows) would reduce the number of conflicts drastically.
Perhaps an off-peak service as follows along the slows though South Croydon/East Croydon :-
2x East Grinstead to London Bridge (to Bedford later, Thameslink)
1x Uckfield to London Bridge
2x Caterham to London Victoria (Slow) – no cross over at Selhurst Jnct
2x Caterham to LondonBridge (Slow)
2x Tattenham to London Bridge (to Welwyn later, Thameslink)
2x Horsham to London Bridge (to Peterborough later, Thameslink)
2x Caterham to Milton Keynes – extend to Caterham in opposite pattern to Vic slow to avoid turning round at East Croydon and releasing platform capacity.
At Cottage Junction (hope I have right name) only four services per hour would conflict coming from Selhurst station with London Bridge services – much better than the 8 now. Again reducing conflicts.
This would mean each slow platform face at East Croydon only takes 13 trains per hour so Platform 4 could then be released to fast services, so 1/2 become Northbound platforms and 3/4 Southbound increasing capacity at East Croydon on the fast lines -my crayonista bit.
At peaks there would need to add 2 tph each for Cat/Tat and East Grinstead routes from Victoria – even then its only 17 tph at East Croydon slows which is a train at the platform every 3.5 minutes. Surely achievable with just two platform faces and improving the capacity of the fast platforms without major rebuild.
This will leave a loss of a train on Redhill route as the Three Bridges – Bedford is diverted to East Grinstead. (Bedford still has two trains per hour to Gatwick with the Brighton train so would be the best service to divert, especially as the Three Bridges service is a slow train). However a new slot would open at xx:23/xx:53 at Victoria which could become a Victoria to Three Bridges train running all stations to Coulsdon South, then East Croydon, Clapham and Victoria.
I’m sure the residents of East Grinstead will mourn the loss of all day Victoria services but it seems to me to make sense to cut as many conflicts as possible to improve capacity and reliability. The Oxted and Cat/Tat routes are on the London Bridge side of South/East Croydon stations so it makes sense their trains should form the bulk of London Bridge services.
It’s rare to see an editorial on here, but I think as regards those parts of BML2 in London it’s appropriate, and I’m pleased to see so little support, none unqualified. I’ll wait for later articles to discuss the parts outside London.
I see from today’s December timetable announcement that the Milton Keynes service will start and stop at East Croydon. Was this a service they previously had to reinstate to South Croydon?
http://www.southernrailway.com/your-journey/plan-your-journey/timetables/dec-2015
Re Gio
Yes indeed (the infamous Clapham Jn and Wandsworth Common Mumsnet Whitgift special.)
T33,
Your thinking and broad terms is very similar to how TfL say they would approach South London. Of course, in this case, it would lead to a lot more people changing at East Croydon. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem with a rebuilt station but at the same time one could argue that with a rebuilt Windmill Bridge Junction keeping the existing pattern wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I think the spectre of the Wimbledon Loop looms large. As you, more than most who visit this site are aware, changing the train timetable and calling pattern can become very, very political.
Ian Sergeant,
My comments on BML2 were much milder when I submitted the article but clearly an editorial decision was made than on this occasion we would come very much more down on one side. There is nothing written that I wouldn’t want identified with me.
It has the feeling of an initial idea that might have been worthy of further investigation but it reminds me of an unsound scientific theory that seems more and more implausible but is propped up by more modifications to try and salvage it rather than do the sensible thing and ditch the idea. Phlogiston is one idea that springs to mind.
Graham Feakins,
Point taken but carriage sidings and goods yards do not necessarily exclusively have carriages or good vehicles in them as appropriate. The former goods sidings at St Johns being a case in point where the only pictures I can find of anything in them are ones of carriages.
@PoP
I take your point about Phlogiston, where, as every Nuffield Chemistry schoolboy knows, the work of Priestley and Lavoisier proved the theory to be complete balderdash. This isn’t really a fair comparison with BML2, where admittedly half the ideas are either the wrong answer to a problem or an answer to a problem which doesn’t exist – but the other half are worthy at least of discussion. But not now.
@T33
If you’re going to make that difficult political decision to reshape services, (which I accept is nigh on impossible in reality so this probably counts as crayonism,) you may as well go the whole hog and send all Quarry line trains fast to Victoria and all Redhill/Cat/Tatt/Oxted trains to the Thameslink core, (except Uckfield which could terminate at London Bridge until electrification,) and establish a minimum 4tph pattern within the GLA/Z6 boundary. Would simplify necessary works at Windmill Jct.
Most of the recent comments would appear to be concurring that “the railways” aren’t run for the benefit of passengers in a way which produces the most timely / effective services overall, but actually operated on the basis of appeasing the noisiest complainants (whether they actually use the services or not.)
Fair summary?
@ Alison W
I would concur with that theory………..and also appeasing those who are least receptive to change. “Those” I am afraid does include some management as well as ‘customers’
…..and having powerful friends in the right places. If your MP is the Minister for Health, your hospital is safe – especially if it is a marginal seat!
See the Wimbledon Loop – and I can think of an example where a promised step-change in service was promised when the local MP was Transport Minister, only to evaporate, before launch, when the a General Election resulted in a change in government?
@ Alison W – ’twas ever thus. There is some evidence to suggest that some recent TfL bus improvements have only happened because of continued political pressure. That’s not to say there wasn’t a need – there was but TfL had held off spending the money to increase service volume. The Finchley Road proposed changes are an example of politicians killing off controversial changes due to electoral concerns. The political accountability for public transport is fine when it works to your benefit but it can be an utter nightmare when it works against you / “the greater good”.
Could Blackfriars terminators be “sold” even now, if 4 tph were promised ( & delivered, of course ) ??
[If this is to be discussed I would suggest that “Devocalypse Now: Taking Control of South London’s Railways” is a far more relevant thread. Not here please. PoP]
@T33 I suspect you have assumed that the Horsham(Arun Valley)-Vic trains cross to the fasts at Stoats Nest. So this would presumably need the up-slow->up fast flyover there as the price of less complex rebuild North of East Croydon. My understanding from earlier articles would be that the Stoats Nest flyover might not be needed, implying all Horsham trains (4tph) would approach South Croydon on the slows.
Obviously you could route the Horsham-Vic trains on the slows from East Croydon, but that again leads to commuter complaints.
Re Silent Lurker,
Generally agree but a Stoats Nest flyover is now most likely in the down direction not the up to supplement the proposed Up Slow –> Up Fast flyover at Windmill Bridge – the long term aim is to get a combined 40tph (excluding a Clapham Jn rebuild which would add a few more!) on the fasts north of East Croydon which needs a Windmill Bridge Jn rebuild no matter what you try to do to with re-arranging services.
Gio at 09:16
I don’t think they ‘had to’ run to South Croydon, the requirement was just that they had to lose the time spent blocking a platform at East Croydon. So South Croydon turnarounds fitted the overall timings but were just the sensible solution to an East Croydon problem.
Does this mean the future arrival and departure times of the WLL service at East Croydon are now much closer together, reducing the stationary time towards something like a normal station call? Realtimetrains suggests it varies, I found a 4 min, but a number of 9 min turnarounds.
It’s all very well criticising BML2 and it is not that hard to do, but the rail industry has so far failed to articulate any mid-term alternative which has any credibility with elected officials on the Sussex coast. PoP’s articles for me just reinforce that there is no credible alternative on the table.
So, while BML2 has a whole host of issues it remains the front-runner in the absence of any alternatives and the longer that lack of presented alternatives persists the stronger the support for BML2 will become. BML2 might win by default unless the industry over the next 3 or 4 years wakes up and suggests something better.
@Kate. The alternative (somewhat cheaper) is rebuilding East Croydon and Windmill Bridge. See previous articles in this series.
@Kate – clearly, this is not the right thread to debate the alternatives, but there is one that people must get used to – do nothing. There isn’t an infinite pot of money and there are many better (I suspect very much better) claims on what cash is available – many of them will have a better BCR for a start. The throng of unsatisfied punters is very large and at some stage, the Brightonians will be told the price of fish. Of course, there are all sorts of crayonista fantasy alternatives but they are almost certainly even worse performers than the scheme now on the table. I don’t see why the railway industry is under any sort of obligation to invent even more poorly performing schemes – a waste of their time and public money?
@ngh Yes a down fast->down slow flyover at Stoats Nest makes sense to avoid the conflict in the current Windmill Bridge plan. But in that case the Up Arun Valleys will be on the slows through South Croydon as there is nowhere for them to cross south of there. Hence a plan to route all trains on the slow through South Croydon to London Bridge would lose Horsham its Victoria trains (Mole Valley excepted).
As you say, if they are rebuilding Windmill bridge anyway for capacity on the fasts then they may as well sort out the slow-fast up trains as best they can and so T33’s plan is unecessary.
@PoP I think you will find there is already a lot of people changing at East Croydon, I sometimes feel I live on platform 5/6 along with many others swapping connections. The cost of the Windmill Junction and East Croydon improvements will mean it will be delayed to 2030 at least but relief is needed now.
Yes, I am very aware of how political it can become being a Redhill Route/Corridor customer as we have been continually burnt since 2006 when the Thameslink’s were removed. I won’t add my thoughts on the December timetable revision as the sheer size of cuts to the Redhill Corridor again has made me very angry which I doubt I’d express very well. Also I suspect a review of that monstrosity may come as we continue south.
@SilentLurker there are no Horsham – Vic’s in the new off-peak timetable and the fast Reigate/Tonbridge to Vic’s replacing the Arun Valley trains along Redhill corridor are routed Southbound down the slows from Selhurst through platform 6 at ECR adding 2+ minutes to the journey and probably being delayed as they go over 4 flat crossings.
Silent Lurker,
I may be missing something but I presume that in reality what you mean is that trains from Redhill (origin irrelevant) not calling at intermediate stations to East Croydon will be forced to stay on the slow line north of Stoats Nest Junction to avoid a conflicting move at Stoats Nest. Let’s not make out that the Arun Valley line is something special.
I imagine that in future we are talking about trains from the Arun Valley lines, Reigate and Tonbridge starters and some future Thameslink trains that will run fast from Redhill to East Croydon.
If I have understood then I am presuming then the question arises: why can’t they do as now and cross Stoats Nest Junction on the flat? I think the answer is that it will gradually become more difficult as the timetable intensifies but is there really a problem?
At the moment there are only 5 up trains between 07.30 and 08.30 from Redhill to East Croydon. Admittedly, as T33 will no doubt say if I don’t, there used to be many more and this is all down to the Thameslink Programme. Currently all but one (a rogue Thameslink one) stop at Merstham, Coulsdon South and Purley. This suggests that under future normal circumstances as a likely scenario there would be around 4tph fast from Redhill to East Croydon at the most challenging time of day – maybe 6tph at worst. There seems to be three fairly obvious options:
– Have them cross on the flat at Stoats Nest. Not ideal but in the morning peak these could have priority over the conflicting down fasts.
– Run them on the slows. Certainly not ideal either as they won’t get a clear run to East Croydon. You could stop them at one or more intermediate stations to make best use of this delay.
– Build a complementary up slow to up fast grade separated connection as well. The terrain actually gives a lot of possibilities for a location which doesn’t have to be at Stoats Nest and could be between Coulsdon South and the tunnel entrances. A really obvious place to do it is where the lines cross at Hooley (Google satellite image). To me this is also a blindingly obvious place to build a down slow to down fast link as well even though construction costs may be high due to being in a deep cutting. An advantage would be that the fast trains in question would avoid having to go through Coulsdon South station when they are not going to stop there (but may be delayed by a stopper). Whether either link would be value for money, wherever they would be built, for the number of trains that would use them is another matter.
“this is also a blindingly obvious place”
so ‘kiss of death’ then 🙁
Kate,
PoP’s articles for me just reinforce that there is no credible alternative on the table
And what if BML2 did get built? Don’t you imagine there would be plenty of potential for a load more articles explaining the many new problems we would then have with the revised railway? And when bored with writing about that I could write about how the trams have become next to useless due to losing their dedicated right of way.
BML2 is no panacea that would just solve everything in one go.
@PoP My original response was to T33 who seemed to miss the Arun Valley lines from the list of trains on the slow through South Croydon. I use the Arun Valley lines as an example as I happen to live in Horsham, and am less familiar with the other uses of the slows through South Croydon. But yes in essence I mean those Victoria bound up trains arriving at Stoats Nest on the slow lines but not stopping until East Croydon. I think we are talking about the same trains.
T33 seemed to be suggesting that the proposed layout north of East Croydon could be simplified if the routing through East Croydon were made to that all those on the slows went to London Bridge. My point was that his listing of trains on the slows was incomplete were, as I have taken as possible, the Stoats Nest flat crossing to become impossible to path train across. Hence the simplified version of the routing wouldn’t work without some places losing a Victoria service.
Which comes back to where your articles have visited a few times, how to get trains onto the fast lines when they don’t start from Brighton. The current excellent article has largely eliminated South Croydon as a possible way. Stoats Nest is currently used, but as you say eventually it will cause capacity constraints even if it is just because it is another place where trains have to cross together. Hooley is obvious, although no doubt expensive, for up trains, and then maybe a down flyover at Stoats Nest. That sorts the Redhill “fasts”, and aren’t most of the rest going Thameslink?
PoP says “BML2 is no panacea that would just solve everything in one go.“. Worse, it wouldn’t solve anything. Mainly, of course, because no-one has yet explained coherently (as far as I can see) what problem it is even supposed to solve. (Except the problem of how to justify any train service whatever southwards from Uckfield, where its protagonist presumably lives).
The Stoats Nest and other flat crossing problems would be much easier to resolve if the layout between Hooley and East Croydon were paired by direction. And the Hooley skew bridge is the obvious place to switch from paired by use (necessary to ensure Redhill has trains in both directions!) (I thought this had been discussed quite recently). The Forest Hill line is PBD all the way to the Bermondsey Diveunder, but you would need to switch the Victoria route through Norbury back to PBU somewhere before Victoria – could be near Windmill Bridge, could be near Stewarts Lane.
The ‘Arun Valley’ services (Bognor/Portsmouth/Southampton to Victoria) are running on the Quarry lines from the December timetable change. Is that possibly confusing some of the above posts?
re PoP
Shame someone built a motorway through the War Department’s preferred location for a Quarry and Redhill lines link….
(or is that to come in part 12?)
Yes they really have been think about doing something for that long.
@Kate….Well then, the answer is obvious, isn’t it?
Collect together PoP articles on the BML, raise a few quid, create a nice-looking website detailing PoPs suggestions for relieving the BML (BML+ anyone?), become skilled in the art of political/industry lobbying……
And there you have it, a credible alternative to BML2!
@Malcolm…Details of BML2’s masterminds can be found here: http://www.wealdenline.org.uk/management-team.html
[Link to BML2 will suffice, thanks. LBM]
@Paul, possibly I’m confused. But I’m thinking more about potential futures where the BML is so congested on the fasts that you’ll need grade separation at most or all junctions.
I may be drifting off topic here, but my understanding from this series is that the aim is to have the fasts full to capacity. There is a constraint south of Three Bridges in the you have to accommodate fasts and stopping trains. Those stoppers are fast north of Three Bridges and so I assume there is theoretically some capacity to put Arun Valley trains into the gaps needed behind a stopper on the BML. The problem is getting them there as a down move will block the up fast. I presume that is what is happening in Dec.
If that hasn’t filled the gaps on the fasts then work North looking for more opportunities to grade separate the junction. Hooley gets the Reigate/Tonbridge trains onto the fasts but in the end East Croydon seems to be the big gain as the capacity on the fasts doubles because there are now two fast destinations…
T33
there are no Horsham – Vic’s in the new off-peak timetable ..
You what?
So, how DOES one get to Horsham, then?
[Snipped for brevity and cynicism. PoP]
@Silent Lurker
“East Croydon seems to be the big gain as the capacity on the fasts doubles because there are now two fast destinations…”
There are, but they are just as busy. There are several branches feeding in at Purley, South Croydon and from West Croydon, which take up the slow lines, so many trains using the slow lines through Surrey have to switch to the fast lines for the run through south London.
Greg,
Exactly the same as you do today. Victoria – East Croydon. Change to pick up the half-hourly London Bridge – Horsham service. Or one train all the way from London Bridge.
@PoP/Greg
“there are no Horsham – Vic’s in the new off-peak timetable ..
So, how DOES one get to Horsham, then”
The same way you get to Dorking – by a route that does not involve east Croydon and has been discussed at length further up this thread.
Someone mentioned double-decking a new pair of tracks over the existing alignment, only to be shot down over issues regarding bridges. I’m not sure such a concept should be dismissed quite so easily however.
Any double-decking approach would, in effect, be a continuous bridge – in all likelihood, we’re talking about a structure only a little chunkier than the long viaducts used by the DLR. As it’s already a bridge, it’s not all that much more expensive to have it pass above other roads, railways, other bridges, etc., by just raising and lowering the height of the supports as needed.
The key issue is whether the plan is to have the new tracks serving stations as, like a new tunnel, it’s the interfaces between the new infrastructure and the existing that adds big numbers to the construction cost. (Not as much as a new underground station, but still substantial.) A station requires a level section for the platforms, as well as suitable access, so this limits the locations of ramps up or down to the platform level if we’re talking about a station like New Cross Gate or East Croydon, where the station buildings span the tracks.
The key issue with such an approach is the increased noise and visibility of the new tracks, but again, noise mitigation measures are available for this too. (Note the noise reduction panels on the new London Bridge viaduct, for example. These are very common overseas.)
If it’s okay for the DLR to take this approach, I don’t see why conventional railways can’t use it too. Modern concrete viaduct designs are visually much ‘lighter’ than their older steel or brick arch ancestors. (Witness the bowstring bridge built across Shoreditch High Street for the ELL to see an example of how to do it right.)
Note: I’m not saying a double-deck approach should be done. I’m just pointing out that, from a civil engineering standpoint, it’s not as difficult as it might have been, say, 40 years ago. The difficulties will be primarily political, not technical, so no change there.
timbeau
I think there’s a misunderstanding / cross-purposes problem here, actually.
After all there must still be $_London_Terminus – Horsham via Dorking slows, presumably via Sutton &/or Epsom ….
Never mind!
Victoria to Horsham after December is exactly the same as now 02 and 32 ish fast via Gatwick but faster as Redhill stops have been removed. Or via Dorking. Slow service from London Bridge as now. Reigate and Tonbridge go fast to Victoria and new Thameslink service slow from Redhill to Purley. Purley will as a result have 4 trains to London bridge with a 4 minute 26 minute headway. Nobody loses Victoria services.
Just checked via Open Train Times. Victoria to Horsham and Arun Valley 06 and 36 via Gatwick. 09 and 39 to Redhill/Tonbridge/Reigate. 32 Horsham via Dorking is overtaken by 36.
While no one loses Victoria services, Coulsdon South does lose its fastest service to London and there is a severe loss of connectivity in the Redhill area – ie Reigate to Merstham and Coulsdon South.
I think it is debatable as to whether Redhill really justifies a fast service that is constrained by the need to cross at Stoats Nest Junction and take up paths that could be used by more services between East Croydon and Gatwick Airport (with Gatwick expansion in mind). It might be equally advantageous to run an even interval service (ie every ten minutes) from Redhill to East Croydon calling at Merstham, Coulsdon South and Purley with the more balanced frequency making up for the loss of Redhill fasts.
If that is true then capacity at South Croydon is actually critically important in allowing 6 tph from Redhill, 6 tph from Caterham / Tattenham and 6 tph from the Oxted line – flighting trains Redhill / Oxted / Purley branches with the Oxted slotting between the trains which are fast from Purley and those which stop at Purley Oaks.
This gives 6 tph fast at Purley and Coulsdon South, 6 tph at Purley Oaks and South Croydon.
The problem would appear to be the slow junction speeds at South Croydon (noted upthread) and what to do with the Milton Keynes train at East Croydon. The fact that this is 1tph and occupies the platform at East Croydon for nine minutes does nothing for connectivity in the Croydon area or for working towards 6tph on the three routes through South Croydon.
This shows that the paths through South Croydon on the slows are set around a 4tph service rather than 6tph. Is a more imaginative use of the three platforms at South Croydon possible – eg up Oxted line services through platform 4 and down South Croydon stoppers being overtaken between East Croydon and Purley Oaks?
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/SCY/to/ECR/2015/12/15/1100-1159?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/advanced/SCY/from/ECR/2015/12/15/1100-1159?stp=WVS&show=all&order=wtt
Note the gap caused by the Milton Keynes service in both half hours as opposed to the half hour in which it actually runs.
@ Purley Dweller – headway gaps of 4 and 26 minutes is why I could never put myself in a situation of having to rely on such awful services. I know there are a million and one perfectly plausible reasons why there are compromises to fit everything else in but prima facie it is a dreadful and unattractive service. Even when I had to rely on buses to get me everywhere up in Newcastle the frequencies and joint headways were never that awful. And yes I know there are many other such examples of awfulness so I’m NOT inviting everyone to list their personal bete noire of train timetabling.
JH
Makes one wonder if, actually extending, rather than shortening the MK service ( I know – extra units needed ) to, say Redhill – MK would be better than having it blocking up things at S or E Croydon, as well as giving Redhill an extra service?
Um.
