The Kent Route Study (Part 2): Crossrail to Gravesend

1. Good article.

   On factor that the route study does not consider, on purpose, is the proposed Thameslink service via Greenwich to Rainham.

   This service will increase capacity between Gravesend and Abbey Wood due to the class 700s standing room, particularly if they run 12 car trains on the line.

   In addition the new SE trains operator may replace the existing metro trains with new higher capacity trains.

   This would tend to reduce the benefits of extending crossrail beyond Abbey Wood.

2. Rounders have been a feature of the SW and Central divisions of the old Southern Region for far longer than the South Eastern, and for the same reasons – the need for more frequency on inner suburban lines without overloading a bottleneck near the edge of the suburban area – Feltham and Croydon respectively.

   If Crossrail is extended beyond Abbey Wood, could it not provide the all stations service and let the longer distance services (to Gillingham) skip Belvedere, Greenhithe, and the rest?

   But, as with the proposals to extend the Bakerloo beyond Lewisham, or the Northern beyond Battersea (or the Victoria at either end!) we should wait and see what loadings are like on that branch of Crossrail before deciding whether attracting more passengers to it by building extensions is a good idea.

3. The note in the study about realignment in the Northfleet area to provide a better interchange with Ebbsfleet is interesting and perhaps explains the implication of four tracking all the way to Gravesend. The current ‘interchange’ at Northfleet is almost non-existent and the councils in SE London would rather the extension formed a proper interchange at Ebbsfleet. The Kent councils, though, want the extension to go to Gravesend. The lack of a decent interchange at Ebbsfleet might be one reason why passenger numbers at Ebbsfleet are so low.

4. Do it in stages?
   Repeat the open-ended parallel-platforms ( As at Abbey Wood ) solution at Dartford?
   Then extend later/maybe to Gravesend?
   Problem: “Watford extension” type of technical hitches?

5. Curiously the approved-last-month Local Transport Plan from Kent County Council does not mention an extension east of Ebbsfleet. It flags up an indicative cost of £2 billion, though there is no specific indication of how this would be financed. (The only rail scheme specifically coming mainly from local funds is the £24m cost of modifying signalling at Ashford International, so that the Siemens units can call there).

6. Just a thought, if Crossrail were to be extended as an ‘all stations’ service, would this provide an opportunity to make SE services run fast between Abbey Wood and Dartford instead?

   Given the need for SE to accommodate limited stop services from Gillingham, etc (something neither of Crossrails eastern branches face – but is a factor on the GWML) such a proposal has merit.

7. I fail to see how CrossRail can go east of Dartford with out some major works, if it is to remain segregated. Immediately after Dartford the line goes into a cutting to get under the A282 (M25) and space there is tight, with housing on both sides. So tunnelling through some chalk might be the only option.

   Adding extra tracks at Dartford Station itself would require the whole existing station to be shoved Southwards, which would mean you’d pretty much have to flatten the Borough Council offices (at least part of one wing), not an easy job….

8. If this thread is to be believed, Ebbsfleet Development Corporation is pushing for Crossrail to go to Ebbsfleet itself, rather than on to Gravesend:

   https://twitter.com/ebbsfleetdc/status/847084196493475840

9. The planning of the SE London / North Kent routes in general seems to suffer from incoherent thinking and inaccurate information. As highlighted here:

   https://fromthemurkydepths.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/government-reveal-they-have-underestimated-planned-housing-numbers-in-southeastern-rail-consultation/

   Right now the local commuter population in the Dartford Loop area is pretty upset by proposals to cut the Cannon Street services from the middle (Bexeyheath) line. The northern loop (Woolwich) line will lose the Cannon Street connection due to track changes, but cutting services from the middle line where there’s a lot of new housing being built seems… how can I put this… odd?

10. @Dix, the Woolwich line isn’t losing its Cannon Street service. It has already lost its Charing Cross service back around 2012. It will however gain Thameslink services in addition.

    Also in relation to the Bexleyheath line, I thought the plan was to send the majority of their trains via New Cross slow lines so that the diamond junction at Lewisham did not have as many conflicting moves?

11. 313s have been swapping from 25kV overhead to 750V third rail 7 vice-versa at Drayton Park since the 70s!

12. I think this should go ahead and possible even go beyond Gravesend to Rochester/Rainham.

    The Thameslink Rainham and the Charing X/Gillingham services could go and become other things with those paths and units, with Crossrail handling all service along the Thames east of Dartford. Nothing from Blackheath to Woolwich I suppose.