@Anomnibus-My thinking was to build either one or two pairs of express tracks above the existing lines, and leave the lower level tracks for stopping and skip stop services. Ramps will only be say once every 5 or six stations. Seeing as there probably won’t be much need for express trains to stop at local stations. It would be interesting to know what such a scheme would look like, and how it will manage when the existing track itself is on an embankment such as through Balham.
@Miles – no doubt a popular solution in S London.
JH, WW and GT
Personally I would have merged the Milton Keynes with the Tattenham shuttle. The timings would have worked with a small tweak to the shuttle. But that ship has sailed.
All Redhill trains stopping suits me though as I work in Redhill and would give fast trains to three terminals. As far as the ridiculous headway goes I did try and point it out on the consultation but a lone voice wouldn’t have been noticed. On the consultation timetable it was 5 5 20 from East Croydon as well because the Brighton to London Bridge is close on as well. I haven’t looked at that in the final timetable yet. I suggested moving the Tattenham train forward 10 minutes in both directions. It looks like it would work.
@Sad Fat Dad and others
Actually one thing that PoPs articles have shown is that rebuilding Windmill Junction and East Croydon do not release sufficient capacity for the BML. Indeed, although I am sure it was not PoP’s intentions, his articles have very usefully shown why BML2 or something similar is necessary.
The MK service could sensibly be extended down to Tonbridge. Typically the Tonbridge via Redhill service is presently four cars (although at peak times services are joined / separated at Redhill). A Tonbridge to Milton Keynes service would offer Kent a cross-London service onto the West Coast Mainline which would be sensible. (Personally I would then extend it from Tonbridge to Stroud via Maidstone to increase direct Gatwick links substantially but that is where Franchises get in the way.)
Jonathan H @ 17:27
…mentions an obvious gap in the opposite half hour to the WLL service, I wonder if that is to allow for its potential doubling in frequency, as that has been mentioned in an earlier RUS?
@Kate: I’m not sure of the merits of your suggestion of extending the MK service to Tonbridge, but would remind anyone interested that, because of the unavoidable stopping nature of this service, it does not provide much of a useful link between its extremities. For example Monday morning’s service (ECR: 1011, MKC: 1201) is overtaken (1014 -> 1140) by travelling via Victoria and Euston.
This does not mean it is not a useful service, of course, but such long distance journeys are not really its strong point.
In fact one could perhaps generalise this finding into a conclusion that where a non-stop route is available, using 4-track routes, it is rather hard for nearby 2-track alternative routes to compete. (Doubtless the odd exception exists). Nuff said?
@ Kate
I think you meant Strood (Kent), as an extension to Stroud (Gloucs) would be rather a stretch – and involve a considerable length of ‘coasting’ mileage from the juice rail.
I travel from Clapham Junction to Shepherd’s Bush everyday and occasionally take the Milton Keynes service. It’s horrendously crowded, yet most people get out at Shepherd’s Bush.
I think half of the problem is the poor management at Clapham Junction: trains up the West London Line leave from Platforms 1, 16 and 17. I can’t be the only person to miss the 0845 on Platform 1, muscle through the crowds on the over-bridge/in the underpass, only to miss the 0850 on Platform 17. Likewise, I’ve seen people waiting for the 0905 shuttle to Shepherd’s Bush on Platform 16 unaware that there is a sooner service, the 0850 on the platform opposite.
@Kate: I am also a little mystified as to exactly how a Milton Keynes – East Croydon – Tonbridge – Strood service increases direct Gatwick links, what with Gatwick not being on the proposed route. I think it is Geography, rather than Franchises, which gets in the way.
Malcolm
While you are right about Gatwick, your reasoning about 2 track services would suggest Thameslink should be abandoned because it is usually quicker to change onto the Northern Line to St Pancras than stay on Thameslink.
@Kate: I did say there might be exceptions. Anyway, my rule of thumb was more aligned to encouraging severe questioning of proposals fornew use of 2-track routes, rather than proposing abandonment of anything currently existing.
Malcolm 22:00
I and I suspect lots of other people too would rather be on one train that takes 20 minutes longer but that avoids getting off at Victoria then getting the tube to Euston to then get on another train.
It’s also cheaper.
@timbeau (10:10). Yes the capacity doubles at Windmill Bridge hence the ability to move those trains onto the fasts, and the need due to West Croydon. The challenge seems to be how to do it in a non-conflicting way.
You can see (clearly in this series) the various historical grade separations around the network as it has got busier, the evolution of Windmill Bridge, the various swapping of fast and slows, now onto the down slow diving under the fasts at Bermondsey. Next is Windmill Bridge (again) and then presumably Stoats Nest and Keymer Jn.
Now I feel I’m beginning to understand the fast lines, I suspect I should re-read the series to try to understand the slows.
@Malcolm….Er, you do realise by saying that, in one sentence you are implicitly questioning part of the rationale for the Thameslink Programme (i.e. the new routes via the ECML and the multiplicity of new destinations south of the Thames)? If that isn’t a new use for the 2-track core, I don’t know what else is…..
Speaking as someone who has used the Southern WLL service to travel between MK and Purley and avoid the Zone 1 premium, slow end-to-end routes *do* have a useful role to play, particularly for travellers who are time-rich and/or have luggage. I always find it quite bemusing why anyone would want to travel to/from London on the extortionate HEx instead of using the much cheaper Underground route.
If there was some way of getting WLL trains on to the fast lines south of Clapham Junction without creating extra conflicts (which the WLL InterCity services that used to run in the 80s/90s surely must have done?), I suspect the end-to-end journey time would be virtually the same as going via Euston….or potentially slightly quicker!
@Kate I hope no-one is making the business case for Thameslink on the grounds that it provides better links between Kent and Bedford. Because it doesn’t really, for the same reasons as the Milton Keynes service.
Just as with the famous Aberdeen-Penzance services, it’s operationally convenient for the slow train from Bedford to London to be the same train as the cross-London metro service from St Albans to Redhill to be the same train as the slow train from London to Brighton (particularly given the lack of platforms at St Pancras). But that doesn’t mean anyone’s using it end-to-end.
And honestly there’s a pretty strong argument that in an ideal world Thameslink should be cut back to a pure metro service – in its current form it’s neither fish nor fowl, the rolling stock is compromised by the need to serve two quite different purposes. Of course politically it could never happen.
Kate,
Actually one thing that PoPs articles have shown is that rebuilding Windmill Junction and East Croydon do not release sufficient capacity for the BML. Indeed, although I am sure it was not PoP’s intentions, his articles have very usefully shown why BML2 or something similar is necessary.
Rebuilding of Windmill Junction and East Croydon along with other changes releases sufficient capacity for the foreseeable future (debate as to exactly when it will run out – maybe late 2030s or perhaps twenty years later). Of course, if the population keeps growing as rapidly as it has done recently and social and business trends do not change then something else may be necessary one day. I don’t think anyone is claiming otherwise. What people are generally saying is “let’s do Windmill Junction etc. first”. Then we can consider whether BML2, a south of Purley – London tunnel or whatever is the best next step.
I think we need to be thinking about a second Thames Barrier far more than a second BML route in the timescale involved.
Unlike BML2, Windmill Bridge etc. a once-in-a-generation opportunity and, with building development in Croydon the way it is, possibly the last opportunity to do it properly. The trackbed from Selsdon to Lloyd Park hasn’t been built on and there are no plans to do so and so the BML2 option case will be probably be just as good or bad in thirty years time.
As you point out, rebuilding Windmill Junction doesn’t even provide the capacity which TfL thinks is needed for West Croydon in the relatively near term. Indeed, there is a strong argument for improving turnaround facilities at West Croydon and increasing services turning there by say 6tph. One of the key problems with the proposal for Windmill Junction is that it doesn’t consider the future potential of West Croydon.
At the present rate of growth, the proposed works at Windmill Rd Junction might get us by 15-20 years, but probably only if there are major works at Clapham Junction as well, and maybe at Victoria too. Other people are saying Stoats Nest, Keymer and Redhill might all also need reworking.
I also disagree that decisions about BML2 can be left because the Elmers End line might get taken over by the Haykerloo if plans for BML2 aren’t properly assessed now.
@Kate….Well, having spent millions/billions (?) to get BML2 as far as Elmers End, I would suggest that the issue of the Hayes line’s availability becomes rather moot at that point. Especially since you’re going to need four tracks from there to Lewisham anyway to fit both the fast and slow services in, Haykerloo or no Haykerloo.
In this ‘money is no object’ universe, why not just tunnel from Elmers End (or even from Selsdon, so Tramlink can be left in peace!) with no immediate stations all the way to Lewisham, where it can then continue as planned in tunnel to Canary Wharf and beyond?
Anyone willing to take a punt on the BCR for this idea? ?
@lmm – well said – the original business case for reopening TLK placed no value on journeys of the Bedford to Brighton variety. It rested entirely on cost savings, with any additional journey opportunities as an added bonus. After that, the TLK network grew driven partly by Chris Green’s “SE RER” vision* and partly by operational convenience. At no stage did anyone parade a network based on transport planning principles.
* *TLK and CR will put most of the major setttlements in the S East within a single interchange of each other”.
@Anonymously 8 Nov: “why…extortionate HEx instead of using the much cheaper Underground route.”
Quality of life aka a seat; mobile connectivity; speed vs time; much luggage, compromised mobility; proximity to Paddington; much cheaper quicker and more predictable than a taxi. Spending other people’s money.
All these and more affect how one chooses to travel, within London, between London and an airport, or on BML.
One of the difficulties in BML-land is that infrastructure which is close to capacity has to be shared between people with very different preferences and ability to pay. DafT TfL and their political masters have to find solutions because there is apparently no way to use market economics.
& once a compromise has been forged, losers squeal and winners gloat silently …
Anonymously
I am not suggesting that BML2 should be built as proposed. What I am saying is that:
1. It is a sinful waste of public money to do anything major on BML until there is a full fifty year plan in place. The Mayor produced one for London (albeit flawed) and NR should not spend major money on any route until they have done the same.
2. While BML2 is flawed until NR produce an alternative scheme, BML2 remains the only idea on the table for the mid-term to long-term.
@Kate,
Why 50 years? Why not 20? For which the RUS is the answer…
What is a sinful waste of public money is to build a line that is not value for money. BML2 has not been shown to be good value for money. That is irrespective of the other plans for the BML.
“until there is a full fifty year plan in place”
Where would be the point though? Each incoming mayor has their own ideas – they even change them whilst in post – and each change of rulers, er government, reflects major differences in priorities and financing possibilities.
I’d suggest the ‘DLR principle’ will have to be followed, poor BCR though it may be, because if you don’t start soon you will _never_ finish anything.
@Kate.
There’s a 30 year plan. Which by some distance, is the longest range plan the BML has ever had. The proposals within that 30 year plan cover expected demand for that period. Even if a 50 year plan said something different, it would be ridiculous to wait at least 31 years before doing anything, when there is a problem now. Equally it would be criminal to spend money now on schemes that are not needed for at least 31 years.
Besides, a 50 year plan for the railway done, say, 50 or so years ago would have had us building marshalling yards, bulk coal depots, and dozens of different locomotive types….
Silent lurker says “What is a sinful waste of public money is to build a line that is not value for money.”” Of course, but no-one here is proposing that anyone should do that.
What is being argued about is whether to further develop the case for BML2 (possibly varying it in the process), to better discern whether it could or should be built. That in itself would cost quite a bit of money; consultants do not come cheap. Some of us here would like to save that expense, because we feel that the answer is sure to come out in the negative, and even exploring it professionally would be a waste of money. (Sinful or otherwise). Others would prefer to see that professional investigation.
@Kate BML2 may be ‘the only idea on the table for the mid-term to long-term’ but that does not in itself make it a good plan, or worth doing. If there is no good plan then it may just mean that one doesn’t exist, at least at the moment.
Alison refers to incoming mayors having their own ideas.
While this is true, it may slightly miss the point that trains between London and Brighton are, strictly speaking, no business of the Mayor of London. (Alison did also refer to changes of government, granted). But it does underline the enormous difficulty that trains between London and Brighton are intimately interwoven with trains, tracks and stations which very much are the Mayor’s responsibility, and so the required decisions and arguments, are quite severely hampered by a fairly arbitrary boundary drawn up part way through the last half of the last century.
To the best of my knowledge, no one, not even Gosplan, has thought it worthwhile to take a 50 year look ahead any work up specific plans. Think back a mere 20 years (1995) – what was the population forecast for the UK for 50 years ahead (ie 2045) ? And what is it now for the same horizon? 20 years ago, we were expecting perhaps a 10% growth in volumes over the next 25 years; now what have we had since then…? SFD makes the point eloquently.
@Malcolm – I entirely agree. One can see now, even using BOFP techniques that BML2 is so far off being worthwhile that even if it doubled or quadrupled its financial or economic performance, you’d still be better off setting fire to the banknotes. Why bother to spend money to tell you something you already know? (Except of course as a political ploy to pass the time).
@SilentLurker think I misunderstood your point – I was thinking of Vic-Horsham’s via Redhill. Of course one of the issues with the Dec timetable is a 50% cut in frequency between Redhill and Crawley/Horsham plus loss of fastest journey times as the Arun Valley trains go along the quarry. This section has good leisure (Shoppers/Schools/college) and commuter usage.
@POP The morning peak trains from Redhill between 7:00 and 8:15 leave Redhill full and standing so I am not sure what benefit they would be of stopping them at extra stations. At Redhill we would like our 27 minute journey time to London Bridge restored as well rather than around 40 minutes now for direct trains or 55 mins with a change at ECR.
@JonathanH Coulsdon South doesn’t have any off-peak fast services to London currently so cannot lose one, but I do understand the issue with Reigate and the college.
It is not debatable if Redhill needs fast trains to London when it is the 9th busiest station on the Southern Network it surely needs a regular fast service to London. Especially when Network Rail admit they are understating passenger numbers at Redhill as they cannot quantify the number of passengers using Gatwick or Dorking tickets that are cheaper via Redhill than Redhill tickets. A recent survey said this could be as much as 25% understated.
@Malcolm
What is being argued about is whether to further develop the case for BML2 (possibly varying it in the process), to better discern whether it could or should be built.
The terms of reference for the London and South Coast Rail Corridor Study are here. One particular sentence is pertinent here: Describe the proposed rail schemes advocated by stakeholders for entirely or largely new lines between the South Coast and London, including concepts such as ‘BML2’.
Thus it would be perfectly acceptable for WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff (who are conducting the study) to say that the objective of creating direct trains from Croydon to Canary Wharf would be cheaper to implement by adding an extra track between South Croydon and East Croydon, and a tunnel from New Cross Gate to Canary Wharf, thus dismissing the BML2 argument in London. In doing so, they do not have to advocate that the scheme should proceed, even in the long term.
Ian Sergeant says “…to say that the objective of creating direct trains from Croydon to Canary Wharf …”
Proponents of schemes like BML2 seem to answer that sort of assertion by “ah, but that is not our objective”. They are somewhat less keen to say just what their objective is, but anything which could be done better in some other way is always “not our objective”.
@Ian Sergeant – actually the TOR are even weaker than that;the requirement is merely “to describe” – no question as to whether the scheme has objectives, let alone analysing them; if it does, the TOR would be satisfied by describing them without comment, however stupid/imprecise they might be; if it has no stated objectives, then that, too, would be fulfilled by “describing” the scheme itself without further comment. A good piece of drafting there…) / Malcolm (whose cynicsm rating is rising by the hour) has probably got it about right!
Since the scheme appears to be no more than the efletus of some noisy Uckfield shopkeepers, one shouldn’t expect too much analysis.
@Graham H
Since the scheme appears to be no more than the efletus of some noisy Uckfield shopkeepers, one shouldn’t expect too much analysis.
I don’t think it’s helpful to attack the individuals’ competence to devise the scheme. Better to demonstrate how the same objective could be achieved in a cheaper way, which is what PoP has done.
the requirement is merely “to describe”
Not so – I wanted to avoid quoting at length. The next section asks for a number of criteria – and I paraphrase – response to demand, ease of building, operational impact, estimated costs, and extent of private sector funding. What I hope is that WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff look at the various parts of the scheme separately, as each has a separate merit.
@T33 Few Reigate College students use the direct trains to Coulsdon and Purley now as they don’t run at the right time. Most of them are on the Tonbridge train in the morning changing to the reading train and on the 1636 from Redhill in the evening.
@Ian Sergeant – I stick by what I said; if you read the TOR carefully, there is no suggestion other than that the consultants describe what is on the table; that description is required to cover a number of topics and criteria. I do not see the words “and devise alternatives” or “rank the schemes” or “make recommendations”. I understood the silent intention of whoever wrote the TOR as letting the results of a description speak for themselves. Have I missed some extra pages of the TOR?
As to Uckfield shopkeepers – I did read the BML2 home page before commenting. Amongst those listed as the leading lights, none offered any experience in railway operations or planning or financing, but at least two had no further background other than in local business in Uckfield. Others described themselves as “historians” of the railway system in Sussex, although none has published any of the standard works on the subject;in any case, being a historian is not really a qualification for preparing a business plan,is it? [I’m not sure that PoP was intending to offer an alternative to BML2 not least because, as Malcolm has pointed out, no one seems to know what problem BML is trying to solve. He is offering solutions to clearly defined problems of conflicting movements at various pinch ponts on the existing network; I don’t read -but he may correct me here – his suggestions as being a strategic upgrade of the whole BML If I were a bank,I’d invite PoP to talk further,but I wouldn’t bother to schedule a meeting with the men from Uckfield ].
Graham says “ I do not see the words ‘and devise … “.
Nor do I. But I do see the words “What is the feasibility of the proposed rail schemes in 2. and 3, above, based on …”. I think “feasibility” here is probably meant to include financial feasibility, so some added value (over and above just regurgitating stuff from websites) is apparently requested from the consultants.
But rather than pick our own selection of words from these terms of reference (which are, it seems to me, rather susceptible to having read into them anything a reader wants to read in), perhaps we should just invite commenters here to look at the document themselves, and make their own judgement. It is very short.
I still worry that we (and many others) are doing everyone a disservice by even discussing BML2. If nobody took any notice of them, perhaps they would go away. Or am I being too hopeful?
@Malcolm
They have influential friends. No-one here is advocating the scheme as it stands. Surely it is better that we tell the consultants (they will be looking here, and another place) why the numbers don’t add up north of the Greater London boundary? If this is dismissed simply by saying “clearly this scheme has a less than 1 BCR”, their friends will cry foul and want another bite of the cherry. However, we may find (without credit) that the idea of a New Cross Gate to Canary Wharf tunnel appears on their web site without credit – similar things have happened before!
@PoP: I think the spectre of the Wimbledon Loop looms large. As you, more than most who visit this site are aware, changing the train timetable and calling pattern can become very, very political.
I agree, but one interesting thing about the Mayor, rather than Westminster MPs, is that he/she has as a constituency the whole of London, so is not reliant on support from any one area and doesn’t need to pander to marginal constituencies in quite the same way. Which isn’t to say that all politicians aren’t cowards and that noisy special interest campaigns aren’t influential, but there is at least a glimmer of hope that you might get a less narrowly parochial perspective from TfL and the Mayor than from planning by the DfT (within the boundaries of Greater London, at least).
Devolving powers to TfL can be a way for Westminster to sidestep the controversy and get a desired result without having to get its hands dirty by seeming to support a change (see the congestion charge, for example).
@Ian Sargeant/Malcolm….As long as influential politicians (i.e. Sussex MPs who hail from the governing party) are listening to them and no one else is prepared to put forward the counter-case or an alternative, I’m afraid BML2 groupies will plough on regardless of how much we (or even the railway press!) discuss or take any notice of them. And even setting up a lobby group to argue for something else may not work, as we’ll soon see when the final (?) result of Heathrow vs Gatwick is announced (I’m predicting a draw ?).
It does make me wonder though….how are BML2 funding their website and other campaign activities? It can’t just be retirees or others with too much time on their hands doing it all for free, surely?
What would be the effect on capacity if First Class was abolished on all services using the Brighton Main Line?
I’m prompted to ask because Mr. Corbyn’s proposal for “women-only carriages” (rejected by many in his own party) would have reduced capacity over all (because segregation would lead to an imbalance). If there had only ever been a one-class railway it would seem equally daft to introduce First Class at a time of lack of capacity – so why not abolish it? Most journeys are relatively short after all.
re Kate,
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/study-sussex-part-10-south-croydon/#comment-258256
1. NR’s current plans contain passive provision for slightly more than TfL were thinking of.
2. An alternative to increasing capacity via a more frequent service is to lengthen LO services to 8 car which would provide more capacity than 6tph to West Croydon. However doing this would require TfL spending money on the core section which they own not NR (hence which isn’t covered in the report therefore it is ultimately for Tfl to weigh up which makes more sense or both but in which order. (Windmill Bridge add ons being cheaper but the “core” being more expensive but higher benefit overall).
3. If you 8 car the ELL “core” the other 3 branches benefit too (net 42 cars per hour increase on the other branches).
@Dave Russell politically impossible – not least because MPs enjoy their first class rail travel. At public expense, of course.
In the spirit of BML2 and, for that matter, HS1 extension from Ashford to Hastings, 8-cars to West Croydon is dead easy. In this case, SDO.
“Passengers in the rear 4 cars should move forward to the front 4 cars to alight at Wapping” OK, it might have a tiny effect on dwell times, but I’m sure it’s manageable.
Now, where’s my coat ?
@Dave Russell. The Brighton Main Line train I am currently sat on has 20 first class seats, and it is approx 70% full. If these were converted to Standard class, the only difference is that there would be 20 antimacassars on eBay, and some lost revenue to the DfT.
Imm
I think you are out-of-date?
Didn’t the rules for MP’s travel expenses change last year, or thereabouts?
@Sad Fat dad
“The Brighton Main Line train I am currently sat on has 20 first class seats, and it is approx 70% full.”
The problem doesn’t arise when the train is 70% full, but when it’s 120% full and there are less than twenty First Class passengers.
@dave Russell
““women-only carriages” would have reduced capacity over all (because segregation would lead to an imbalance).”
There is a difference between this and First Class provision. If you fail to provide enough First Class accommodation, you have to refund the First Class passengers, which costs money. So the railways always over=provide first class, to ensure that First Class ticket holders get what they have paid for.
If you fail to provide enough ladies-only accommodation, you don’t have to refund any ladies who fail to find space in the ladies only carriages.
In these days of open carriages, you are much less likely to find yourself alone with a stranger in a train. It was a very real problem in non-corridor trains.
At least one TOC allows some women to travel First Class on a second class ticket.
http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk/Mumstobe.aspx
Timbeau – my poor wording (again). The train was about 140% full, first class was about 70% full. I.e. 6 spare seats.
Clearly, as SFD indicates by his anecdote, which probably matches other people’s experience, abolishing first class would have a close-to-negligible impact on total capacity.
However, might it have a bit of a psychological impact? Supporting “We’re all in this together” versus “They don’t care”?
‘Malcolm
!abolishing first class would have a close-to-negligible impact on total capacity”.
Not negligible if you are one of the seven passengers left behind because the rest o0f the train is full.
Even when people are being left behind because of a lack of space in second, some operators ban people from standing in first class, .
Arrgh. Standard Class.
Re Malcolm,
“However, might it have a bit of a psychological impact? Supporting “We’re all in this together” versus “They don’t care”?”
I suspect both this an allowing people to stand in what is currently in first class would be the main differences rather than extra standard class seats. Getting rid of the first class internal doors will certainly help with more standing space.
The southern (redhill lines?) twitterrati are regularly asking for first class to be declassified on certain services and i think there are still arguements over whether standing in first requires a first class ticket – you have been pushed into standing in first. Would southern pay delay repay if you didn’t board the service as the only option was standing in first or not getting on.
At risk of digressive irrelevance, just what was the point of renaming second class to standard? (Or third to second, come to that). Is anyone fooled? But then I never have properly understood so-called “branding”.
Would southern pay delay repay if you didn’t board the service as the only option was standing in first or not getting on.
This issue came up at a GLA transport meeting with passengers (assembly members really) complaining they got dumped at South Bermondsey and couldn’t get on the following train. Southern was adamant that it applied to the individual’s journey being delayed for whatever reason so yes being unable to board would count.
This doesn’t explain why one of my clearly described delay repay applications got rejected because a lineside fire meant my train could not call at my destination station. I was told that it rejected because my train wasn’t delayed – which it wasn’t as it took the fast line to London Bridge. That took multiple pestering of London Travelwatch to get Southern to finally cough up and then add something for the completely unnecessary difficulty of obtaining a refund I was fully entitled to.
The issue of standing in first class is further complicated by the fact that the last people to board will not be in the first class compartment itself, they may be in the vestibule thanks to someone else having moved into the first class compartment, or left on the platform thanks to the someone else having refused to risk a fine (sorry, “penalty fare”, must get the name right!).
Second class has the connotations of second class citizen. Or second class post – takes longer to get there. Standard Class gives the better idea that this the standard product that most people use and that first class is something extra – but maybe premium class would be better still but not worth the trouble of changing it.
It is actually a branding rename that is one of the very few I really think was an improvement over what was previously there as, unlike most rebrandings, it actually better describes the product on offer.
Note: If this develops into a whole sequence of comments I will have to delete them all including Malcolm’s and mine as being too many of them too off topic.
Re PoP,
“Southern was adamant that it applied to the individual’s journey being delayed for whatever reason so yes being unable to board would count.”
Southeastern seem equally adamant that no space on board doesn’t count see Lewisham complains post Jan ’15.
Using Oyster data can really help delay repay claims though it does appear that the invidicals processing Southern claims may have actually never travellled on a train in London as they can’t see the implications of running fast and also have so many claims to process that they don’t have the time to look at the harder ones so simply reject.
I suspect a significant number fo delay repay claim will result form more complex claims (skip stop and missed connections).
Interesting Oyster / Key (at some point in the future) could be useful for proving real journey times thus decreasing the actual threshold for delay. e.g. if you change from Southern at Clapham Jn to SWT for Waterloo and are dealyed on Southern by 20minutes but can only board the 3rd SWT service at P10 to Waterloo you would have been delayed by more than 30mins overall.
Time for £1000 ORR fines per valid claim rejection overturned later if involving travel watch and pro-rata 8% p.a.interest payment for every day over the target response time? That should focus some minds on quality delay repay responses especailly now is can be paid as cash.
There are now app that help people claim delay repay so I suspect the number of claims (inc ones where the person wasn’t on the effected service) has shot up.
@purleyDweller That will explain the explosion of scruffy kids hanging round Redhill station late afternoon.
@NGH Have you seen the latest plan for Windmill Bridge in the Sussex route plan, shows LBG services going under Victoria services, new link from up slow to up fast and a link from New platform 4 to the slow lines in the down direction. Will that provide additional capacity? More importantly will it mean @PoP has to go back a bit in the Study in Sussex series?
@NGH the reason for the Redhill lines twitterati constantly complaining that our trains have too much first class provision is that First class is not used as much from here but as we use the same trains as the rest of the BML two first class compartments are too many. Also the trains are so rare & jammed people are often not always able to get on.
@PoP @NGH on delay repay I have an interesting conundrum. I have an All-Zones season ticket and was delayed last week on the District line outside East Putney between 10-15 minutes. This meant I missed connection at Wimbledon to Clapham Junction and had to catch a train 30 minutes later which in turn was 10 late making me just over 40 minutes late – Delay Repay territory. Only who do I claim from? TfL cleverly only allow you to claim if you have an Oyster card – I don’t. Southern state it was not their train and along with SWT were not technically at fault?
Southern have also added to their delay repay form a tick box statement that you confirm that you actually were on the trains concerned. It reads “Please tick this box to confirm you are making this claim on your own behalf and that you have made the journey you are claiming for.” They are aware of the Apps obviously
T33,
The diagram in part 9 was based on the diagram on page 158 of the final version of the Sussex Area Route Study. Our diagram is entirely consist with Network Rail’s one but we would argue ours is better because it is better drawn and it clarifies what point work lies to the north and south of the GeorgeSt/Addiscombe Road road overbridge.
Network Rail’s diagram has the highlighted comment:
INDICATIVE FUTURE LAYOUT , AS AT AUGUST 2015, SHOWN
We know it is already out of date but not in a way that significantly affects the details. As the latest information is not in the public domain and, in any case, is tentative we have held back from getting into the situation where will give updates on any minor variation. There will be changes. It is not as if the final layout has yet been decided.
The diagram we showed has the fast London Bridge going under the Victoria services – as happens now and, I believe, was always the plan. It also shows a link between the new platform 4 and the up slow line which we believe would have to be south of GeorgeSt/Addiscombe Road road overbridge. I don’t think this is very significant and would not be used on a day-to-day basis. It could be useful for terminating a train on the slow tracks from the south when necessary. This would, for example, be useful nowadays when trains from Horsham are terminated at East Croydon during works on Southeastern to enable the Charing Cross – Hastings trains to start from London Bridge and take the path of the Horsham train as far as East Croydon. It would be better to terminate at a new platform 4 as passengers, at least in a down direction, could just cross the platform to pick up the Horsham train having travelled on a fast train from London arriving at the new platform 3.
On the subject of delay repay for journeys across multiple operators, it is not a conundrum for the operators who argue they should only pay up for their delays and never have accepted responsibility for consequential delay. It is rather unsatisfactory but I cannot see how, realistically, it can be any different because you are effectively disproportionally penalising the first operator for a small delay.
I suppose there could be a case for a journey with separate delays with each operator to be compensated for (e.g. 10 minutes delay on LU followed by 20 minutes delay independently caused by SWT and a further 20 minutes delay to the next part of the journey with Southern above and beyond what was caused by LU + SWT). It would be largely up to the DfT to mandate that. It would be complicated to administer and probably wouldn’t have helped in your situation.
The principle seems to be that it is the initial delayer which counts, even if the delay was marginal, but compounded by a missed connection. So a five minute late incoming local train becomes a shut-the-doors-in-your-face “we must keep to the timetable” missed Inter City connection and a wait of an hour for the next one. The TOC operating the incoming service gets to pay you the compo, despite most of the revenue from the original ticket going to the Inter City operator. So there actually an incentive to not hold connections – it hits your competitor’s profits.
“First” implies there is a second (at least), even if it’s called something else. “To come second is to be the first of the losers”
T33 & PoP,
Just to add the latest plans have actaully evolved a little and actually iron out a few issue that were also covered by in discussions on part 9. The LR diagram also includes actual permitted curvatures, gradients etc. to an extent so is much more geographically correct for bridge and viaduct loactions than the one on page 158 despite being schematic.
Would a BML2 using the old Steyning line from Shoreham to Horsham be more economical than the current proposal?
@Mr Crayola- the trouble with anything that doesn’t pretty well follow the present direct BML is that it is a longer way round and therefore will take more time – possibly, in the context of a high frequency timetable, sufficiently longer on BML2/3 for each departure from Brighton on the new line to be run down by the train service on BML1. Now,if you were to strip off all the services joining BML 1 (including the Arun valley) and provide *them* with their own direct route to London , that might be a different kettle of fish.
“if you were to strip off all the services joining BML 1 ….and provide *them* with their own direct route to London ”
I feel we’re straying into forbidden territory again, but the name BML2 is a misnomer – Brighton is the one place that BML1 will always be the optimum route for. All the various Arun/Mole/Meon Valley, Uckfield, Bluebell(!), Portsmouth Direct, Tonbridge etc etc proposals could do is to divert traffic to and from further east or west along the coast (but no one project could do both!) away from the BML, to make more space for trains to/from Brighton itself.
Railfuture has been campaigning for reopening Ukfield-Lewes for some time. I had noticed that Railfuture and BML2 were studiously avoiding mentioning each other. I now see that Railfuture has its own rival scheme, which they are calling “Thameslink 2”, and here it is:
http://www.railfuture.org.uk/Thameslink+2
Nobody here seems to have mentioned this. I was wondering what people thought of it.
peezedtee,
Putting aside technical merits or otherwise for the moment, at least Railfuture’s Thameslink 2 doesn’t claim to have the answers but instead suggests various options are worthy of further investigation. And it builds on Network Rail’s plans rather than seeking a confrontational alternative. In fact I think some parts of the proposals will actually be done anyway as part of Network Rail’s proposed upgrade.
I would have liked to have seen a proposal based on “assuming that the proposed Network Rail plans for CP6 at Croydon get built …”
I still think this is all looked at the wrong way round. First decide if one needs a north-south route through Canary Wharf. If so and a case can be made then one could start looking at where the tentacles should spread to. This obsession with a Sussex perspective is not good and pre-empts the area of London and beyond south of the river that this possible line should serve.
Surely delay compensation is paid to a passenger from the organisation they bought the ticket from, whether it be a TOC or 3rd party ticket seller, as that’s who the customer has the contract with. How the supplier apportions cost is up to them, but is of no concern to the passenger. The fact it was a 3rd party at fault is also of no concern to them, and is no reason to deny the claim
John B,
I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this but you have to forget the notion that your purchase of a journey is covered by all the various facets of contract law. IT IS NOT RELEVANT. Your purchase of a ticket is governed by the railway conditions of carriage byelaws and it is on that basis that you will succeed or fail in getting a refund (or possibly the goodwill of the Train Operating Company). If you want to argue your case and get a refund you need to scrutinise the railway condition of carriage byelaws and find where they have been breached or require the train operating company to compensate you.
I wish I could track down the legal case that established this but it has been established that various things you think are a contract in fact are not. It involved an Electricity Board in the days before privatisation. The point was that the lawful object has to be voluntarily entered into by two or more parties … The railways have not voluntarily entered into this in the legal sense of the law of contract because they are obliged to accept your business unless they have a good reason not to (also covered by the conditions of carriage).
Although your starting point has to be the conditions of carriage there are various aspects of contract law that you probably can invoke. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 is likely to be one such example. I have quoted this in another dispute e.g. it is iniquitous to expect the customer to have to purchase a ticket but not provide a means of a full refund if the train that the ticket was purchased for does not appear or is, after the ticket is purchased, announced as delayed. On that occasion I got as far as writing a letter before action to the company’s registered address before I got the grovelling apology, the refund and extra cash as a goodwill gesture.
What I don’t understand is the obsession with routing through Canary Wharf and up to Stansted instead of through Central London. Surely Thameslink 1.0 will mop up most of the Canary Wharf traffic with the London Bridge/Farringdon connections?
Re Miles,
Probably about 15mins quicker direct though if you avoid changing at London Bridge or Farringdon (which will do wonders for house prices in certain bit bits of Sussex if the numbers fall under certain magic numbers 45 or 60mins???)
@timbeau – I entirely agree but have foreborn developing the thought on anti-crayonista grounds. (Nevertheless,if I was put up against the wall by that crowd of people who demand that I solve the unspecified problem that BML “addresses” before I criticise their proposal, then I would say something along the lines indicated).
@poP/JohnB
“you have to forget the notion that your purchase of a journey is covered by all the various facets of contract law. Your purchase of a ticket is governed by the railway conditions of carriage byelaws”
Quite so – which is why in the example I gave above it was the company that caused the initial delay, and not the one that compounded it twelve-fold by not honouring a connection, that ended up paying compensation, despite the fact that the ticket was sold by the latter, and more than 90% of the distance of the journey was with the latter, and the latter took 90% of the revenue.
Under contract law the first TOC would be seen as a subcontractor, and the “main” contractor would be responsible to the customer for the failure of the subbie, and they would be working together to provide the service that the customer had paid for.
Under railway Ts and Cs they are each out to shift the blame to each other.
Since contract law does not apply to railway tickets, operators should not be entitled to call passengers “customers”.
(All too often the most appropriate term would seem to be “victim”)
Southern delay repay staff have almost certainly not travelled on trains regularly in the area as they are based in Bristol. I am trying to get a claim through using my Key card currently but they keep telling me I haven’t got a valid ticket for the journey despite the fact that I have and used it every day for several years and have claimed several times earlier this year! They never usually object to a delay caused by the train being made to run fast though – use cancellation for the claim reason. I have asked the station manager at Purley to sort out the Key Card issues and even he can’t get in contact with the Key team!
My first reaction on looking at the “Thameslink+2” map was to laugh loudly at the idea of adding SIX new routes through Croydon. Not sure where they think the platforms could go or the paths would be found …
Though at least they aren’t making out that a Gatwick – Stansted link is a necessary thing. As regards the Wharf though I feel that TL2 and BML2 might be right in thinking that drilling under zone one is not going to be successful given just how deep they’d have to go, so heading East makes some sense. Though whether Stratford could cope would be ‘interesting’ as pre-CR1 it is already creaking from the load.
Dave Russell 9 November 2015 at 06:47
” Mr. Corbyn’s proposal for “women-only carriages” . ”
He didn’t actually make a proposal. He responded to a point put to him. Results:
1) rapid response from those sure it was a bad idea
2) accusation that he’d proposed it himself
Pedantic,
The basis of the Railfuture Thameslink 2 concept is that London’s economic centre of gravity has shifted eastwards but (aside from Crossrail) the rail network has yet to catch up. Taking a helicopter view suggests that strategic development of the London rail network should include a SE-NW cross–London route, a North – South route through Docklands, an outer orbital route, and better BML-Old Oak Common links – which will provide the necessary extra capacity that the London termini cannot.
The key economic centres in East, South-East and South London are Stratford, Canary Wharf, Lewisham, Croydon and Gatwick (stretching a point) – which gives an indication of where a north-south route should go. Whilst services could come from the South Eastern route, these fit better with a SE-NW Crossrail 3 solution. The next question is whether the need is for a metro or limited stop route – a metro would primarily serve the London area, with services no further than Gatwick (to meet the political imperative), whilst a limited stop route would serve only the major stations listed above, and include destinations further out like Brighton. Other destinations south of the river with either option could include Sutton via West Croydon, Caterham, Tattenham Corner, Reigate or East Grinstead – but no more than is needed to disperse 24 trains per hour.
The diagram on
http://www.railfuture.org.uk/thameslink+2
shows the Thameslink 2 and Uckfield – Lewes services in different colours because there is no presumption that these are inherently linked.
A metro solution would be able to utilise the existing double track Hayes branch, with all services stopping all stations – which would still be faster from East Croydon to Canary Wharf than via London Bridge – so would be cheaper to implement. A limited stop solution would need either quadruple track on the Hayes branch (probably too disruptive to be viable) or tunnel, so would be more expensive. These different solutions might attract different funders.
@Bridge the Gap – thank you for the helpful explanation of the railfuture colour coding. As you say, the two halves of their proposals aren’t really connected (or don’t have to be). I’m not sure that it is quite right to conclude that places like Lewisham and Croydon are in any way comparable with the Wharf in terms of job numbers (an order of magnitude smaller) nor is the importance of the Wharf,large though it is, comparable with the City and the West End in terms of jobs. The TfL 2050 Plan suggests little change in these relativities.If anything, the effects of OOC, Heathrow and Shepherds Bush will tend to make the CAZ elongated east-west. I suspect the moderators will not like discussion about this corridor in this thread.
As you note, building a tunnel between the Wharf and Croydon is one thing but finding somewhere for the trains to go at either end is another. This particularly true at the north end, where silence descends on the railfuture stage, but the south end would seem to be at cross purposes with the intended TLK network and possibly CR2 as well..
@Bridge the Gap. It would clearly be quicker from various places to Canary Wharf on this line than via London Bridge. But it would be somewhat slower from anywhere on the Hayes line to The City / West End for the nearly 10m people a year who do that trip. I forsee resistance…
Bridge the Gap,
I have to admit I was misled by Railfuture’s Thameslink 2 page. It was not so much the diagram but the text which led me to be believe we were talking about something that was yet another Lewes-Uckfield-Canary Wharf proposal.
I can now see that if you treat the proposal as two entirely separate schemes for which their may be justification in them ultimately joining then it makes a lot more sense. It was also not clear to me that this was driven by Canary Wharf and appeared to me to be yet another scheme from Uckfield looking for a destination.
If you read it the way you described it makes a lot more sense. So yes, the first stage is to establish the justification of a north-south line through Canary Wharf and take it from there.
I also had not appreciated that the option of this being a metro scheme was one consideration. This shows the unwitting presumption present in a name. Thameslink 2 suggests we are talking at least to Gatwick but it seems that Crossrail 3 (or 4) may turn out to be a more relevant name for the proposal if further evaluation shows that a more metro-like scheme would be the best option.
Farringdon – Reading is getting on for 40 miles as the Crow flies so calling the proposal Thameslink 2 rather than Crosslink n suggests one is intending to serve the south coast.
Sad Fat Dad,
Well 10m passenger journeys which isn’t quite the same thing. But, yes, if you look at the figures for station usage on the Wimbledon loop and the station usage on the Hayes line you realise that the former is around a tenth to a fifth of the latter.
AlisonW,
There is actually only one new route on the map – from East Croydon to Canary Wharf. The Thameslink 2 concept is based on Network Rail completing the 2 additional platforms at East Croydon and the grade separation at Cottage/Windmill Bridge Junctions planned for Control Period 6. Beyond that, there are different options for connecting Thameslink 2 with BML to provide the additional capacity which will be needed in the next 20+ years, which are explained on the http://www.railfuture.org.uk/thameslink+2 webpage.
To clarify the point about an all-stops metro service in my response to Pedantic, ‘all-stops’ really refers to the Lewisham – East Croydon section utilisng the Hayes branch, not ncessarily further south on for example services to Gatwick.
Sad Fat Dad,
Utilising the Hayes branch for Thameslink 2 wouldn’t necessarily preclude some Hayes services continuing to Charing Cross and Cannon Street – although TfL do suggest that reducing the variety of termini served from each route in South London would increase reliability and capacity.
@Dave Russell (+others)…..
There will always be a certain type of passengers / commuter who is willing to pay a premium so they avoid the hoi polloi, with a (semi-)guaranteed seat in a quieter area of the carriage. And any TOC with long-distance commuters (i.e. all of them except LO) would be foolish to ignore this lucrative source of revenue. Remember how Connex South Eastern initially ordered their Electrostars for the Kent Coast services with no First Class seating? They were rapidly pressured into retrofitting these by angry passengers whose (very expensive) First Class season tickets were in danger of becoming worthless!
So, as long as there is a demand for these seats and people are willing to pay for them, there is little incentive for TOCs to remove First Class seating, however jam-packed the rest of the train is. At least we can be grateful these areas now just occupy the ends of units, instead of nearly an entire carriage (as with some of the old slam-door units).