    A proper North Kent station needs to be built at Ebbsfleet and connected into the existing interchange there.

    Stopping patterns could differ obviously, like they do on the GWML – so that tiny stations can get 1-2tph, quicker journeys for main stations and 2 tracks can be enough. For example, of 12tph – 4tph slow to Gravesend, 4tph semi to Rochester, 4tph to Gillingham/Rainham. All flighted per 15 minutes.

13. Bexley Council are releasing a draft of their updated Growth Strategy next month, It will give us more info. I expect a massive uplift in housing numbers based on the City in the East document from the GLA and the tone coming out of the council.

    Slade Green may not see much housing but it does have a really quite sizable bit of unused land directly beside the station. I always assumed it was green belt, like on the other side (and part of which is now being built on for the freight terminal) but it isn’t. Whether that means it’s worth stopping any future Crossrail train there is another matter.

    Verulamius – In terms of Thameslink using 12 car trains for the Luton to Rainham via Greenwich service – that’s a big unknown. Those in the know suggest not, as it’s a late addition and the number of trains ordered was already on the short side. If it’s an 8 car, is that much of a boost above a 10 carriage Networker (or 12 with some relatively minor upgrades in the grand scheme of things)? Probably a slight increase but not massive.

    Darian – “the Woolwich line isn’t losing its Cannon Street service. It has already lost its Charing Cross service back around 2012. It will however gain Thameslink services in addition”. Not quite – there is still a twice an hour off-peak service and is a useful link to Blackheath, Lewisham, Waterloo East and Charing Cross.

14. Oh yeah, I forgot about that service. I suppose the Thameslink service will be great in the off-peak though as Southeastern likes to run 4 car services at these times and the nice thing about Thameslink is they can’t be short formed.

15. Just checked and all the vacant land around Stone Crossing, Northfleet etc which I also assumed was green belt isn’t. Here’s a map of green belt land http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/greenpolitics/planning/9708387/Interactive-map-Englands-green-belt.html

    There’s scope for much new housing. The SE consultation does however state those stations will remain at just 2 trains an hour despite a wider desire for all stations within a set radius of central London to be 4 trains an hour, and those two fall within it but are excluded. If there’s no Crossrail till 2050, and NR don’t want to go above 2 tph, that’s a whole chunk of land that could help the housing shortage not being utilised due to inadequate rail provision.

16. I can see two options:
    Provide an all stopping line as far as Slade Green, allowing the existing line to become non stop to Woolwich/Abbey Wood.

    This allows some express service, while avoiding exceptionally high costs.

    But this seems to me at best a phase 1 solution,

    The more expensive alternative involves a major rebuild of Dartford with extra platforms and tracks. This would allow for major transfer from all outer commuter traffic at Dartford to Crossrail creating capacity further West.

    I suspect that the BCR would work out better for the bigger proposal.

    I’m not sure on the traffic levels East of Dartford, and whether the existing line can have more trains running on it.

17. I found the new Bexley Growth Strategy. 8,000 homes for Belvedere along with an outlet retail offering, 6,000 at Erith and 8,000 at Slade Green immediately stand out.

    https://democracy.bexley.gov.uk/documents/s78013/Item%2008-%20RG%20update%20final.pdf

    I’ll write up a post about it. I suppose this further buries the DfT’s housing assumptions in the consultation for Southeastern. Their timescale may be quite long but listending to noises from Belxey Council and they want a lot of this much quicker than 30 years.

18. Sorry for typos and incorrect link above. Here it is:

    https://democracy.bexley.gov.uk/documents/s77999/Item%205-2%20Growth%20Strategy.pdf

19. The Kent Route Study could be summarised as ‘remove as many points and mechanical parts as possible to improve reliability.’

    As a regular commuter on HS1, it rarely has points problems in comparison to the other Kent lines, because it has significantly fewer points than the London Bridge lines. When there are problems it always tends to be near Ebbsfleet where the line splits.

    Keeping Crossrail to Gravesend on a separate line makes perfect sense as the Dartford loop is particularly unreliable, and that would have knock-on effect to the rest of the Crossrail route. I would suggest that the reasons for the reliability of HS1 has been well understood and evident in the Kent Route Study.