TL2…..hmmmm, seems very much to me to be a solution in search of a problem, as others have pointed out. At least they aren’t as fixated on booting out Tramlink as the BML2 lot seem to be.
The following sentence though did make me chuckle:
‘To the north, services can be extended to the North London and West Anglia lines. By extending via Canonbury and Finsbury Park to Muswell Hill, a direct route from North London to Docklands could also be created, providing capacity relief for the Northern and Piccadilly lines.’
Ho ho ho……how often this must have been discussed on LR!
[We take this as excellent, biting sarcasm. In any case, this is not carte blanche to evaluate nor crayon a VTBM (virtual tunnel boring machine) a London route for Thameslink 2. LBM]
Without getting into the merits of specific proposals, I do think access from North London to Canary Wharf is surprisingly poor. It can’t be desirable to have passengers from Piccadilly-Line-Land going there via Green Park. Changing at Moorgate and again at London Bridge isn’t great either.
All of these proposals run into the problem, which is entirely relevant to our discussions & the ambit of this web-site generally, of … “What the hell do you do, once you are more than a mile or so inside the GLA boundary?” Where are you going to put the extra tracks?
In that respect the “revised” NOT-BML2 (from Railfuture) proposal to avoid Zone 1 altogether & go “Thameslink2-via-Canary Wharf” makes a great deal of sense – in the inner zones, that is.
Complicated, isn’t it?
Mr Crayola/Graham H
Steyning-Horsham – & then what?
Re-open Horsham-Guildford? ( Not a bad idea if the road congestion is as bad a some make out? )
Go via Epsom/Sutton – with the problems already discussed re the junctions @ “Streatham”?
Miles ( & Alison & everyone )
The “Canary Wharf” complex is/will be very well-served from the E & W. From the N or S not so much, if at all – one of the old chestnuts on this theme is one of mine, with the initials “H F C”, but it’s a real problem. Aee also Imm’s comment.
Now as PoP says about looking at problems longer-term … let’s put it together, & maybe, then postpone it for a n other thread ( like London 2050?)
Problem part 1: BML & other Sussex lines are crowded & bursting
Problem part 2: “Canary Wharf is a bugger to get to from some directions, as noted
Problem part 3: Lea Valley lines are overcrowded, but even with CR1 AND CR2 there isn’t going to be spare capacity at LST
Possible potential solution MIGHT be “Thameslink 2” ???
PoP
Wimbledon Loop services 1/1oth approx Hayes?
And, given the reliability (not) & low frequency of the former, why is this a surprise?
At the risk of the scissors, doubling the frequency & terminating at Blackfriars would do wonders for the ridership ( I think)
Generally, regarding Hayes branch in this discussion, I think that from Elmers End up to just short of Lewisham, it would have to be 4-tracked to cope with the increased volumes – yes/no?
[ Note: I’ve been told to render my comments into more digestible “lumps”, so I’ve done that this time – I hope that it is thought better of? ] [Yes. Malcolm]
@Anonymously – and quite how (or why) Hayes gets dragged into something supposed to link the Wharf to Croydon is a real puzzle; maybe railfutures are using a different map projection (Mollweide’s?) to the rest of us. [I’m coming rapidly to the belief that Hayes has some of the same magical qualities as the Drain or the GNC – crayonistas are inexorably lured there only to die from a reality attack.]
lmm 10 November 2015 at 07:36
“access from North London to Canary Wharf is surprisingly poor. It can’t be desirable to have passengers from Piccadilly-Line-Land going there via Green Park”
Via Highbury and Shadwell or Stratford would be alternatives. Although I hear there’s a crush Finsbury Park to Highbury on the Victoria line.
@Alan Griffiths. At relevant times, there is a crush on just about every line. But a commute with three changes is asking a lot.
@Malcolm….knowing some of the lengths commuters go to (including my mother, now retired in peace) and including connecting journeys by bus or rail, three changes is actually not too bad!
north London to Docklands – surely via Bank is an option, and one of the reasons Bank is being improved?
@Graham H….I suppose it’s because the Hayes line (including the old Woodside to Selsdon line) happens to be in the right place and heading in the general direction where the crayonistas wish to go ?.
Without serious discussion about four-tracking or a lengthy additional tunnel by them, it all becomes rather moot, doesn’t it? Inclusion of only one these would see the BCR shrink to collapse to unjustifiable levels, I suspect.
Greg’s “doubling the frequency & terminating at Blackfriars would do wonders for the ridership” of the Wimblelloop is, of course, correct and known by all sane people. But we are talking about politicians and their desire to keep their noisiest constituents happy …
ahem.
@timbeau
“north London to Docklands – surely via Bank is an option, and one of the reasons Bank is being improved?”
I do this quite a bit so quickest to go Tottenham Hale to Stratford (13 minutes) and then Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf (another 11 minutes).
Given 5tph “additional services that will be provided from 2017 / 18 between Stratford and Angel Road.” – from https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/crossrail2/october2015/user_uploads/ne2.pdf – this is going to be an increasingly more useful route for many people.
Malcom
But a commute with three changes is asking a lot.
OK, you asked for it.
Bus to Leyton, taking at least 45 mins, Central Line, Jubilee Line or DLR
Alternative, supposedly easier …
Vic line to Tottie Hale, “Anglia” to Stratford then Jubilee/DLR as previously.
“New” alternative: Walthamstow – Hackney Downs – Stratford etc …
Time taken in any journey approx 1 hour for a distance of less than 6 miles. ( Under 9 km on my OS 1:50 000 map )
Right.
( “HFC” anyone? )
That’s enough of North London. Any further comments straying thither from South Croydon (the article we are discussing) will be snipped.
We don’t very often snip too long after posting. But this digression (including my contribution to it, before anyone says) might prove an exception.
@PoP apologies I completely missed part 9 and see what you mean.
My biggest concern with rebuilding north of East Croydon is how will they do it without disrupting services. As it will start just after the major issues caused by London Bridge/Bermondsey rebuild another 3/4 years of work will not be popular as by completion it will have been 10 years of disruption. London Bridge issues started in 2012 immediately after the Olympics.
Hopefully the planning team are considering radically reducing disruption whilst sticking to Health and Safety requirements.
T33,
The scenario is completely different to London Bridge. The Selhurst triangle is a big site and for the most part the new replacement tracks will not be in the same location as existing tracks. Furthermore,with an overall increase in platforms, there should not be any platform reductions or, at most, minor short term reductions.
At London Bridge there was very little opportunity to do any work until you had shut something. That would not be the case at East Croydon where you should be able to build new stuff in advance of decommissioning old stuff.
Re T33,
“Extra” tracks likely to be added first so the “net” capacity remains similar to current levels during the the works while existing tracks are rebuilt rather than starting with a reduction in lines / capacity like London Bridge.
A common theme with many of the proposals various people on here regularly suggest (quite passionately in some cases) is the ability of the existing network to cope with their grand plans.
Taking a selection from recent posts gives:-
Shoreham – Horsham reopening, What about all those coastal level crossings that already cause traffic problems between Brighton and Shoreham? Adding yet more trains just simply isn’t feasible (shades of Surrey CCs opposition to BAAs Airtrack proposals) and diverting trains from West Worthing up to Horsham won’t be acceptable to the users of Lancing etc. Finally splitting and joining units at Shoreham is asking for trouble on a very busy two track railway.
Christs Hospital to Horsham, What about the limited track capacity between Guildford station and Peasmarsh Junc? Portsmouth services have increased over the years such that along with things like the planned 3tph Reading – Redhill / Gatwick accommodating extra services on the southern approaches to Guildford is extremely difficult and adding a interchange or Parkway station at Peasmarsh introduces its own problems to fix.
As for the ‘go via Dorking’ supporters how easily they manage to overlook bottlenecks like Epsom (earmarked for CR2 terminators), Sutton (onlt two platforms for Thameslink and most through Southern services, the flat junctions in the Streatham area (plus the single track nature of the fast line spur), etc
BML2 to Canary Wharf – lovely plan, except, what happens after that? Yes we are told it can simply head for the WAML but there is deathly silence about what happens then, how it fits in with CR2 etc. These are regularly dismissed as “someone elses problem” – in a way that reminds me of Douglas Adams literary creation.
Unless these issues can satisfactorily addressed its no good continually saying how good the main proposal is and as such people should not be surprised when transport professionals fail to be sportive.
Anonymously
It is easy to knock BML2 and TL2 but, unless there’s an alternative proposal, I suggest you learn to love them because I predict that within a decade some major BML relief will get the go ahead and probably something which goes to or via Canary Wharf because of the relief to the Jubilee line.
@PoP & @ngh – thank you for the clarification. A riot in rural suburbia has been cancelled. Mind you judging by twitter it has been a bit hectic round here today with the Gatwick announcement. All good one minute all bad the next.
Surely there is a simple answer with the South London – Canary Wharf – somewhere question? Send the trains to Stratford where they can terminate. There are a myriad of onward connections but not massive demand flows to warrant an extended intensive service. I recognise there are potential space and tunnelling issues at Stratford to add two tunnelled tracks and possibly sidings but given the intensity of development and demand it seems to be a reasonable destination and covers off a range of demands for N-S connectivity in South / East London. I’m not knowledgeable enough about SE London’s line to comment about the optimum route there.
I like the look of Thameslink 2, especially the fact it is a link to local stations in Surrey where capacity is urgently needed rather than the empty countryside of BML2 or the already adequately served Brighton.
@Anonymous of 1932 – don’t exaggerate. There’s no problem with Guildford – Peasmarsh – 14 tph each way is well within the capacity of two track junctions, doubly so in this case since the section has been bi-di’ed. And why would a station at Peasmarsh complicate that? [Not that it is planned]. Here’s a hint,the Stagecoach bid team carefully looked at the implications of reopening to Christs Hospital,in connexion with the new Dunsfold development – and as part of a possible Guildford metro. The idea was abandoned on cost, not operational issues.
@Kate -sorry to repeat a point but if BML2 is a dud scheme, the absence of any worked up viable alternative won’t turn it into reality. Indeed,such is the time taken to put major schemes in place, we can in fact already predict what will be -or at least attempt to be – built in the next decade. Nor does the volume of noise associated with BML2 mean that it will be moved up in priority; if noise were the criterion then the pacers would have been seen off years ago.
Anonymous 19:32
Thank you for reminding me of that. When one looks at railway history it is surprising how often branches had to be cut to give a decent service on the remaining lines. In other cases that wasn’t the reason for the pruning but was still the consequence. In the lucky cases they were taken over by a separate railway (the Stanmore branch twice over!, various LNER branches went the the Central and Northern lines). In the not so lucky cases they just died (e.g. Sanderstead and Addiscombe via Woodside). In some of the cases you mention it may be that the easiest bit would be to re-instate the branch and the harder bit would be to provide the paths to London. Those paths don’t just sit there unused waiting for the closed line to be revived.
Possibly what is remarkable about Corby reopening is not that the branch has been reinstated but that it has a direct service to London rather than just being a shuttle.
Of relevance to the Brighton Main Line, there are no direct services from the often forgotten Seaford branch to London as far as I am aware. It might be reasonable to argue that users are actually better off changing at Brighton but I suspect that is a bit of a dubious argument. Incredibly, in the old days, these used to terminate at Horsted Keynes (via Ardingly) suggesting that this is not a new problem.
This just possibly makes the case that what we really need in capacity and what could be usefully used if we had the capacity are probably two different things. You can’t go re-opening branch lines willly-nilly but if you are to consider it then you really need to factor in the cost of providing the onward path to London if intending to provide additional trains to London. No-one has produced a case for unfettered “predict and provide” when it comes to railway revival. Everything has to be justified on its merits and the mere fact that it would be used if it were (re)built is not a good enough reason.
On the subject of allocating costs I do wonder if BML2 have any perception of the cost of providing street running of trams. £30 million a mile would be a good initial figure to get started but if you need to rebuild roads to provide space for the tram route then that cost ought to be allocated to them too. Then there would be the additional trams because they are bound to take longer over the diverted route and of course the additional trams will need depot space. The disused railway line that they make such a fuss about reusing is only one kilometre long – hardly worth getting excited about. To me it causes more problems than it solves.
@POP
As far as I know, there is one direct Seaford to Victoria train in the early mornings, and one return in the early evening. I think it joins a Littlehampton train at Haywards Heath.
Graham H
re. Guildford-Horsham The idea was abandoned on cost, not operational issues.
Pity. Maybe, some time soon, when the road-congestion gets REALLY bad?
As for flat junctions it’s, IIRC 22 tph each way through the flat junctions at the top of Bethnal Green bank for the various “Wanglia” services via Hackney Downs?
I understand to an extent the scorn that seems to be heaped on BML2 here. It seems to particularly relate to the northern end of the scheme – ie from the South Croydon area heading northwards. However there does seem to be merit in the original source of the scheme which is to reconnect Uckfield to Lewes.
In the context of the BML route the proposals in the general Croydon area are aimed at providing desperately needed additional capacity, but ultimately the two-track stretches further south must set a constraint on how much more capacity can be provided – eg with stopping trains at Balcombe blocking the line for fast trains.
Surely if some existing services from Lewes, Seaford, Newhaven and Eastbourne can be redirected along the extended Uckfield route this must ease the pressure on the BML and allow more services from other starting points, like Brighton itself, to be sent up the BML, without worsening the pressure at places like Balcombe?
The business case for the Uckfield / Lewes extension (and associated upgrades of the route north of Uckfield) should to my mind include the derived benefits to the BML outlined above, not least being that the avoidance / deferment of the massive costs of adding more tracks to the BML.
In other words, shouldn’t pushing more services onto the under-utilised Uckfield line be at the heart of an overall plan for the BML?
@PoP – “I wish I could track down the legal case that established this but it has been established that various things you think are a contract in fact are not. It involved an Electricity Board in the days before privatisation.” – I doubt whether it was this one, then (I wonder which other one you had in mind to contradict this, contract or no):
“Haley v London Electricity Board [1965] AC 778 – Some workmen were digging a trench in a pavement. They went off to lunch. They had nothing to fence of the trench so they left a shovel and pick at one end and a punner at the other end to warn pedestrians. The claimant, a blind man, tripped on the punner and fell hitting his head. As a result of the fall he became deaf. The defendant argued they had done all that was necessary to warn an ordinary person of the danger and there was no need to take extra precautions for blind persons as it was not foreseeable that a blind person would be walking unaided down that street.
Held: The defendant was in breach of duty. It was foreseeable that a blind person might walk down the street and they should be given appropriate protection.”
Translate that to the situation of an aggrieved passenger and I can see another conclusion, albeit depending on the interpretation of “duty”. No byelaws involved in that case (and I can’t recall the Electricity Boards having such, so the situation may not be parallel).
Re Graham H, PoP and Brockley Mike,
Uckfield – Lewis reinstatement – surely the proposed grade separation of Keymer Jn (in Sussex Plan) also blows this out of the water* in all but the extremely long term on an East Coastway to London BCR capacity and journey time enhancement basis? (See future Sussex part 12/13?) [Ignoring the local connectivity benefits]
*In a similar manner to one of my predecessors as another former treasurer of an Oxford sporting institution did for flood defences in North Rhine-Westphalia in the early morning of 17/05/43 come to mind.
Re PoP
“I wish I could track down the legal case that established this but it has been established that various things you think are a contract in fact are not. It involved an Electricity Board in the days before privatisation.”
Deemed Contracts? (If so I can provide certain expertise…)
I have always viewed the BML2 project as a lever to try and persuade the greater populace and authorities to add influence to the proposal simply to reopen the line between Uckfield and Lewes as a first step, just as Chris Green had envisaged and supported during his Network Southeast days. Just reconnecting the two towns and the railway routes it served would have been useful enough, especially should the link at the northern end of the line beyond Eridge towards Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge be incorporated.
I believe that the interpretation needs to be shifted somewhat to the east of Brighton itself and more towards Lewes, Newhaven, Seaford, west of Bexhill and Eastbourne and then consider the usefulness of the route via Uckfield towards the towns mentioned as well as Edenbridge, Croydon and London via the latter but it also would act as a useful BML relief for the route via Keymer Junction from Lewes.
Graham F mentions “…simply to reopen the line between Uckfield and Lewes as a first step…”
I think PoP is going to touch on this in the next instalment. But no “simple re-opening” is possible, as the trackbed through the town of Lewes has been repurposed. Re-using the original trackbed might not involve all that much demolition, but it would cause plenty of disruption and expense, and is not AFAIK seriously considered. All plans and notions of building southwards from Uckfield, even BML2, and including Chris Green’s one, involve some new stretches of line, generally with tunnels.
@Malcolm – I didn’t say “simple re-opening” but “simply to reopen”, which I intended to convey”just get on with it”, with the understood agenda that the most recent route was already hindered at the Lewes end but the alternative (original 19th C. alignment) route was still feasible, especially serving trains into Lewes from the east. I think you’ll find that the new stretches of line certainly Chris Green had in mind (and maybe you) were following that original alignment. Latter day proposals produced other alignments, naturally…
‘The business case for the Uckfield / Lewes extension (and associated upgrades of the route north of Uckfield) should to my mind include the derived benefits to the BML outlined above, not least being that the avoidance / deferment of the massive costs of adding more tracks to the BML.’
IIRC, the last feasibility study failed to take these factors (amongst other things) into account. Why the Wealden Line campaign created BML2 instead of aggressively challenging the flaws in this study is anyone’s guess.
@Malcolm…..Actually, the plan (dating as far back as the 60s just before the decision to close was made) has always been to reinstate the Hamsey Loop to the Lewes-Haywards Heath line, enabling the section of line across the Ouse and through Lewes (which was due to be severed by a road scheme) to be abandoned/avoided. Otherwise the trackbed from there to Uckfield is protected, making reinstatement (relatively) straightforward. All this tunneling malarkey is a later invention by BML2 to get the trains under the South Downs to Falmer and into Brighton without reversal at Lewes (which is impractical due to the junction layout).
As Graham Feakins has pointed out, simple reinstatement to the Hamsey Loop without a westwards facing connection to Brighton could still allow Eastbourne (+/-Seaford) services to be diverted up the line, freeing up paths on the BML and capacity at Brighton itself. In order to avoid making the Croydon bottleneck worse though, I guess these services would have to combine with or even replace the Uckfield – London trains, which may not be easy or popular (due to the increased overall journey time from Eastbourne).
@Kate….How confident are you about your prediction that something major like BML2 or TL2 will be approved within a decade? If it were allowed, I would happily wager a significant sum that this *won’t* be the case. If recent history is any guide, you’ll be lucky to see anything happen before 2040!
@Anonymously – just so; the campaigners for BML2 have done themselves a gross disservice by adopting the BML2 title. If they had concentrated on Lewes-Uckfield re-opening they would have had to face far less factual criticism and spent far less time defending the indefensible.
@Greg T (and without wishing to get too far off topic), the Surrey Rail Strategy of 2013 sadly concluded that the BCR for Guildford Horsham was very low, and therefore dropped the scheme from its preferred options (indeed cateorised it amongst those not worth pursuing further). This was before the Dunsfold New Town proposal was revived and the subsequent Surrey modelling of the highway impacts showed the Horsham Road becoming a permanent car park;whether this will change the assessment is to be seen. BoFP figures for going just as far as Cranleigh look like £70m+, which would require a very hefty CIL levy on the 3500 new houses at Dunsfold unfortunately.
Right that’s enough specifically about Uckfield-Lewes. It is hardly so time-sensitive that it needs urgent discussion.
Graham Feakins,
Haley and London Electricity Board, which is in practically all the relevant law books, was nothing to do with it as it involved the Law of Tort. The case I am thinking of was much more obscure and was related to the Law of Contract and I have only seen it referenced once – hence my difficulty in finding it.
Why don’t the Thameslink2 people propose sending some of their trains down the SEML fast lines to Tonbridge? This would provide extra destinations, reduce loading on the Hayes line and between Lewisham and LBG,, and give proper access from West Kent to Lewisham and CW.
Is there any reason why every new line *has* to have through working over existing lines with all the resulting engineering and timetabling issues? I know there are important reasons why TfL don’t want to build any more small-diameter tube lines, but why couldn’t one build a Croydon-Lewisham-Docklands-Stratford-(Walthamstow?) route as a self-contained large-diameter tube line? The only issue I can see might be where to put the depot.
@Graham F
“Haley v London Electricity Board ” Surely that is a case of tort? There was no financial relationship or any other “consideration” between the workmen and the person who fell down their hole.
@pop
“When one looks at railway history it is surprising how often branches had to be cut to give a decent service on the remaining lines.”
The latest incarnation of that is the relentless chasing of market share on the main line to the detriment of any branch line. I see from the latest issue of “Rail” that VTEC’s direct all-day services to such backwaters as Harrogate, Lincoln and Tees-side have now been postponed even further, and are now projected for 2020.
Meanwhile, closer to home, my branch train was terminated two stops short of the junction with the main line again today, to avoid its lateness contaminating the services on the main line.
@Philip -well, depots are not the only issue. Small matters like demand and money may also be important. But yes, a self-contained may well be better than trying to integrate it with everything else. However, if self-contained, then perhaps not for this thread.
@Graham H….*cough*CR2*cough*
@Anonymously – you have been reading my thoughts haven’t you? Must stop leaving them lying about…
@Kate
The issue with BML2 is not that the principle doesn’t have some merit, but to put it frankly there are better uses of money in upgrading the existing BML to its max first. The BML2 campaign simply refuse to acknowledge this obvious fact.
You also need to recognize that the Uckfield line (including north of Hurst Green) – even if redoubled is still double track railway without passing opportunities. Unless you spend large amounts of money providing lots of dynamic loops along the line, any services from Eastbourne will end up getting stuck behind the all station stoppers which will still be needed to service intermediate stations between South Croydon & Uckfield (as opposed to getting a free run northwards from Haywards Heath).
The existing BML by contrast (assuming Keymer junction gets grade separated) will only have a single station on a two track section / without passing opportunities, or where slow trains will get in the way of fast ones.
Thus if you are getting into the business of needing extra capacity, creating dynamic loop(s) in the vicinity of Balcombe station (to overtake stoppers) is far more worthy than doing the same on the Uckfield branch. Moreover improvements to the existing BML can be justified by the improvements they give to the likes of Worthing and Brighton – not just Eastbourne or Seaford.
BML2 only makes sense once ALL the existing troublespots have been sorted out first including Keymer, Balcombe etc. Only once that is done and you are needing to start doubling the Ouse Valley viaduct or duplicate Balcombe / Haywards Heath tunnel does it make sense to look mega schemes link the BML2
Finally as for TL, all this talk of rerouting trams, 4 tracking the Hayes branch or a new mega station in the vicinity of South Croydon is unnecessary and very inflexible / waste of an expensive tunnel to Docklands. Even if the Uckfield line upgrades happen then you are far better using the existing BML through an Expanded east Croydon, with any connection to the Wharf coming off in the Honnor Oak area, which allows suburban trains from Sutton and Crystal Place to get into the act as regards serving Docklands.
[Although this references the Uckfield line it doesn’t mention Uckfield-Lewes and only references the line in respect of comparing with the existing BML – so quite acceptable. PoP]
I must apologise for not joining in earlier.
I’ve been thinking about this at http://hs4.info/bulding-hs4-london-tunnel/
[All but the link deleted as very vague musing. PoP]
@Anonymously 11 November 2015 at 03:59
The Wealden line campaign group realize that
(1) The amount of spare capacity the that can be freed up on the BML by the diversion of some Eastbourne trains (particularly as many services would need to remain to serve the likes of Haywards Heath, Gatwick, etc.) is pretty small
(2) Improvements to the current BML will benefit Eastbourne AND Brighton / Worthing travellers so any improvements will be far easier to generate a positive BCR for the the Uckfield line.
Its an unfortunate fact of geography that Uckfield line improvements only benefit one third of Sussex (upgrades to the Arun / Mole valley are the same in this respect) – only the existing BML can serve all parts of Sussex with fast trains and that is why it should receive monies for upgrades first.
Anonymous @ 17:07
Common sense is breaking out.
As well as the reasons you give for concentrating any available money on the existing direct London-Brighton line, there is another compelling reason. This line is already the fastest and most direct, mostly 4 track, and with very few stations on the fast lines. So any extra capacity added here will give best possible value, compared with (a) trying to get past the stopping trains on any existing (or part-existing) alternative route, or (b) building a complete new line from scratch.
@anonymous of 17.07 (may I repeat my plea for people to use some other nom de plume than “Anonymous” – here we have two anonymice opposing each other; this does not make for clarity) – If the Wealden group understand these things, I have to say their analyses and public stance suggest they don’t.
Taking your points in turn:
– Maybe small but it’s the total picture that counts (as indeed, according to you, the Wealden Group argue themselves).
– The Brighton punters aren’t benefitted by taking them for a Jorrock’s Rural ride through the Sussex countryside. As explained before, the extra mileage is such that any train travelling via the BML2 will be run down by the following BML1 train. Worthing more so. This does wonders for a negative BCR.
– Yes, geography is unfortunate, but short of moving Uckfield to somewhere near Balcombe, it is what it is. I do agree that upgrading the existing BML is probably the best option and although expensive it is always going to be cheaper and less controversial than BML2. In fact, speeding up the present Eastbourne and Arun Valley routes as freestanding projects, combined with BML1 upgrade would produce benefits all round without having to make people travel further. And if you did do these things then the case for BML2 would vanish away.
@Briantist: IIRC HS1 is restricted to 200km/h in the London tunnels and under the Channel due to length of the tunnel and the ram effect.
I do sometimes feel I am asking stupid questions here, but I find the topic very interesting and like reading all the articles and comments, so hopefully my amateur musings here can be tolerated…..
Looking at the National Rail Journey Planner for tomorrow 7.00am to 8.00am yields the following results for number of trains from the following destinations to East Croydon: On BML: Brighton 6, Wivelsfield 7 (yes, more than from Brighton!), Haywards Heath 10, Balcombe 3; From Lewes 3; From Hove 3; Uckfield / East Grinstead line – from Oxted 5.
So at Wivelsfield there are 12 trains between 7.00 and 8.00am, of which 7 stop and the Wivelsfield to Haywards Heath stretch has the most trains (presumably a couple of trains join together at HH as only 10 in that hour heading north from HH).
With a mix of fast and slow trains or even with all following the same stopping pattern, can more than 12 trains per hour be pushed through a 20 mile long two-track railway (Preston Park to Three Bridges)? Be grateful for the experts here to advise on that.
If yes, then the works at EC and northwards can be exploited by running more trains on this two-track section. If no, then surely more trains need to use the Oxted lines in order to share the capacity more evenly, otherwise what is the value of all the works proposed from SC northwards?
Also if 12 trains arrive from the south at Haywards Heath, but only 10 head north to EC from there, does that imply that the pinchpoint on the long two-track section is between HH and Three Bridges, thus reducing the case to grade-separate Keymer Junction?
PoP
I think you are treating Brighton as a point source. It is not. While it is not as big as London, there is a growing population to the east of the centre and for those Brighton residents a direct route via BML2 to Lewes to Falmer is probably quicker than changing trains in Brighton … And even if not quicker, the preference for direct trains means a direct service to Falmer may well be rather popular.
Similarly, there is a fair population west of the centre but Hove is served by direct trains from London. Arguably with a suitable chord, Falmer could be given a direct service from London but with the viaducts in Brighton it would be very difficult to achieve and, even if there was a chord, there isn’t the capacity to add direct Falmer services … And there we are back to why BML2 and TL2 are interesting.
@BrockleyMike – in theory, you could probably get closer to 20 tph even with a mixture of fasts and slows by the use of skip stopping and flighting of trains. (The Met is a good example) . One would, however, need to sit down and draw up an actual graphical timetable to demonstrate this – alas., i don’t have the time this month…
@Kate – yes, but that’s an enormous spend for a small (by relative standards) population. What are we considering here, 20 -50 000 in “greater Falmer”?
@BrockleyMike – actually, on reflexion, parts of SWML are probably a more relevant example.
The route study briefly addresses quadrupling south of Balcombe Tunnel Junction (on p60), but only to point out the difficulties. It concludes that without sorting out the bottlenecks closer to London, extra tracks there wouldn’t yield any additional through train paths.
@Brockley Mike.
Yes it is quite simple to operate 12tph from Preston Park to Haywards Heath to Three Bridges. Indeed 15tph, arguably even 20tph. But the stopping patterns south of Haywards Heath in particular have to be carefully choreographed. For comparison, the 17 miles of 2 track GEML from Witham to Shenfield has 14 tph in the peak (16 if you include the two Chelmsford starters), with a variety of stopping (or non stopping) patterns.
And the point of the work at E Croydon is to enable more trains from a variety of locations, not only just south of Haywards Heath. Particularly Horsham, Redhill, Reigate etc. and this is the point; the current capacity constraint on the BML *is not the two track section(s) south of Three Bridges*. It is Croydon, with a side order of not running every main line train into London at 12 coach length. As an aside, if I were a betting man, I’d have a few quid on 12 car trains to Reigate before too long – a cheap way of boosting capacity on the Redhill – Croydon – London corridor. I’d also bet my house against Kate that BML2 or something similar does not get the go ahead in the next 10 years.
I’m pleasantly surprised to see the Seaford/Littlehampton to Victoria train mentioned. It’s the one I get every morning.
Kate,
I think you are treating Brighton as a point source….
For the record, I am not. I think you make far too many presumptions. I have travelled to Lewes many more times than I have travelled to Brighton in the past few years. Even if BML2 were built in the next ten years (I would also be prepared to bet my house, on short odds, that it won’t) the journey to Lewes would still be quicker via its present route than via Oxted. The reasons for this can wait for a future article.
This series will be going down the line to Brighton so there will be better opportunities to discuss issues such as Keymer Junction, capacity south of Haywards Heath etc. (as far as it is relevant to London).
Does anyone know how long it would take to get to London via Hastings if HS1 Domestic services were to be extended there? I seem to recall this being a political desire not too long ago. If the overall journey time proves competitive with the BML, then BML2’s entire case falls apart.
Surely it would be better to concentrate on providing better metro services in the area to improve the local and regional economies? Some form of automated light rail may be a better option for opening up the area north of Lewes. Unlike Croydon’s Tramlink and, more recently, the DLR, there’d also be little to prevent future extensions to improve connectivity in future.
To put it another way: just because a disused conventional railway exists between two points, it is not a given that the best use for it is as a conventional railway. Just ask Manchester and Newcastle.
Anomnibus: Brighton (or even Lewes or Eastbourne) to London via Hastings, Rye and Appledore is a deviation beyond the ridiculous, you may need to dust down your map of Kent and Sussex. Even Hastings to London via Appledore would have struggled to compete on time, and anyway the local MP is now elected and probably does not need any such stunts.
@Malcolm – but at least his heart is in the right place on this one!
@Malcolm:
BML2 is hardly a direct route either. Even assuming it were built, Brighton-Lewes-Croydon (well, Selsdon)-Lewisham-Canary Wharf-Stratford is hardly a straight line. It actually doubles-back on itself.
It’s clear East Croydon is the bottleneck for BML. Ergo, the solution is to [inappropriate joke snipped. LBM] sort out the problems at that station before looking at the problems further south. I suspect extending the quadrupled section south into Brighton & Hove would be sufficient.
@ Southern Heights. The limit on HS1 in the London tunnels is 230 km/h. It is the same from Ebbsfleet inwards. The channel tunnel limit is 160 km/h.
Brockley Mike
In terms of increasing the service north of Haywards Heath the fact that the section between Copyhold Junction and Balcombe Tunnel Junction is double track is less of a limit than many assume.
The reason why services split at Haywards Heath when coming to or from Eastbourne is that it simply has the capacity to do so while other potential joining points such as Three Bridges or Gatwick Airport are too busy to block up a plaform while the attachment takes place.
The joining of services is mainly necessitated by the constraints of East Croydon and the flat junctions to the north of it. Sort them out and you will free up a surprising amount of fast line train paths as far as Haywards Heath. If some of these new paths were used to remove the time consuming attaching / detaching of trains then not only could the length of the Eastbourne / Litlehampton trains be extended, but platform working at HH would become far easier.
The Benefits of Grade Separating and expanding Keymer Junction are twofold.
(1) Even after any East Croydon improvements the BML timetable will still be based around Thameslink services due to the need to ensure the hit their slots through the core on time. At Keymer junction the present flat junction is a big constraint on timetabling as trains coming from Eastbourne hold up down trains to Brighton.
(2) It gives another overtaking opportunity (or splitting / joining place if required) potentially giving better timetabling options when it comes to Brighton departures
(2) The curve round away from the BML is sharp, the linespeed is low and there is a level crossing to consider. Assuming a sufficiently long approch is used a Eastbourne train could split from the BML still traveling at a high (and slow down as it passed through Wivlesfield) allowing a following BML to not be checked in speed.
[Nearly got removed for “going south” too early. Reprieved because it mentioned East Croydon twice. This doesn’t mean that in future people will get posts allowed simply because there is a passing reference to East Croydon. PoP]
I should have said Seaford/Hastings to Victoria train earlier. Silly me.
Are there good track diagrams of the BML available online, like the Carto Metro for London?
Open Train Times have the whole Brighton line except Forest Hills to Windmill Bridge on their signalling diagrams.
@timbeau – You said: ““Haley v London Electricity Board” Surely that is a case of tort?” – Quite – PoP said “I wish I could track down the legal case that established this but it has been established that various things you think are a contract in fact are not. It involved an Electricity Board in the days before privatisation.” – and hence my reference the tort dealt with in Haley. PoP has since stated that that case was not the one he had in mind, so we’ll need to keep searching.
@Brockley Mike
There may be more morning trains from Wivelsfield than Brighton calling at East Croydon, but using a journey planner to do the analysis means you will miss the 6 Gatwick Expresses from Brighton that don’t call at EC.
As far as I can tell the “BML2 Project Team” is little more than a rail enthusiast with a bit of expertise in PowerPoint and Photoshop who has some time on their hands, and it’s surprising to see that the proposals have got as far as they have.
I find it hard to believe that the expense of a tunnel through the Sussex Downs could be justified in order to avoid Lewes, which is probably the most significant population centre (and therefore generator of traffic and revenue) on the entire route.
There may be a case for a rail link between Uckfield and Lewes via the historic link to the existing line at Hamsey in order to improve local transport links, particularly in the context of new housing developments in places such as Crowborough, Buxted and Uckfield itself. However, the idea that the route could be developed as an alternative to the existing BML is just a dream.
Thanks for the responses to my questions. @Stox, I see 3 Gatwick Express trains on Journey Planner in the 7-8.00am hour, so if the rest of my figures are correct, that would make 15 trains per hour heading north from Wivelsfield, thus closer to the 15-20 train capacity for a two-track railway based on Graham H and Sat Fad Dad’s capacity limit numbers.
Based on that, – up to five more trains per hour could be sent from the BML through the improved layouts in the EC area (along with possibly other extra trains from Reigate / Tonbridge / Caterham / Tattenham Corner), so that does seem to provide for reasonable capacity growth before implementing more radical schemes like four-tracking south of Three Bridges.
As an aside, the 20 train limit for a two-track railway is also helpful in understanding the challenge in the Thameslink core with 24 trains an hour planned (and having to accommodate 8 conflicting movements in the opposite direction).
I don’t think that is everything though. What about the Arun Valley and Horsham trains which I suspect are on the fasts by Purley? And if I am counting right from 2018 there will be a further 4tph Thameslinks on the fast through South Croydon and Purley which you haven’t counted? (More on the slows through South Croydon.). So you may be undercounting by 6tph?
Don’t know about 2018 but in December there will be 14 trains on the fasts and 10 on the slow north of Purley off peak (which is one down on now). There may be an extra 2 fast off peak in 2018. As far as I can remember there are only 4 peak only thameslinks in 2018 through Purley – 2 fast to Littlehampton and 2 slow to Caterham. Not sure about Victoria services though.
Currently, between 0730 and 0830 at E Croydon there are 17 up trains on the fasts and 14 on the slows.
From the new December timetable, that becomes 17 and 16 respectively. Of these 33 trains, only 11 have come from the BML south of Three Bridges, and 9 on the BML south of Keymer Jn.
Which means that there is at most 3tph capacity at present on the fast lines through South Croyon and Gatwick and it’s unclear whether Thameslink will take up most of the slack. Also, trains on the fast lines are already mostly 12 carriages.
There is probably no chance to increases capacity above 20tph to 24tph since then this 24tph would need to interleave with a different 24tph through the Thameslink core.
For me those figures show that the fast lines through South Croydon are full regardless of any work done at Windmill Junction.
Kate,
Amazing how two people can look at something and see it completely differently.
Assuming Stoats Nest Junction wasn’t a problem (a big if I grant you but it could be sorted out) then:
– Absolutely no reason why you couldn’t run 30tph between Stoats Nest Junction and East Croydon if Network Rail wouldn’t be so reluctant to run with 2 minute headway (although there are places where they do)
– Absolutely no reason why East Croydon station should be a problem in future with 2 platforms for northbound fast trains (and Gatwick Express not stopping there) so plenty of dwell time
– No problem continuing north with two grade separated tracks
– No problem fitting into another service pattern (e.g. Thameslink) because trains can wait at various places for a short while (notably East Croydon platforms) without blocking other trains
– Problems finding paths north of Selhurst and capacity at London Bridge and beyond and Victoria
It doesn’t take much to realise that there is a bottleneck just south of South Croydon.
North of Windmill Junction, there are:
2 fasts (in each direction); and
2 slows (in each direction).
Since fasts and slows are mixed at East Croydon, let’s just call that 4 lines.
South of Windmill, we have 4 lines too:
1 BML fast
1 BML slow
1 West Croydon (spur at Windmill Junction)
1 Oxted Line (spur at South Croydon)
That all looks good. But, the Oxted line doesn’t carry anywhere near a full line’s traffic which means that in order to utilise the lines between Windmill Junction and London Victoria / London Bridge efficiently we need:
either duplication to West Croydon with extra platforms there to turn services;
the Oxted line to be used to capacity; or
six-tracking of the main BML from south of South Croydon.
Duplicating to West Croydon is the best solution if the problem lies with metro services but the issue is probably with long-distance services. BML 2 / Thameslink 2 address the second option and allow more services to use the Oxted Line (and it suggests that the much-maligned route to Canary Wharf might not be necessary) by creating the option to run through to the Sussex Coast. It might not be the best route to the Sussex Coast, but it is better than nothing.
So while operationally Windmill Junction and East Croydon might be difficult, the central problem on the BML is that a smaller proportion of down leave the BML at South Croydon than necessary leaving the BML south of South Croydon as the main bottleneck in terms of absolute capacity.
(Incidentally, the relative under-use of the Oxted line is why 5 tracks (in total) are sufficient between East Croydon and South Croydon. If the Oxted line was fully used, then a sixth track would then become necessary between East and South Croydon ).
@Kate: So that’s what BML2 is for! Not to serve Brighton, or Seaford, or wherever the ever-evasive team want to send their expensively-bought trains. But “ to utilise the lines between Windmill Junction and London Victoria / London Bridge efficiently “. And there was me, thinking that taking passengers where they want to go, when they want to go there, might have been the objective!
I don’t buy this capacity problem south of South Croydon. Kate is correct there are 4 lines to each of the destinations north of Windmill Bridge. But East Croydon supplied the fast lines. The slow lines are supplied mostly from West Croydon and aren’t much good for trains from South of Croydon. Therefore if anything there is spare capacity there because the Oxted trains peel off at South Croydon. You can avoid the grade separation at Stoats Nest by running all peak trains to London via the slows like now. There are 6 stoppers after 2018 which could meet the Oxted trains at South Croydon and run parallel into East Croydon on the bidi line before going to alternate destinations. That still leaves around 18 paths an hour from Redhill. More than enough.
@Kate 15th November 20.25. I was focussed on the two-track section south on the BML south of Three Bridges, hence not counting the Arun Valley / Horsham Line which joins at the four-track part of the BML (plus it was hard enough trying to work out how many peak trains use just the two-track section!).
From what I have read here, there does seem to be some spare capacity on the two-track section of the BML which can be exploited after the works in the EC area are completed and the debate then shifts to what happens when that capacity is fully used up (5-10 years with 60% predicted growth by 2023?). do you then four-track that 20 mile section, tunnels and all, or consider the cheaper option of extending the Uckfield line to Lewes and then sending diverting some Eastbourne, etc trains via that route, freeing up some more capacity on the BML north of Wivelsfield to run more trains from Brighton?
I agree with you that the Oxted lines seem to be underutilised and the works at SC / EC could facilitate using that route to a greater level (with reinstated double tracking, etc). with the predicted growth in demand and its rapid nature, I would think the work to sort out the Uckfield line to Lewes should be in advanced planning by now, given the pace at which schemes are delivered in the UK.
Brockley Mike. How do you know it’s cheaper?
Given that it is quite possible to run 18-20tph from Preston Park to Keymer Jn, ie twice the current peak level, I don’t think 4 tracking south of Keymer would be realistically needed in any time frame worth planning for. Which means only 7 miles required north of Keymer, acknowledging 2 tunnels and a viaduct included.
But we will have to wait a couple of decades many, before that is needed, and indeed, for parts 11-18(?) of the rest of this series to hopefully explain.
Brockley Mike: Are you sure they are underutilised? Or is it maybe that the demand simply isn’t there? Just because a line has excess capacity doesn’t mean you have to run extra trains….
The demand on Uckfield branch is there, but the trains are rammed due to a lack of rolling stock, that is a different problem though….
Re Southern Heights, Brockley Mike et al.
Also note that the ticket prices on the Uckfiled line are lower than comparitive local stations on the BML for example Uckfield is circa 30% cheaper than Hayward Heath so those in the villages in between can go for the cheaper but slower option… Which maynya appear to have done!
Equalise the ticket prices and relative demand levels might change???
“trains are also restricted to 8-car length, although some peak period 10-cars are timetabled and use selective door operation (SDO).”
I would add that SDO is not limited to 10-car trains, there are also 12-car trains calling at South Croydon in the peak, e.g. the 08:27 to London Bridge (from East Grinstead). There is just enough length on the bridge for the four-coach ‘tail’ not to obstruct the junction itself while calling at the station.
[Thanks for that. I have amended the text to reflect this. PoP]
Generally it is not just the frequency of the peak-trains, but also the fact that they are fast, which makes the South Croydon peak service rather attractive to commuters – plus one has a generally better chance of a seat than if boarding at East Croydon!