    That’s also why they’re suggesting the Greenwich line only goes to Cannon St. and the Sidcup line only goes to Charing Cross. More points can be eliminated near London Bridge. The only surprise to me is that there aren’t more flyover/unders suggested in the report.

20. Barry, HS1 also has the significant advantage that in railway terms it is a mere stripling. All the points are to a standard design,with no compromises, and are thus easy to maintain. They are also built on an exceptional formation of around a metre of rock and/or sand (and for many places, solid concrete), rather than the combination of clay, ash, and various other muck that you find 2-300mm below the sleepers on the ‘reseau classique’

21. How much extra capacity would be required at Dartford too end the need for rounders services, so all services at least start at Dartford.

22. Is there a reason why Crossrail couldn’t take over the existing tracks from Abbey Wood until near Dartford? For clarity, this means the services via Greenwich terminating at Abbey Wood (separating and simplifying that service group). And with services from Lewisham terminating at a new Westcombe Park platform on the Angerstein wharf branch as hinted in the recent/current Charlton Riverside masterplan? Obviously you’d still need extra tracks/platforms at Dartford, but you’d have a cleaner setup between Abbey Wood and Slade Green. Crossrail is much the better railway from Abbey Wood, that it seems the vast majority from beyond Abbey Wood on that line will want to use it, rather than the existing line via Greenwich.

    PS. I’ve always assumed that any Ebbsfleet extension would likely be a short branch a la Barking Riverside heading south after Swanscome rather than tunnelling under eastern Dartford and Bluewater.

23. @ rational plan – probably quite a bit as we’re talking mid-20s tph split across the three lines (and this is without Crossrail).

24. Yes, yes, of course extend Crossrail further and further east (why stop at Rochester when any red blooded crayonista would go at least to Dover?). Has anyone considered whether it can take the load…? No, I thought not.

25. Extending both crossrail lines out beyond Abbey Wood station seems to be a bit ‘technically challenging’. There is a connection from one platform to the NKL for maintenance access. The line for the other crossrail platform is currently blocked from going further east by a column supporting the new station building that spans overhead.

26. Graham H: it’s not that far from Dover to join up with RER line D. It could be a useful alternative to Eurostar. On rail competition is good for the consumer, no?

27. An interesting article. I take the “what is the point of extending it” argument. Going a long way into Kent is reliant on so many things where the politics have gone sour in the last year I don’t see it happening. The proposed development of Ebbsfleet “Garden Village” seems to be proceeding more slowly than an arthritic snail on crutches so that doesn’t look like pulling in large scale funding any time soon.

    What I can envisage is a two stage approach to support the suggested large scale housing expansion in the east of Bexley Borough. You could perhaps see a similar approach to what happened at Barking Riverside. TfL has coped with the first stage of expansion of housing by expanding bus services. That could very easily be mirrored for Erith etc with better buses to Abbey Wood if the South Eastern future TOC is not minded / able to assist. The second stage, for a much larger expansion of housing, could be tied into a joint funding venture between City Hall and the housing developers to help fund the extension of Crossrail onwards by about 3 stops to Slade Green. That’s how we’re getting the extension of the GOBLIN built but obviously a Crossrail extension is a somewhat more expensive option. Of course City Hall would have to impose that planning condition in conjunction with the local authority and I don’t know how feasible that is given the differing politics. This smaller scale approach avoids having to touch Dartford and it keeps TfL out of Kent and TOC politics. I suspect TfL may have been demonstrating greater cooperation and more expansive plans if it had had the South Eastern franchise devolved to it but that’s gone for another decade or so.

28. @SFD – 🙂 Yes, a better alternative to the alternative of extending the Bakerloo to meet Ligne 1 (but you could, of course,follow the logic set out earlier on this thread and do both, keeping the Bakerloo/1 as the all -stations service.

29. WW – I think that plan to Slade Green is most plausible. Bexley are very keen on it and the numbers out today on housing (8k Belvedere, 6k Erith and 8k Slade Green) should greatly help fund.

30. @Graham H

    The Bakerloo/MetroLine 1 connection is presumably an extension of my previous proposal to resolve the rival claims to the mid-Kent Line trackbed by the Bakerloo and BML2 protagonists ( the BakerLewes line)?

    This would, of course, have to be a Dieppe Tube line.