So maybe that’s the solution. The objection some raise against BML2 that the Oxted Line would be slower can be offset by lower ticket prices for services routed that way.
@ Kate – I assume you’re joking about lower fares being maintained. You know the mantra is “put the fares up to pay for investment / better service quality” whether or not it actually materialises. Expect that mantra to be repeated more frequently and loudly after the Autumn Statement regardless of whether Mr Osborne gorges himself on more rail investment spending (while slashing revenue support / demanding ever higher premia from franchisees).
Kate,
With an additional 12 car of DMU coming to Uckfield route at some point soon expect some above average fare rises for the route announced either this December or December ’16. (Average has to be previous the July RPI currently)
[and some below average rises on the quietest bits of the network to balance???]
Fares would have to rise massively to pay for BML2
A few years ago, I regularly had to travel from Victoria to Brighton or Hove one day a week. (The place I had to get to was between the two stations so it was just as easy to travel to either one). Regularly the journey was fast and uninterrupted until we arrived two miles from Brighton.. Neither East Croydon, nor the flat junction at Keymer were the problem. The problem was always that we were regularly held outside of Preston Park station., Why? Because there was always a Preston Park stopper in front of us OR we were held by a northbound train coming out of Brighton, and a crossing train in front of us was held up. But why? There is/was a Brighton bound platform on the east side of the station that could be used for Brighton bound services that has been taken out of use. This could have been used for all Brighton bound stoppers giving London to Brighton fast trains a clear run. It now means that fast trains get held by slow trains before entering Brighton station. If London to Brighton journey times are to be improved, perhaps re-instating that Preston Park platform is something that should be looked at?
So, raise fares on the BML (eg an airport premium for any service routed through the Gatwick) and use that to help pay (in part) for enhancements to the Oxted Line. I’m not saying that is what should be done, just that WW’s objection is another which can be addressed very trivially.
I do wonder whether BML2 would be viewed more favourably had NR been the first to float the idea?
@Sat Fat Dad, Southern Heights and others.
By ‘underutilised’ with reference to the Uckfield / Oxted lines, I was referring to the fact there are currently only 5 peak hour trains from Oxted to EC, and the consensus here is that a two-track railway can accommodate 20 trains.
My initial line of reasoning was triggered by the proposal to reconfigure SC to provide two platforms for the Oxted lines (which was noted much earlier in the comments) and then thinking that if that was done, then that enhancement at SC should be used as fully as possible.
As to cost, as with everything else railway-related I am not sure (!) but it would be whatever was needed to provide two tracks from Uckfield to Lewes and a single (second track) from Uckfield to Edenbridge as far as I can tell. Conceivably electrification of the rest of the existing Oxted lines could be associated with the ‘electrification’ pot, however empty that may currently be. At the very least, electrification of the existing line must contribute to the overall business case as a further benefit?
To 4-track the BML south of Three Bridges would need much the same in terms of track work, plus the cost of two new tunnels and probably a flyover at Keymer Junction, so even if the track mileage was less, the cost of the major engineering elements would surely make that option more expensive.
As to demand, if that is really on the BML corridor rather than the Uckfield corridor, then my point is that by diverting Eastbourne-area trains via the Uckfield lines, then capacity on the BML is created for more trains from Brighton / Hove.
On the pricing issue, my personal view is that journey pricing should be uniform, but possibly costs for station car parking could be managed to push people towards the Uckfield line?
I suppose my overall point is that what is done now at SC and EC has long term effects on what can be done later further down the line and thus should only be done with a long-term masterplan in mind for the whole route.
@ Brockley Mike. Diverting Eastbourne area trains via the route-that-must-not-be-named: not so good for all those Eastbourne / Lewes area people who want to get to Haywards Heath, Gatwick etc.
‘With an additional 12 car of DMU coming to Uckfield route at some point soon….’
Didn’t realise they were going to run re-configured HST sets down to Uckfield! ?
But seriously….are there any other DMUs in the UK that are currently run in such a long configuration? I would have thought electrification would be necessary for much longer commuter trains (as opposed to powerful HST-type express trains) to be used on the Uckfield line.
@Kate…I seriously doubt that NR (or even its much maligned predecessor Railtrack) would have come up with something quite as barmy as BML2. IIRC, even HS2 initial genesis was a creation of DofT/government, not NR.
anonymous I think additional 12 cars of DMU to be added refers to additional to the pool of vehicles used on the route rather than one 12 car train
Re Anomously and Alan bluemountains,
“an additional 12 cars of DMU” means an extra 12 cars on the services overall not 12 car services the maximum will be 10car (230m).
TSGN have leased 4x3car 170s ex Scotland and have been trying to reconfigute them as 2x2car and 2x4car 171s to match the existing stock however this has taken at least 6 months and counting and they are no where near entering service yet. They may also be left as 4x3car hence keeping the total as 12car to cover all potential outcomes.
Sad Fat Dad
If Eastbourne services are diverted via Oxted then there would obviously need to be a Hayward s Heath to Lewes shuttle – possibly Haywards Heath Ashford would make sense but such issues are beyond the geographic scope of LR for discussion in detail.
All
I am very much in accord with Brockley Mike but I would add that a secondary benefit of restoring the full Oxted Line rather than upgrading BML if costs of the two were comparable, is that a totally distinct route offers greater resilience since it is less likely two routes would be simultaneously blocked by two independent incidents.
@ Kate. Ah a shuttle, obviously.
So East Sussex passengers for London have their journey times extended (possibly considerably) by going via the Weald, and passengers for Gatwick have to change, possibly twice.
Good luck selling that!
@SFD – I, too, was gobsmacked by the shuttle suggestion. For the difficulties these cause, have a look at Sittingbourne Sheerness. And that’s little more than a stone’s throw.
@ Kate – just for clarity I made a comment about the wider political / funding environment for any rail scheme. It was not an “objection” to anything BML related. I can’t quite see the day when I become sufficiently agitated to be able to raise an objection to anything about the future shape of the Brighton main line. It’s interesting to read about it but I rarely use the route. Past frustrations have related to the fairly useless headways to / from Burgess Hill. No doubt the reasons for them will be covered in a future article as we trundle south through the problem areas on the BML.
Why with road building is there no sense that fares (ie tolls) will have to go up to pay for new roads (with the exception of bridges) but for rail schemes like BML2 there’s such concern about fares needing to go up to pay for investment?
@Kate – Let me assure you that if there was an easy way of making road users pay for specific investments, they would have been implemented years ago – the problem with the UK road network (unlike, say, the French network) is that the “traditional” free network is dense and provides an alternative to a PAYG project, albeit a slower one (but not that much slower for localish journeys).
The other point to be considered is that the revenue base for rail schemes is low in relation to likely volumes of useage, so charges rise disproportionately high compared with road – hence the squeaking. As a rough guide (and not knowing now what the precise figure is these days), BML1 longer distance traffic is likely to generate around £150-200m pa. BML2 v1.0 is likely to cost around £1-2bn (no details available!),the financing costs of which will therefore be between £125m to £500m, depending on whether it is privately funded or not. Even at the low end of that scale,you would have to double all the fares on the Brighton Line corridor to pay for it. [Yes,I know 125 is less than 150, but you have to allow for fares elasticity,which I have probably underestimated in the circumstances]. Now compare these sorts of numbers with the tolls charged in the West Midlands or on toll bridges – or the Dublin airport tunnel* – and you see the point.
* A good case in point – the taxi drivers at the airport invariably ask you whether you want the cheaper route – making that toll stick at a commercial level has been well nigh impossible
@Kate – But there is a precedent for roads. In order to pay for the planned Silvertown Tunnel, TfL is proposing to introduce a charge to use the Blackwall Tunnel, which is currently toll-free.
See https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/rivercrossings/silvertown/consult_view#User
And, the Dartford Bridge/Tunnel crossing was going to go “free” after the construction costs had been paid off, wasn’t it?
Whereas, actually, tolls have gone up.
@Kate, Graham H:
One key difference between the UK and most of continental Europe is that the former had Thomas Telford. Telford worked on improving and upgrading a number of what are now major “A” roads, such as the Great West Road, the routes to Wales, parts of the A1, and so on. These weren’t minor changes either: they were properly resurfaced and new structures were built to improve travel speeds, such as new bridges, straightening of some sections, and so on. This was the beginning of the end for the old Turnpike Trust system. Some of this work was driven by the desire for faster mail coaches, so the roads were explicitly upgraded to handle higher speeds.
This means British road users have two viable road networks: the major A roads, and the 20th century’s motorways.
In most European nations, similar upgrades never happened, so their motorways – which are often tolled – effectively have a captive market. Their secondary roads typically still follow the original medieval, Roman, or even pre-Roman routes, which were designed – if “designed” is the right word – for pack animals and infantry, not motor vehicles.
Furthermore, an awful lot of that motorway traffic on the continent is through traffic, travelling from one country to another. Switzerland is effectively a giant crossroads, but even Italy sees a lot of cargo arriving by sea for onward transport into northern and eastern Europe. Charging for through traffic makes a lot of sense.
Road tolls work in countries like Germany and Switzerland because there’s often no sensible alternative and there’s a lot more passing trade. In the UK, there’s an entire secondary road network that provides an alternative, free, route. Conventional toll booths are thus perceived as being an unfair stealth tax, given that the government already charges fuel duty.
The Swiss or Austrian model could work. Both charge a flat toll on entering the country, with the vehicle getting a sticker as proof of payment. That sticker is valid for a year and can be checked for using cameras at strategic points around the national network. This would make it easier for the government to encourage rail freight over road haulage, for example.
Back on-topic: Does it strike anyone else as ironic that we’re already on Part 10 of this series, but are still stuck in Croydon? Is it time to consider building a “London Reconnections Mainline 2”?
@Greg T – and the same with the Severn bridge, and … [I often suspect in the Welsh case , it’s simply a means now of providing a subsidy to the staff employed to collect the tolls, along the “Do not throw stones at this notice” way of thinking. Cynical, moi?]
To revert to Kate’s point for a moment – and before Anomnibus points this out – the technology certainly exists now to make all road users pay for the journeys they actually make, and to vary that charge depending on whether the roads used have been upgraded. That would put road charges on a more comparable footing with train fares, and in economic terms, that would have a lot going for it (unless you adduce specific reasons for wanting to subsidise particular elements of a trip) but it isn’t done because it would be desperately unpopular with voters (penalises people who have to travel, rural inhabitants, requires electronic supervision of private journeys to visit your mistress, and so on). Even its pale pre-electronic cousin of replacing car tax with increased fuel duty was rejected on those grounds (and also because it would have disadvantaged BL’s market position at the time).
A further point is that railways are overwhelmingly used by the comparatively rich, whereas roads are used by everybody. Subsidising roads more than rail is a progressive policy.
@Wax Lyrical -an old canard and one which is probably untrue in the context of urban transport. Suggest you take a trip on the tube now and then and look at your fellow punters. (Maybe different for InterCity services but then who was suggesting they should be subsidised? Oh, HS2? Yes, of course,that’s different.)
@Graham H:
Oddly enough, insurance companies are already encouraging the use of GPS-linked “black box” technology in cars to reduce premiums. I understand it’s proving very popular with younger drivers. (The same approach to insurance is having a noticeable effect on the quality of driving here in Italy. It’s definitely improved.)
This means most of the technology needed to do what you suggest is already in place in a number of vehicles right now. It’s “just” a matter of “simply” connecting the IT dots. Which is, of course, where it gets really difficult given the government’s track record with IT projects.
Incidentally, the privacy argument is moot: roads are considered public, not private, space, so anything you do on them is fair game. If it wasn’t, one could argue the police would need a warrant just to follow a suspect’s vehicle.
*
Dragging things kicking and screaming back onto the original topic: what’s the road network like between Brighton, Lewes, and Uckfield? If it’s decent enough, why would reinstating the railway be useful?
By the time any major investment does happen, electric vehicles may be becoming the norm rather than the exception, so the pollution issue becomes much less compelling.
If people can just drive to a suitable railhead to catch their train, there’s no need to reopen or rebuild parts of the old railway at all, and arguably far less justification for something as expensive as tunnels. After all, very few people live right next to a railway station, so it’s a fair assumption that they’ll be spending at least part of their journey on roads.
[Could I just point out you haven’t dragged things back onto the original topic but merely back to the original off-topic subject that was being discussed. PoP]
You invite proof-by-anecdote, and if you compare the tube (or around here, the trains) with the buses, it remains very plausible. Commuters into the centre earn more, as a rule, than people working out in the suburbs. A frequent moral of LR is that rail spending is all about capacity in the peaks, when the people you’re crushed against wear suits.
Back on-topic: Does it strike anyone else as ironic that we’re already on Part 10 of this series, but are still stuck in Croydon? Is it time to consider building a “London Reconnections Mainline 2”?
It has been pointed out to me. This was very much a voyage of discovery for me when I started to write this and I set out with few preconceived notions. Whilst it was always intended to point out the the greatest benefits for the Brighton Line could actually be created in London itself, the extent of this is only becoming truly apparent to myself as I investigate further and new and modified schemes come to light. I think this was originally intended to be combined with East Croydon and was due to be part 4, or maybe 6.
It has also been pointed out to me that A Study in Sussex is woefully misnamed although I could argue that just about everywhere south of London Bridge and Victoria is referred to as “Sussex” by Network Rail and we are basing a lot of this on the Sussex Route Study.
@Wax Lyrical – actually, I prefer proof by fact, and whilst it is the case that – some – Intercity passengers are in social categories ABC1 ( to use the old-fashioned descriptors), this is far from universally true, nor is it true for most people using local transport of all descriptions. However, all this is a bit beside the point: subsidy is paid not for reasons of transferring social benefits amongst different classes of people but to buy external benefits which cannot be captured through a charging system. [BTW, we have all been here on this site before exhaustively and exhaustingly fairly recently; I forget that particular correspondent’s nom de plume (maybe you are he under another guise?), but the arguments would be tiresome to repeat again].
[Entirely agree Graham H. And as you have so masterfully summarised the situation this is a very appropriate point to veto any further discussion here. PoP]
Anomnibus (and briefly,as I hear the whirr of scissor-blades)
The line is parallelled by the A26 as far a s Lewes,then the A27 on to Brighton.
The latter is very busy,the former is a traffic-choked cart-track for most of its length.
Drowned by the brou-ha-ha of BML2 are the very real potential benefits to local connectivity….
Slugabed,
Sharpened but put away. I don’t want to encourage commenting about Uckfield – Lewes because an opportunity will happen in the near future but one thing you comment does emphasise (and we will need to bear in mind) is that the benefits of re-opening the like are most definitely because the line will provide benefits linking central Sussex (e.g. Uckfield) with the South Coast. The difference to rail passenger traffic to London will be negligible.
Graham H
The Dublin tunnel is a bit of an exception; it is intended for the docks, not the airport. The tolls are deliberately set to discourage cars from using it, although buses got in after a bit of arguing.
@Anonyminibus – interesting – the tariffs seem to alter depending on the time of day and I was told that this was to soak the car commuters;may be that was an alternative way of saying they were to be discouraged. Whatever the reason, on the dozen or so times I’ve used it (at a variety of times of day and night), much of the traffic seemed to have been cars and taxis – but I was there at a time when the Irish economy was on the rocks and freight was at a low ebb.
@Pedantic of Purley:
“[Could I just point out you haven’t dragged things back onto the original topic but merely back to the original off-topic subject that was being discussed. PoP]”
But… but… look! See! It says “BML2” right there in the post’s title!
[But Uckfield – Lewes isn’t specifically a BML2 thing where as their proposal for South Croydon is and time I time again I said there would be other opportunities to comment on Uckfield – Lewes. Subsequent comment on Uckfield – Lewes removed. PoP]
@Pedantic of Purley:
“ …..the benefits of re-opening the link are most definitely because the line will provide benefits linking central Sussex (e.g. Uckfield) with the South Coast. The difference to rail passenger traffic to London will be negligible.”
Not wanting to prejudge whatever comes out in the ‘Uckfield – Lewes’ chapter and certainly not promoting the barmy BML2 scheme, but it is worth pointing out that the benefits of reopening extend much further north than central Sussex, indeed right up to the edge of Greater London.
Living as I do in north east Surrey, my local station is Upper Warlingham. If I want to travel to the south coast, my journey by train would involve back-tracking north to East Croydon to catch a train back south. Apart from the cost involved, the extra time taken means that I never use the train and always drive all the way as it’s quicker. Reopening the link would mean that my journeys would almost certainly be by train, even allowing for the fact that the service wouldn’t be quite at the same speed as the main line.
The same argument applies to any of the towns along the Oxted/Uckfield line, many of which are expanding rapidly with new housing.
Peter Heather,
Actually that is what I meant but maybe I didn’t explain clearly enough. Perhaps if I had said benefits those travelling southwards on one’s outward journey from anywhere south of Croydon (basically Sanderstead to Uckfield).
In the case of Upper Warlingham, I suppose that includes people on the east side of Purley with easy access to Upper Warlingham as even from Purley it is usually quicker to get a train to East Croydon to make a subsequent journey south for anywhere south of Three Bridges on the Brighton Main Line.
@Kate I’m still not clear what problem BML2 is supposed to solve. If it’s capacity from Brighton to London, and if (big if) that’s enough of an issue that we need another two tracks from East Croydon to Brighton… surely even then, it makes far more sense to build those two tracks along the fastest route i.e. 6-track the main BML? Building a slower route to relieve capacity is a big risk as the demand might not be there – if you’re talking about putting up fares on the BML, that in itself might well shift enough people away from it to “solve” any capacity issues.
@lmm – a good summary of the great mystery! You will notice that the BML2-ists have been very silent on the matter…
According to my (ancient) edition of Quail there’s a party electrified
”Perturbation Siding ‘ as part of an otherwise un-electrified ”Goods”line just north of East Croydon. Is this still there, and what is it actually used for? And/Or what might it be used for.?
Stafford,
Is it still there?: yes
What is it actually used for?: perturbations
It is not intended for any regular use but it used for when the service goes up the wall and they just want to shift a unit out the way for whatever reason e.g. door failure during the peak means it cannot remain in service and it causes less disruption to put it there than to try and get it back to the depot – even though the depot may be literally on the other side of the tracks.
In twenty years of using the line between Purley and London I have seen a train in there once – but that was quite recently.
@ Graham H: Which is why the BML2 lot really do need a reality check! How one convinces them to dump their crazier ideas and go back to their original Wealden Line proposals, I have no idea….thoughts, anyone?
@POP, I saw a Virgin Voyager in there once when the Manchester to Brighton services still ran, which was a bit weird.
I gather the perturbation siding (also known as the Norwood Turnback) was created to allow a particular train to run but that train never happened in the event. I have often wondered if bringing the whole line back into use from platform 7 at Norwood Junction might do anything useful in terms of the current timetable? Turnback from down services into the station is fiddly, requiring a shunt, so it has some use for that (though going back towards Sydenham would block every line in the process); but it would certainly have helped recently to loop one of the Purley bound aggregates trains that was holding up the Sutton bound train that I was waiting to relieve. Ther is also still a lot of stabling space potential to the east of that siding, presumably from the goods depot days, but sadly it would probably be prone to vandalism these days.
@GTR Driver – Well, coming from the era when I remember that perturbation siding connected, together with parallel tracks to the east, right back to Platform 7 (and 6) at Norwood Junction and in use during and even subsequently to the goods traffic era, I often wondered why the undergrowth was not cleared on today’s disused section and the buffer stops installed on the rails instead. In fact, I think you will find that the rails themselves still exist all the way back to Norwood Junction if you look in the undergrowth.
Like others, I have never seen a train on that siding and it was a greater source of wonder to me that, at a time when Railtrack were crying out for funds, that they managed to replace the old and install brand new rail + conductor rail and all the related bits for what then seemed an isolated siding far from local stations or Selhurst depot (separated by lots of other tracks).
In other words, I agree with you that it would be a useful extra track, especially combined with a reopened Platform 7 (long called-for from the northern approach). I wrote about this suggestion at the time ‘to those that be’ but answer came there none. Maybe better luck today?
I wouldn’t worry about potential vandalism from over the fence separating the railway from neighbouring Davidson Road (and the more recent Canal Walk and Towpath Way – contrived new names). If they can get over that fence, then the whole of the outer Selhurst Depot is at risk, too.
Anonymously
Re BML2 – It’s a standard negotiating tactic.
You ask for shedloads more that you expect to get, in the hope of settling for something more modest, like a Lewes-Uckfield re-opening + double track all the way.
Makes sense to me, anyway!
@kate
“Why with road building is there no sense that fares (ie tolls) will have to go up to pay for new roads (with the exception of bridges) but for rail schemes like BML2 there’s such concern about fares needing to go up to pay for investment?”
And even when a toll is introduced to pay for a road improvement, it is only done so by the users who benefit from the improvement, after the road is built. Putting today’s rail fares up to pay for tomorrow’s improvements is a very unfair cross-subsidy – especially if today’s users also have to put up with the disruption caused during the construction work they are paying for.
They said privatisation would attract private investment in improvements – I didn’t realise that investment was expected to come from the fare-paying passengers rather than, as in most industries, the shareholders and banking industry.
@Graham
“the more recent Canal Walk and Towpath Way – contrived new names”
Contrived, yes, but from the existence for a few years of the Croydon Canal, which ran for a couple of decades from the site of West Croydon station via Forest Hill and New Cross to the Grand Surrey canal
see for example http://www.londoncanals.co.uk/croydon/croy18.html
@ Anomnibus: “One key difference between the UK and most of continental Europe is that the former had Thomas Telford.”
And the latter had Napoleon, who improved roads quite a bit to enable his army to get around more easily…
Greg, BML2 is an extension of the Uckfield-Lewes reinstatement campaign. Initially their aim was to reinstate to provide an alternative to the main line during disruption and better connections from the Weald to Brighton. However the 2008 study placed seemingly no value on these aims, just repeating the mantra that we can’t run more trains from Brighton as there are no more paths into London. So the campaign changed tack and presented a scheme for a new route into London. It may not be the best way to get more paths through East Croydon but it would certainly provide a way of getting punters to the coast next time the main line takes a dive.
@Anonymous – time and again, studies of the value to be placed on the availability of an alternative route in the event of disruption have shown that their economic value is close to zero. (I say this from the extensive studies undertaken in relation to railway closures, for example, during the time I was responsible for such things). This is not surprising really as the numbers for retaining or – even more so, in this case – building anew are so large (as explained above) that it would probably be cheaper to retain a fleet of taxis against the disruption days. (As per above, £150m pa would keep about 2-3 000 taxis on *exclusive* permanent standby…)
Around 3 p.m. today there was a train in the perturbation siding.
Graham H
Anonymous – time and again, studies of the value to be placed on the availability of an alternative route in the event of disruption have shown that their economic value is close to zero.
By this argument, closing the Settle & Carlisle ( see the “Marylebone” thread ) would have been a financially sound move then?
Or maybe not ??
Greg,
I am sure Graham H can answer this better but the Settle & Carlisle was not saved because of it’s value as a diversionary route – which given it is not electrified would have been limited anyway. I use diversionary route in the sense of meaning a route kept in reserve to be made available as an alternative in case the main route is closed.
The Settle & Carlisle was largely saved because the closure case was flawed and because the traffic needed to justify it did materialise – largely in the form of freight traffic which just could not be handled on an ever increasingly busy West Coast Main Line.
As Graham H has said, in practice, when it comes to facing reality, most diversionary routes are of very little value. There are exceptions of course. The problem is that people look at a route and a set of tracks and don’t take into account other issues such as can the signalling handle it, is there anywhere to terminate the trains if necessary, are the drivers route trained, could the alternative stations handle either the trains or the passengers using it? The cost of upgrading the facilities for the very occasional use is not usually a prudent way to spend money.
@PoP/Greg -it is cruel – and possibly an infringement of my human rights – to ask me to recall the precise numbers of a business case from 30 years back. However, here goes: as I recall the NPV for S&C closure was in the range about 4.0M to 6.0M, compared with the NPV for retention which was in the range 3.5M to 5.0M. Of that retention value, about 1.0M was its diversionary value (WC trains were to be dragged by diesel), the rest being what we would now tend to call agglomeration and connectivity benefits. The case for rejecting the closure was – at least I took the view in advising Ministers – that the overlap between the closure and retention cases was so large that it would not be legally safe (ie challenge free) to proceed with the closure case.
As you see, the diversionary benefits were only a small percentage of the case and even if they had been omitted, the case would have been tricky. One could, of course, try and argue that BML and WC are different – of course, they are – but WC has a lot of high value long distance traffic and much freight. BML has neither, only volume,so the economic differences may not be so large. (And the costs of providing some of the alternatives to diversion in the S&C case were very expensive, which is probably not the case for BML.)
Given Graham H’s comment about the cost-effectiveness of a fleet of taxis I’m tempted to question whether, if there was presently no rail system in these isles, would there be good enough business case to actually create one, and if so would it only include services for commuters into the major conurbations ?
But I won’t, as I suspect it would get moderated out of existence before anyone answered. But it does relate to whether you’d build a line along the BML2 suggestion if there wasn’t already a trackbed/line there already.
@Alison W – it’s a question one doesn’t like to ask…but it is an interesting part of counter factual history – suppose for example, the B type bus had been perfected 15 years earlier – we’d have had no electric tramways. (In the States, it would have been been even more touch and go – if the Model T had been on the market five years earlier, the whole of the American interurban industry might well have not occurred). Or Macadamised road surfaces and steam carriages been satisfactorily developed by 1830.
I realise we are into Steampunk country, however, and I hear oldfashioned manual scissors being sharpened…
Alison,
We won’t go along the “why have railways?” route as it has been discussed before so yes it will get moderated.
But it does relate to whether you’d build a line along the BML2 suggestion if there wasn’t already a trackbed/line there already
And in trying to get my head around why BML2 think that their scheme is a good idea I think this is one of their problems. People see a disused railway as a “free” asset just ripe for taking advantage of. BML2 more or less say this on their website. The trouble is that very often it costs an awful lot of money to reinstate a disused railway route to modern standards. Remember that these were built in the days when soil technology just didn’t exist and bridges were constructed to the standard of their day. Also a lot of the cost (e.g. track, signalling) is still there in any case whether the trackbed previously existed or not. In the case of Borders Railway that was roughly £30 million a mile for a railway that is largely single track and that didn’t include electrification or anything other than the most basic of signalling. Stations are also very basic with short platforms.
The comment on cost is sometimes true even in the case of just reinstating a second track as Chiltern found out in the early days of their franchise. It is back to the Waterloo & City line argument that it sometimes might be actually easier to start again.
In particular there is a lot of Sussex that is sparsely populated and relatively flat. Also if you are going to have to tunnel through the South Downs then it doesn’t really make much difference where you do it. Excepting of course that it is a National Park and you have to be careful about not intruding on that.
So, if you start off with the premise that, for some reason, you need an extra route to Brighton and if you argue that it is too difficult to four track the Brighton Main Line all the way then there are probably some good options involving mixing and matching the existing main line and/or branches with a new route for a limited distance + tunnel under the South Downs. Of course this presumes that you don’t start off with the premise that the Brighton Main Line is full up and needs relieving throughout its length.
@PoP: I’m sure the East Grinstead extension to the Bluebell didn’t cost £30m/mile… 😉
To elaborate on my earlier point, whenever you go along a secondary road on the near continent and it’s line on both sides by mature trees, it’s bound to be one redone by Napoleon…
I won’t go into the rest of Anomnibus’ post…
Southern Heights,
I am equally sure that some sections of the East Grinstead extension would have cost far more than that if done on a commercial basis. They had to excavate a former rubbish tip. I have forgotten how many trains that involved but I seem to recall each trainload cost about £20,000. Prior to that they did some of it with lorries which was even more expensive. A lot of the work was done with volunteer labour. They also had to buy back the land. And at the end of the day you have a single track railway restricted to 25mph.
@Southern Heights
“I’m sure the East Grinstead extension to the Bluebell didn’t cost £30m/mile”
£11m for five miles according to their own website.
But a fairly basic platform, no major civil engineering (apart from digging out a filled-in cutting, and only single track, built for 20mph operation
‘Initially their aim was to reinstate to provide an alternative to the main line during disruption and better connections from the Weald to Brighton. However the 2008 study placed seemingly no value on these aims, just repeating the mantra that we can’t run more trains from Brighton as there are no more paths into London. So the campaign changed tack and presented a scheme for a new route into London.’
This is precisely why I find the BML2 rationale so infuriating! As Graham H has said, the economic benefits of a diversionary route are fairly minimal, whereas the connectivity and agglomeration benefits might be quite substantial. This is the principal reason why the 2008 study was flawed…..and if I was in charge of the Wealden Line campaign at the time, I would have aggressively directed my efforts towards countering this (including commissioning my own study if necessary!). Instead, they have tried to address the flawed conclusion of the original study (i.e. the lack of train paths at the London end) with the railway/planning equivalent of a Heath Robinson machine!!!
And in doing so, Greg Tingey, I fear the Wealden Line campaign have made reopening *less*, not more likely, simply because any future feasibility study will examine Uckfield – Lewes reopening in the context of BML2 and not on its own merits. Unless there is political interference (always a possibility, I admit), such a study would likely conclude that there are other more cost-effective options for relieving the current BML (some of which we have discussed above) and that BML2 is poor value for money. And so Uckfield – Lewes will be kicked into the long grass again.
I’m afraid the Wealden Line group really have shot themselves in the feet with a giant bazooka on this one…..
Sorry, instead of ‘the flawed conclusion of the original study’ in my post above, it would be better to say ‘the premise behind the conclusion of the original study’.
Just to be clear.
The 2008 study had its own terms of reference. Based on the brief given (and having read it a number of times in the past) it is difficult to see in what way the study was flawed. Now if you want to argue the terms of reference were flawed then that is different but it is noticeable that people only complained about what was effectively the terms of reference after the study was produced. They didn’t like the answer so concluded that the wrong question was asked – which may well be true but this should have been sorted out before the study was done.
I have only responded to clarify a specify point – and notice that Anonymously has later himself clarified this technical but important point.
This is not an invitation for general discussion of the line to Uckfield which is on hold.
Yes, I guess what I (and others) have been saying is that the terms of reference for the study were flawed, not the study itself. As the old saying goes….ask a stupid question, and you get a stupid answer.
Why this was not clarified and sorted out at the outset of the study is anyone’s guess, but let’s leave potential conspiracy theories for the future article ?.
@PoP
Borders Railway was approx. £10m a route mile (ca. £300m for 30 miles), as a largely single track basic railway. Not the £30m a mile you suggest. It did however include some fairly serious bridge reconstruction.
Towards the other end of the single track cost spectrum, STAR is costing ca. £120m (excluding the relocation costs for Meridian Water station) for a 4.3 mile electrified single track, a modest junction, and virtually no signalling. That’s a little under £30m a mile, including the cost of passive provision for another track. So it would be yet more for a double track, serious signalling, extra platforms etc. Then there’s the train and operating costs… No-one should think that railways are cheap, even simple ones.
@ Jonathan Roberts. When you say ‘virtually no signalling’, I think you mean:
‘fully equipped with track circuit block, multiple aspect signals for bidirectional operation, including a new junction south of Coppermill Junction, removal of all controls associated with Northumberland Park LC, significant interlocking changes and alterations to three workstations at Liverpool St IECC’
SFD
Yes, I meant once the works had been done, there will be virtually no signalling on the third line itself, as it will be ‘one train in steam’ rules. But you are right to point out the changes to the existing signalling arrangements. Indeed the costs of STAR are much to do with changes to an existing railway, as opposed to having a ‘greenfield’ site. For example I understand removal of Northumberland Park Level Crossing is north of £10m when all the elements have been added up. Construction costs were less onerous per mile on the Borders Railway, as it was largely ‘greenfield’.
Jonathan Roberts,
Thank you for that correction. Mental block remembering 30 and 10 and route miles and cost per mile but not necessarily in the right order.
Nearer £15m / mile when the actual final cost is used.
Uckfield – Lewes is about 10 miles (slightly less). At 60mph the distance is covered in 10min. Flighting trains 3mins apart means that a flight of about 6 trains could be fit into a 30 minute slot. And in the peak (when the route is most needed) a couple of flights could be included in the morning peak with a less-dense reverse flow in between the two flights.
On the £10m per mile for the Borders Railway, the cost for re-instating single track could be in the order of £100m. That’s ignoring electrification and the purchase of new trains (or the retention of trains which would otherwise be taken out of service) – unless train sets were included in the £10m per mile for the Borders Railway?
In all honesty, it’s hard to see how that would not have a very positive BCR. I find it hard to see why people are so negative about the benefits of recreating the link.
Now, if you insist on electrification, duplication, extra stations etc the cost rapidly escalates but there is really no reason why it needs to be gold-plated from the start. Initially a single track re-instatement would be sufficient to start to deliver benefits in the peaks and a 1tph off-peak service for local connectivity.
At outset, this doesn’t need to be a billion-pound scheme. Start small and add incrementally over the years and decades. It is how Tramlink has developed. In the first place build the cheapest possible link and flight services in the direction of peak flow with a low-frequency service in the reverse direction and off-peak.
Incidentally, PoPs articles suggested another 6tph could probably be squeezed into Victoria and again it needn’t be 6tph via Lewes from outset. Adding 2tph initially, the another 2tph 3 or 4 years later, then a further 2tph a few years after that, would give incremental growth in capacity to mirror increases in demand.
There are two viable approaches to investment. One is a massive investment in infrastructure like Crossrail. The Borders railway is the example of the opposite approach. Over time the Borders Railway may get extended to Carlisle, acquire more passing loops and/or be duplicated. This incremental approach is sometimes the better way.
@Kate – at the risk of repetition there is no reason to cart people the long way round,only for them to find they could have got there quicker by the present route – you couldn’t charge any sort of useful fare for that…
@Kate…..Just to clarify, I am *not* being negative about Uckfield – Lewes, per se (if anything, I’m all for it!). I am just seriously questioning the rationale for BML2 as a whole given that a key part of the plan relies on a lot of expensive, controversial and potentially unnecessary work within the London area. If the Wealden Line group hadn’t dreamt up BML2, then I doubt so many of us would have felt the need to address it.
I do agree with you to a certain extent that sometimes an incremental approach can work best, especially if it makes a scheme more affordable and improves the BCR for it. However, care must be taken to build in enough provision for future upgrades if required, to avoid later disruptive (and potentially expensive) remedial work. The DLR is a classic example of this.
AIUI, the Borders Railway has not been built with much in the way of passive provision for future (re-)doubling…..many of the brand new bridges, for example, are single-track only. So if it ends up a success, increasing train frequency and capacity may not be very straightforward!
I have deliberately not talked about the case for re-opening Uckfield-Lewes because the moderators want us rightly to concentrate on Croydon. I would however like to add some further comments on costs and revenues. The Borders line certainly cost around £10m or so per mile but it is a simple single track line with very limited signalling. It is not electrified. A busy electrified line is likely to cost around £20m/mile if not more. So that 10 miles is likely to cost around £200m. The annual cost of carrying that is likely to be between £40 and 50m.
On the revenue side, Brighton is used by 16m passengers pa, of which perhaps 1/4 to 1/3 are going somewhere other than London (we aren’t told the precise breakdown). So, 12m London journeys. Of the London traffic about half goes to the City and half to Victoria; so, 6m single Victoria journeys. The average fare seems to be about £15, so the total London-Victoria is likely to be of the order of £90m +/- 10m. Trying to raise another £40-50m on that revenue base would require fares to double (allowing for the usual fares elasticity).
Is there an economic case – hardly – the normal basis of economic cases is for time savings. Anything involving a slower journey would have a negative BCR.
Graham, you are using present traffic figures. We should expect annualised 5% population growth (say) which means fare revenue doubles in about 14 years – but take your pick at between 10 and 20 years. Combined with growth further up the line, it’s debatable whether BML could handle much of that growth, so notionally the £50m you are looking for would be there.
I don’t personally think Brighton figures are the best to use, but that was what you picked. For me a secondary benefit of BML2 is increasing capacity to/from Croydon. If Westfield happens, Croydon could become a major shopping destination for Surrey and parts of East/West Sussex. Any BCR calculation should include that.
@Anonymously,
The rationale for BML2 north of Croydon is very different to the rationale for the southern section, which was proposed first. My sense is that the southern section could deliver benefits within a decade or so but the section might not be needed for 30 years. What is important is now is merely to safeguard the route from the Haykerloo.
@Kate…..But what exactly would you like safeguarded? Whether or not Haykerloo happens, you’re still probably going to need four tracks on the Hayes line to fit in express trains from the BML2 alongside the stopping services. Preserving enough space alongside the line to allow two extra tracks between Elmers End and Lewisham is one almighty ask….and I’m not sure there’s even the space for that along the entire route!
You seem to be suggesting that the Hayes line should be kept out of the Bakerloo line’s evil clutches until BML2 is evaluated and a decision made as to whether to proceed with it. I would argue that the ultimate fate of the Hayes line is a red herring here, since whether those two tracks are NR or LU metals doesn’t alter the fact that you are probably going to need an extra two tracks to run BML2 trains alongside the local stopping trains. Even at the current off-peak frequency of 4tph, squeezing in those express services from the coast isn’t going to be easy…..
(And before anyone points this out, I’m well aware that express trains do share the two track line between Shortlands and Brixton with the 4tph Victoria to Orpington trains, but AIUI this is only made possible by sending some fast trains via the Catford loop instead).
@Some people – It is rapidly becoming impossible to have a rational discussion on any of thi. What started a few hours ago as a a requirement to reconstruct 10 miles of railway (passim) has now – suddenly – switched to the full BML2 v2.0, whose cost is an order of magnitude larger than reopening Uckfield-Lewes (and which will therefore require 10 times the sums I mention to fund it); we have an entirely bogus projection of traffic growth (last time I looked, the population of the SE was due to rise by something less than 2% pa, any further traffic growth is likely to be from that well-known industry self-inflicted wound – buying volume); and we have a vision of Croydon as an alternative to central London (in your dreams, Croydon), which even if true for the shopping ,would be generating o/p traffic, not peak congestion; finally, and I really, really can’t find any map projection that explains this, on my conventional maps,BML2 v2.0 starts by going NE to Lewes, turns NW to go to Croydon, due east to go to Hayes, and then NW again -hardly the most direct route, especially the dogleg to Hayes. My runner beans have a better sense of direction. Whom the gods love, they first lure to Hayes?
Absolutely plans for the Hayes line should only be considered as part of a much wider review of services to Surrey and East and West Sussex and of Croydon itself.
Oh Graham H, how you fail to understand!
The point about BML2 is that it is all rational because, in true Douglas Adams spirit, you change the objective (and the projections) to fit what you can and want to achieve. So the Hayes line takes you way too far to the east of Central London where there isn’t the terminating capacity anyway. No problem! Just change your objective to be to serve Canary Wharf and Stansted. And make sure you never raise the issue of whether or not this is the best way to serve Canary Wharf and whether it is the best way of spending any money put aside for such a task.
@PoP – sorry to inhabit a different space-time continuum. (Actually,out here on Tharg, the High Council is deeply concerned about the extension of Bakerloo de-icing trains from KHR to Euston and thence via a new tunnel to Sheerness, but let it pass…)
It’s only impossible because you are conflating two separate issues, although unsurprisingly so as the authors of the BML2 papers do the same. There are several separate issues and its only possible to discuss them rationally, IMO if you keep them separate.
1. BML south of Croydon is capacity constrained and some extra lines will probably be needed
2. There are issues of local connectivity between Lewes / the coast and Uckfield etc
3. There would be benefit in direct services between London and the Falmer area of Brighton
4. Just as Westfield and HS1 has revitalised Stratford, Westfield might revitalise Croydon. (Personally I am a sceptic, but it should be considered.) In turn, the catchment area for Croydon could grow.
Uckfield Lewes re-opening and through running via Oxted is a candidate to address those issues. Not the only candidate, but one which should not be rejected without proper consideration.
4. Particularly once BML is addressed either by quadrupling etc or by BML2 or TL2, then extra capacity between Croydon and London might well be necessary.
If it does then the viable options are:
A) a massively expensive tunnel for an entirely new route
B) restoring the connection to Croydon from Elmers end and linking somehow to Canary Wharf – there is probably no need for services to run express so they could interleave with a 4tph Hayes service,
C) biting the bullet on the Wimbledon loop and extending the Thameslink Core so that 30tph run East Croydon to London Bridge then to Blackfriars to maximise capacity between Croydon and London Bridge.
D) Upgrading ELL to 30tph and 12 car platforms
A and D are very expensive and we have seen how tackling the Wimbledon Loop can be too political so suddenly, the Elmers End route (not via Hayes), for all its weaknesses, might be the compromise chosen. (In the medium term, Victoria might be able to handle more terminating trains but it is not clear how many, how much the reconfiguration of the throat needed would cost and, in any event, a very expensive set of changes would be needed at Clapham Junction before additional services could run to Victoria.)
BML2/TL2 might happen, not because they are great schemes but because they are the least bad way of addressing the needs.
Mon Dieu! And now the ELL joins in. Are we sure that the W&C and GNC can’t be part of the solution, too?
Actually,Kate is right, there are at least four separate problems (of varying plausibility and importance,none of them quantified) which may actually call for 4 separate solutions. Some of them may not involve pouring concrete. One size rarely fits all. [There are also some invented problems which have yet been proved to exist, especially in relation to the Wharf].
@Kate.
1) every railway is capacity constrained. The pertinent question is: is the BML south of Croydon capacity constrained for the demand projected? And the answer to that is no, not for a long time. As PoP has patiently explained it is the Croydon area itself that is capacity constrained.
2) similarly there are local connectivity issues between (insert name of random small town here) and (insert name of larger town / city / area about 10 miles away here). But generally they cope. Particularly outside the M25, where most people have, err, cars. (And don’t ever believe campaigners who will say whole swathes of the population only have cars because a certain line hasn’t been built).
3) very small benefit.
4) Arguably the hosting of the largest sporting event in the world provided the cash that revitalised the transport network serving Stratford. And even that didn’t result in the reopening of the Bishop’s Stortford to Braintree line.
@Kate:
Contrary to BML2’s supporters’ belief, the bits of the Woodside & South Croydon Railway track-bed used by the trams were heavily remodelled to lower the track to street level. Here’s an example. There simply isn’t that much of the original route left in usable form.