    Seriously, though, your point about loadings is well made. Before talking about any extensions, let’s see what loadings are like on the Canary Wharf and Woolwich branch. (See also my comment at 2302 on April 5th)

31. There is some interesting background in the evidence given to the House of Lords Select Committee for the Crossrail Bill back in 2008 – this confirms that the safeguarding was to be updated at the time to include scope for four tracks from Abbey Wood as far as Dartford (but no further).

    The cost then (if the extension was built for opening in 2017) was estimated at “about £560 million”. Crossrail as a whole at the same time was estimated at £16 billion, which is pretty much what it will actually cost, so this doesn’t seem wildly unrealistic, especially as Crossrail were arguing against going to Ebbsfleet at the time (so if anything had an incentive to quote on the high side). If the cost is now given as £1.5 billion, either the scope must have expanded enormously, or Network Rail have lost control of their construction costs.

    And according to this Parliamentary question, in 2014 the DfT commissioned a review of the value for money of the scheme, which “recommended further analysis before an informed decision could be made”. This analysis was to be the Kent Route Study, which in turn proposes… “[W]ork to understand the technical viability, value-for-money and potential to support growth”. The British Solution indeed.

32. @WW, a phased approach could be possible, its a very UK/London solution (ie. crap but feasible). Maybe the land at the end of the river Darent is being eyed up for riverside housing, potentially with a branch like Barking Riveride.

33. Re. long extensions, and with apologies for straying fro the topic. I was intrigued to see a long time ago that the then new East-West Rotterdam Metro km marker at the station (Beurs) where it crossed the North-South route was set at a nominal 200.00km. Given the Dutch predilection for reclaiming land, this puts the Ongar-equivalent 0 marker just off Felixstowe…

34. While appreciating the scepticism of the Extendadorfinder General, Lord Dawlish, the main effect of extending from Abbey Wood to a sensible extent must be that Crossrail passengers will simply get on to Crossrail earlier. That means that an extension will not be adding huge numbers to the trains, but will be relieving the SE services that feed Abbey Wood. Whether that in itself justifies the big bucks necessary is another question. The tricky bit is knowing the effect of housing development. Any commitment to an extension will almost certainly encourage house building.

    The notion of waiting to see how well Crossrail actually loads in the initial years of operation is a good one. Then we can get our crayons out in earnest.

35. @Fandroid – absolutely – as with BLE, there comes a tipping point; it’s just that we don’t (and can’t) yet know where that might be and in the absence of any useful analysis, the rest is speculation. Simply saying “there’s lots of houses coming” may well be so, but whether CrossRail can cope is something else. As you say, once we have a better feel then we can all order new tins of FaberCastell’s finest.

    Lord Dawlish writes “Are there ceremonial robes – and specialised instruments for extracting confessions – and do I get £300 a day?”

36. @RNHJ: The Rotterdam Metro is taking over the line to Hoek van Holland, so surely a link to Ongar is next?

    😉

37. This article reinforces what I have always thought, there has never been a convincing case put forward for this extension. Just because there is a railway that extends beyond Abbey Wood, it does not mean that Crossrail should run on it.

    In terms of additions to Crossrail 1, I believe we should be looking to the west. As it stands, the Crossrail 1 network is unbalanced, with two major branches out east but only one in the west (Heathrow is only a twig). This wreaks havoc with timetabling and operational robustness. If any priority is given to Crossrail 1 bolt-ons, it should be a new western branch. The two headline options here would be Crossrail services running on the Chiltern Main Line or the West Coast Main Line.

38. SHLR
    Surely either a revival of the Aldeburgh branch ( or maybe Southwold ) would be more appropriate?

39. The other option in the west is to the extend the Heathrow branch south-westwards towards Feltham/Staines and potentially taking over the line to Weybridge. I am not saying it is feasible or desirable, just repeating what I have read elsewhere.

    There certainly doesn’t appear to be much of a business case yet for extending from Abbey Wood. Future housing growth is something to monitor, but putting the line in early to promote housing growth hasn’t worked for Ebbsfleet yet, so doesn’t seem enough of a driver yet. Taking over stopping services on the North Kent line to provide capacity elsewhere may be an option, but that probably requires too much joined up thinking and a long term strategy for the area, which is currently missing.

    So keep it in the drawer as an option, and re-visit it in a few years once Crossrail 1 has gone live and settled in. We can then see how well Abbey Wood copes, and how much spare capacity there is on the line.

40. @Jim Cobb, Anonymous: An extension to Tring has been mooted in the past, there’s even an article on it here

41. @Anon

    Heathrow may only be a “twig” in terms of length, but it is likely to generate as much traffic as all the stations on the Reading branch put together.