As for the BML’s capacity: it’s clear from this series of articles that by far the biggest problems are in and around Croydon itself. Sorting out all the junctions and reducing conflicts should effectively keep BML up to snuff for many years to come.
That brings us to either Crossrail 3 or 4. Such projects are the only viable option for increasing capacity into central London itself.
I suspect a bigger thorn in Network Rail’s side will be Gatwick Airport – especially if it gets permission to expand. This could end up skewing transport planning decisions in much the same way Heathrow has done, but I’ll refrain from discussing this further as I assume it’ll pop up in one of this series’ future articles.
As for the BML’s twin-track section: quadrupling is very much a known science and arguably the most cost-effective solution once capacity here becomes a serious problem. Even so, I doubt it’ll be needed for at least a generation or two.
@ Graham H @1022 22112015: I guess your KHR is not this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamloops_Heritage_Railway
So what is it, please?
I suspect that Graham was referring to Kilburn High Road, though, given the context, it may alternatively been the German title of the Commission for the Hydrology of the Rhine…
Coming back to South Croydon, I may have missed it but has anyone quantified how much benefit the reversible track provides in terms of capacity. I know that theoretically you could timetable two trains to cross at a double track junction, but in practice how much extra does the reduction to a single point of conflict (as described above) actually give you?
@Old Buccaneer /Malcolm -Kilburn High Road indeed – a rare case of LU using NR metals when not in service – tho’ I quite like the idea of the Rhein Commission (on which DTp used to name a commissioner – a much prized ; nearly as desirable a reward as the UK seat on the Coal and Steel Community’s pro-cartel committee which survived well into the ‘eighties.)
@Ian Sergeant
That might be true for the northern section of BML2 subject to increasing capacity between Croydon and London and bringing the Bakerloo to Croydon rather than Hayes is an option which ought to be considered. Obviously notwithstanding any expansion of Gatwick which is a game changer.
Your argument, plausible though it is, would still not address the bottlenecks between Croydon and the coast including the five track section between Croydon and South Croydon and the four track section between South Croydon and Purley.
@Ian Sergeant – I seem to recall the New Cross – Wharf issue came up previously in the Bakerloo thread where some suggested extending round from Peckham to NX and thence to Canary wharf. It seemed a waste then and time hasn’t revealed any reason to change that view. (And,of course,it wouldn’t then serve that magical place near Bromley which is the focus of every scheme for improving rail capacity throughout the whole of the SE).
@Kate -but no one (BML2ists apart) has yet identified these bottlenecks. If you read what PoP has said, sort out Croydon and you will have capacity for many years to come. Even Gatwick expansion shouldn’t bring on the pains – GatEx sets can be doubled in length, for a start, without needing extra paths for the extra punters. Buying 10 new 10 or 12 car sets in place of 10×5 car sets (which will fall over in the next decade or two anyway) is so much cheaper – another £50-60m extra – than buying infrastructure…
“Wharfies”? Perhaps “Wharfingers”?
@Kate
Your argument, plausible though it is, would still not address the bottlenecks between Croydon and the coast including the five track section between Croydon and South Croydon and the four track section between South Croydon and Purley.
It wasn’t supposed to! The lack of capacity south of South Croydon is another matter entirely, and, much as I would like to comment, I’m waiting for the appropriate place to do so. The game changer here is that extra capacity can be created through East Croydon. All plans based upon that not being possible without a tunnel to somewhere in the West End, the City or Docklands now need to be revised.
@SFD
“But generally they cope. Particularly outside the M25, where most people have, err, cars. ”
— So you think new rail capacity should be provided only where the private car cannot “cope”? I thought we were supposed to be encouraging modal shift? And even if “most people” have cars, some still don’t, and shouldn’t be required to.
@Kate
Your definition of ‘viable’ is obviously different to mine and most others! Of your plans A/B/C/D, only C is remotely close to what I consider to be viable, and even that might have to wait for ERTMS to come into effect.
And if you think the politics of C are hard, they’re nothing compared with issues that B will cause! Not only is it probably the most expensive of the four (needing a good chunk of plan A to get to Canary Wharf), the disruption and upheaval it will cause to Tramlink in Croydon will make the Wimbledon loop hoo-ha appear as a storm in a teacup by comparison.
And as for not needing to run BML2 trains express over the Hayes line so they can fit in with the existing services on the two-track alignment….are you seriously suggesting that these trains become all station stoppers? Having taken passengers from the Sussex Coast on the GWR (Great Way Round), no doubt stopping at most stations between Uckfield and Oxted, you would then subject them to a slow crawl through the South London suburbs to pick up passengers along the way from the likes of Clock House and Lower Sydenham? It would be as unacceptable as making Hastings line services call at every station between Tonbridge and Central London!
@Graham H…’that magical place near Bromley’. Ha ha. It might be geographically close (and rapidly gentrifying thanks to those new expensive-looking residential tower blocks near the railway), but in terms of socio-economics, politics and plain snobbery, they couldn’t be further apart ?.
peezedtee
And, quite a few people have cars, but do not use them a lot, but “merely” when they need to, because they are going where/when there is no public transport &/or need to carry things that you can’t take on a train or bus.
I’m fairly sure that my annual train-mileage is at least double my car-mileage per year, for instance ….
The Thameslinks routed through Herne Hill from Brighton in the morning peak might as well be stoppers because they are so slow. And yet they remain very busy.
Sir Peter Hendy’s capital programme review report has been published. This link takes you to the relevant page for South East enhancements including the BML improvements timeline.
Re WW,
Indeed “Windmill Bridge and Croydon area Remodelling” pencilled in for CP6.
SE= Kent and Sussex in NR terminology
Some stuff I’ve noted I maybe wasn’t previously aware of
Thames Valley electrification doesn’t include Marlow branch (p. 25)
Electric spine development starts in CP6 (p. 38)
Thameslink trains start appearing in 2017 (p. 18)
12-car Kent Suburban services start afterwards (i.e. 2018?) (p. 20)
@Edgepedia
“Thames Valley electrification doesn’t include Marlow branch”
I understand this is because there is no electric train short enough to negotiate the reversal in the constrained site at Bourne End.
I think Class 700s in 2017 is just a simplification, and might well be based on taking the middle of the usual 2016 – 2018 two year period of delivery? Or maybe when they appear on GN services into Kings Cross initially
The first one is trial running as far as Brighton just this week, and they should be arriving fairly regularly from the new year…
To add to the above, a 700 made it to Blackfriars last night on test.
Looks like BML2 is popping up again …
http://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2017/02/05/brighton-and-lewes-mps-hail-turning-point-in-campaign-for-second-mainline-railway/
And now expect radio silence again whilst the costs (just a few billion after all) and revenues sink in (Brighton-Amex Stadium is such a big market, don’t you know…) followed by a repeat of the whole exercise in 2019…
Moderator’s note: This comment is just about acceptable, as a perhaps-significant development. However, a rerun of earlier discussions in this thread and elsewhere about the viability or otherwise of the project, or about other details of it, will not be tolerated.
For all those advanced Crayonistas out there I can thoroughly recommend reading the article in February’s Modern Railways about the D-DART – a type of train that can’t be mentioned here! I thought the April 1st edition had come out early!
@Malcolm -indeed, my remarks were intended to do exactly what you wanted – suggest that there is a boring circularity to the discussion with no new facts ever being identified. Your injunction could equally well be circulated in 2019, 2023 etc etc. Alas.
@130 – similarly. People never think about possible objections to their bright ideas, do they?
“the Transport Secretary has agreed to look at a more detailed feasibility study”
Well, what else would he do with it?
In any case, there is no promise of any funding – and of course a feasibility study may come up with the conclusion that the proposal is not, in fact, feasible.
Politics is going through a funny period, and Grayling has form for surprising people, so never say never – but given the average tenure of SoS for Transport, the chances of Grayling being in a position to take any final decision on such a project are slim indeed.
@timbeau – a further study is the classic Whitehall method for growing long grass.
But I think they might have got a new box of crayons for Christmas, they now appear to want to route the BML 2 via Tunbridge Wells instead of the Tramlink route.
I’m sure the Spa Valley Railway will have something to say about that. Not too mention the citizens of Tunbridge Wells… No more seats on the train…
… and a set of geometry instruments would also be a good present for them.
Have DfT published the previous kicking into the grass report yet? I’ve either missed it or it is no somewhat overdue. May be DfT looking to delay as much as they can to use the previous report this time and save themselves some money?
Haven’t seen anything since this masterclass of a Written Answer on 16 Jan:
Q Asked by Peter Kyle(Hove)[N]
Asked on: 11 January 2017
Department for Transport
Railways: South East 59698
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 10 October 2016 to Question 46666, when he plans to publish the findings of the London and South Coast Rail Corridor Study.
A Answered by: Paul Maynard
Answered on: 16 January 2017
The Government will publish the London and South Coast Rail Corridor Study, and its response to the recommendations, in due course.
Southern Heights,
No. That route (in red on this map ) is operating at full capacity – as BML2 concede.
A-mous,
Presumably that will be published shortly after the well overdue Kent Route study and immediately before the often-promised-but-never-materialises Network Rail Electrification Strategy.
PoP AIUI, one of the two is imminent, the other may never see the light of day…
@PoP: Ah, it was “transport article in a newspaper” error!
Graham H 20:47
Also a classic where supporters claim that when they meet the SoS, the SoS supposedly said that he was “very keen to see this happen” whereas there is nothing directly reported to suggest that the SoS is happy to be attributed with the words – and in any case he may have meant he was really keen for a further study to happen (so they can kill this idea forever).
I’m tempted to wonder whether the current report hasn’t been published because it comes to some totally unacceptable conclusion, such as closing Hurst Green-Uckfield outright, converting the BML to a guided busway, or rejecting all existing plans in favour of restarting work on the Ouse Valley route (abandoned 1866).
@PoP – I am very glad at so many participants’ on this site ability to interpret the weasel words correctly…
Re John Elliot,
Or more simply an early start* on rebuilding the Windmill Bridge complex. * e.g. very tail end of CP5 for Norwood Jn start noting other recent DfT comments.
Delaying the report also has a big benefit for DfT: 2 rebuttal reports for the cost of 1, a 50% efficiency saving!
PoP 6th February “Presumably that will be published shortly after the well overdue Kent Route study …… ”
Network Rail hasn’t produced any of the remaining route studies for a long time and the programme is clearly many months behind schedule.
@ Guano – which perhaps begs the question as to whether the entire process has been scrapped? If devolution is the big thing you have to wonder where potentially grandiose schemes fit into that new framework. By the time you chuck in Mr Grayling’s “teamwork” approach I can see that any form of future long term planning will have fallen away because the organisation will be struggling just to cope with immediate changes. It was ever thus whenever organisations go through large scale, convulsive change with politically set deadlines / objectives. I’ve even been wondering whether Sir Peter Hendy has been locked away, at Mr G’s request, and not allowed to say anything. He’s been uncharacteristically silent in recent months despite both good and bad things happening with Network Rail.
@WW -at least some of the team that were doing the route studies have been dispersed to the digital railway project, although I am (slightly) less pessimistic than you about the long term planning process – the route-based teams are still in place and active. Like that other rightwing Transport Secretary, Ridley, Grayling is likely to be viscerally anti-plan. Still,he won’t be here for ever.
@ Graham H – well good to hear they are still extant. Let’s hope they are managing to keep making some progress even if Mr DfT isn’t minded to listen.
Graham H
Like that other rightwing Transport Secretary, Ridley, Grayling is likely to be viscerally anti-plan.
But the old private companies, especially, pre-1922 planned well in advance, if they possibly could.
[ H A V Bullied’s biography of J A F Aspinall makes this very clear. ]
So … why?
Or is “State planning bad, private planning, good” the mantra?
About 15 years ago, in the first round of Route Utilisation Strategies, there was a long hiatus before the RUS for the East Coast Main Line was published. The hidden agenda of the first wave of RUSs was “squeeze a quart into a pint pot”: how can increased traffic be carried without spending too much on the capacity and resilience of the infrastructure? There were severe delays in publishing the RUS for the East Coast Main Line because it couldn’t be made to fit into the “squeeze a quart into a pint pot” approach because, however you looked at the traffics trends, significant investment in infrastructure was likely to be required. It took a lot of to-and-fro with the DfT before they got comfortable with that kind of conclusion. (And some of the previous RUSs, such as the Brighton Line RUS – back on topic – were soon found to not really fit the “quart into a pint pot” approach either.)
The agenda of the present Long Term Planning route studies is to examine what is needed in the short-term in the context of what is likely to be needed in the medium-term and what possibly will be needed in the long-term. Maybe Grayling has difficulty in being comfortable with the results that he is getting from that kind of approach, or maybe he just has difficulty with the kind of choices that need to be made with that approach. As the epitome of a short-term politician, can he get his head around the idea of planning for the short-term while leaving open options for the long-term?
NR have been moving to the approach of having what are now Route Studies under the current Long Term Planning Process being more frequently updated/refreshed but not necessarily publicly due to passenger growth higher than estimates and franchise changes and control periods not necessarily aligning requiring a good upto date working document at most points in time. This could be as simple as refreshing the spreadsheets which with actual outurns and data which might suggest something need doing sooner rather than later or that there is less reason to do a small job soon when a large job will need to be done far sooner than anticipated hence the business case for the smaller job is undermined.
The Kent study probably is affected by strong passenger growth especially in metro area (at 6-10% p.a.) which will have invalidated a few previous assumptions and thrown up a few new ones such as:
“where to put new depots/sidings?” now being very urgent
and
“how much difference could ATO overlay on new signalling in the “Kent” area transferred to Three Bridges ROC* make?”
* CHX/CST to Woolwich Arsenal / Eltham / New Eltham / Chislehurst Tunnels (SEML) / Hayes
Until those 2 questions have some kind of answer the rest is a bit academic. Then there are the TfL related issues of BakerLew or Haykerloo extension and whether given growth levels CR extension from Abbey Wood to Dartford (and beyond) is solution to a number of the Kent issues
@Greg
I think the ‘rationale’ is that state planning gets in the way of efficient operation of the market – on the basis that the market knows best. This approach does, of course, founder either if there are significant externalities that the community finds important or if there are irresistible demands for public sector investment. The more market oriented politicians tend to minimise the former (until voter pressure becomes unmistakeable) and resist the latter as far as they can.
ngh – The Route Studies are supposed to put these considerations into the public domain. The conclusion of each report is “Options for Funders” rather than a fixed plan and it is up to others (mainly government) to decide what they want to happen (which means what they will pay for).
The hiatus in publication of (draft) Route Studies is worrying because it implies that DfT doesn’t want such information (traffic is growing at x% so you will either have to A, B, C ….. ) in the public domain.
Re Guano,
Probably poorly explained on my part, maintain an internal working draft update so it can be published with out starting from scratch each time, which is where Kent effectively is as by the time a complete first draft is attempted there has been reasonable change in the input information or it takes a while to propose viable solutions e.g. depot space which weren’t even seen as issue last time round when the Kent routes were split into Outer Kent and the suburbans in the South London (the previous Kent Draft was published in early 2009 and the final version in early 2010 and the London Suburban in 2008 with a high level refresh in the SE study).
@quinlet: That’s very funny, when the markets like certainty as it stops their investors getting nervous. The word ‘rationale’ can be replaced by ‘ideology’ …
The fundamental problem is that the market isn’t like going down the High St. for the market. The numbers are just too big. No private business can take a risk that big, not when their sharholders demand ever increasing returns for less risk and more certainty. Not to mention that the directors want to secure their bonuses. They aren’t linked to taking a risk and getting it to pay out, they are linked to steady as she goes….
@Guano: DfT doesn’t want such information (traffic is growing at x% so you will either have to A, B, C ….. ) in the public domain.
On the other hand Network Rail is now FoI-able, so if someone asked for the documents they could be made public anyway.
Or perhaps the idea is to keep the information from TfL?
IJ – sorry, but that’s just daft. There’s no conspiracy – in fact, NR and TfL work very closely together, including on Route Studies.
Re: ngh
Isn’t the fact that the context has changed so much (and is changing rapidly) a reason why there should be a route planning document in the public domain as soon as possible? Shouldn’t it be a matter of public record that there might be a need for new stabling locations, or new ways of dealing with traffic growth?
Re Guano,
The idea was that they were meant to propose potential solutions not just bucket list questions / problems. Hence just saying “we need more depot space/stabling” isn’t that helpful but where it would be most useful given which routes trains would be lengthened on along with some suggestions of potential locations which then tends to involve speaking to local councils so they aren’t surprised when they read a draft RUS saying a new depot is needec in their area.
While there might theoretically be more space at an existing location there might not actually be enough paths etc. to get extra units into or out depots or sidings without addition infrastructure changes so the suggestions need to be checked carefully for practicality first.
@SHLR
Quite. Perhaps I should have mentioned that the irony lever was full over.
The DfT has today published the London and South Coast rail corridor study: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/london-and-south-coast-rail-corridor-study
@A-mous – the conclusions will be totally unacceptable to the BML2 irredentists, of course, who will continue to inhabit La LaLand. Expect local authorities in Sussex to continue to be pestered into yet further studies…
Re Graham H,
“Expect local authorities in Sussex to continue to be pestered into yet further studies…”
As I said on 6th Feb:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/study-sussex-part-10-south-croydon/#comment-285099
“Delaying the report also has a big benefit for DfT: 2 rebuttal reports for the cost of 1, a 50% efficiency saving!”
Looking at the detail WSP-PB have poked a lot of holes in the cost and practicality assumptions that BML2 have previously used which would make it far harder to for further studies to get off the ground as the scheme costs have been pushed up and all the practical issues raked up. (Unless it is the basis of a local Brighton centric scheme). E.g. pointing out TfL’s work on 4 tracking a section of the Hayes line for the former proposal to DLR to Catford / beyond which required non railway land to 4 track in places (Hence BML2 would…) or that Hindhead Tunnel is the most appropriate cost comparator for tunnelling costs rather than HS1 in Kent.
@Graham H
The conclusions will be totally unacceptable for the majority of BML commuters who don’t have an axe to grind with the promoters of BML2. Blithely stating that there is no need for major improvements for another 30-40 years is La La Land. The NR package is a basic minimum, something which should have been done years ago, and not the gamechanger which is required.
Re Anonymous,
So adding additional capacity equivalent to the current peak hourly fast line capacity into Victoria on the BML (additional capacity split between London Bridge and Victoria) above the December 2018 timetable level (which itself is an increase on the current levels) post London Bridge rebuild isn’t a game changer???
And, given it is almost inconceivable both BML upgrade and BML2 could be funded at the same time, I would have thought it would be pragmatic to implement the sensible scheme first and reconsider subsequently.
By the way the report points out that a bells and whistles BML2 option is roughly the equivalent in cost of Crossrail 2. I know which I think is more useful.
As far as BML2 is concerned, the report is pretty damning on every level and to every variation of the scheme. The one chink of light for supports is the suggestion that whilst a transport case cannot be made there mad be other reasons for implementing parts of the scheme (e.g. housing, employment). The ball is firmly put back into the BML2 supporters’ court by suggesting that if this were the case it is up to them to provide the convincing financial justification and a source for the money to support it.
Rather amusingly, there is yet another variation of BML2 reported. To cater for the argument presented by Network Rail and WSP (report writers) that it is madness to bypass East Croydon given the importance of Croydon, BML2 have now suggested a tunnel from around the former Selsdon station area to Woodside going under East Croydon.
@Anonymous – it isn’t the case that I have said anywhere that some sort of upgrade is not needed; it is. It’s just that BML2 is a poor way of doing it, wasteful and trying to deal with the wrong problems (and in some cases, things that are no problem at all). But – make no mistake – even the upgrade of the existing route is not cheap and there is no reason at all why Brighton commuters shouldn’t take their place in the competition for funds along with others who may have a more deserving case.
Having read the whole document, I’m rather pleased to say that my counter-BML2 proposal – “NEW-02 Entirely new ‘high speed’ BML to new central London station” got a fair hearing in Section 7.3 and was award the status of …
“We do not expect the scheme to be able to make a positive business case for at least another 30-40 years (once capacity on the existing BML is outstripped by demand, if Network Rail’s upgrade package proceeds in the timescales they currently propose).”
Which I believe is “long grass” rather than “actual madness”, which is gratifying.
Also, pace the report, a complete rebuild of the E Croydon / Windmill Bdg / Norwood Jn complex during CP6 should at least make a start of improving, not just the purely Brighton/Hove services, but all the others here – as previously discussed.
I suppose in the long term a tunnel from Selsdon to East Croydon might be a way to remove conflicts at South Croydon Junction (and as an alternative to adding a sixth track between East and South Croydon). But I’d expect the time to consider that would be when adding extra tracks between East Croydon and London, as mentioned in p52 of the report.
Wait — if the study was, as the PDF itself claims, completed in April 2016, then why is it only being published in March 2017? Has the DfT been sitting on it for 11 months?
Re Henning,
Indeed they have, as I noted above before they published it they would get best value from it by sitting on it and publishing it when more BML2 media and political attention had picked up again (as it was starting to) to prevent yet another study being demanded before the next election.
Still no sign of Chris Gibbs’ Southern Rail review. Government (via a FOI request) have stated that the report will be issued “in due course”.
Given that leaked reports suggest that it is damning of the Dft & NR this is hardly surprising: https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/transport/rail-transport/news/82813/southern-rail-review-scathing-about-government