42. timbeau
    Really?
    “If & only if” … the overcharge/excess fare for the privilege of using LHR’s special tunnel is reduced to a sensible amount, otherwise, I’m afraid that the trains will be as thinly used as HeX & Heathrow Connect.
    And, you also have to remember (oft-discussed here) the huge suppressed demand, in both directions Padders-Reading caused by the current short-formations & overcrowding

43. Given that it is going to Reading on the other end, I don’t think beyond zone 4 in the SE is so awful. Even the Medway Towns are closer in, and a lot more in line with a local/commuter service, mentally. Dartford/Ebbsfleet/Gravesend, 100% reasonable. It’s not the tube.

    12 long trains per hour will not be full at Abbey Wood- I think there would be capacity. Especially with skip stop patterns. And many would jump off at Canary Wharf, to be replaced and so on. And there is scope to improve frequencies in future, if there is somewhere to send them on the western side…

44. @c -the length of journey is irrelevant ..When you say there would be capacity ,what evidence do you have?* The trains may be emptyish when they leave Abbey Wood but that doesn’t mean they won’t be full within a couple of stops.

    *Here’s a hint: “reasonable” is not a metric.

45. @c – Skip stop patterns are a bad idea and undermine the fundamental purpose behind Crossrail: a big sized tube line…

46. I think there is a more “fundamental” problem, that it is not firmly established among the commentariat just what “the fundamental purpose behind Crossrail” actually is. (Hopefully it is established among the designers and implementors).

    The key feature of Crossrail, to my mind, is that it is a significant new stretch of railway, and it is actually being built. So no-one should be surprised that all sorts of vaguely railway-related needs, in the same geographical area, are the subject of attempts to get Crossrail to address them. Because, if Crossrail does not address them, they generally will go unaddressed in the short and medium term.

47. Re Graham H,

    The data in the NR London studies covered by LR several years ago suggested that if CR trains were extended to 12car equivalent (11car 345) and the Abbey Wood service level remained at 12tph in the peak only just under 50% of the capacity on the train would be used westwards of Abbey Wood in the am peak (and v/v for the evening peak). The discussion at the time was that the issue was getting passengers to Abbey Wood to fill the trains, so extending further east in the right way would do this.

48. @ngh – thank you for this – exactly the sort of analytic evidence I had in mind.

49. I guess the Charlton Riverside masterplan deals with the protected status of the wharf, but its worth thinking about for all the other Thames adjacent industrial>housing work that is going on, planned, or assumed in long term rail planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguarded_wharf

    @Ngh Presumably the train would only be under 50% used until the next station, enabling Deptford users to get on easily?

50. Re Toby,

    <50% of the capacity on the Crossrail trains west of Abbey Wood i.e. the the Abbey Wood Branch has similarities to the southern end of the Bakerloo…

    That would depend on how many extra passengers get on at Woolwich (either), Plumstead, Charlton, Maze Hill, Westcombe Park and Greenwich first! to fill the space

    Even with all intermediate stops Abbey Wood – Dartford, Crossrail services from Gravesend would still be faster that todays semifasts or the future Thameslink services to the City or West End.

    Relieving the DLR interchange at Greenwich also needs to be considered.

51. @ Stephen C – I made the suggestion purely on the basis of information others have set out. There’s little point in going further than the Greater London boundary, as things currently stand, because there is so much uncertainty. That uncertainty extends to the DfT, the future of the S Eastern franchise, the “relationship” between City Hall, central government and Kent County Council and the prospects for large scale development at Ebbsfleet or the Medway or perhaps somewhere else. We know the current “vogue” is for any substantive rail development to be linked to development *and* potential funding sources. That was what I could see in the context of Bexley Council’s apparent big push for development near the possible extra Crossrail corridor. I do take the wider point others have cited which is where is the demonstrable business case that supports potential investment and it is not clear.

    You may favour big, expansive schemes but I get the distinct impression they are off the agenda if they are not 100% conceived in Whitehall. That is why I fear CR2 is a no go any time in the next 20 years as Mr Grayling didn’t “invent” it nor did be “invent” some sort of unique delivery vehicle for the project. Pathetic I know but that’s party politics for you.

52. @WW, I do favour bigger schemes, but primarily as a way to separate service groups (which is very much in vogue). I also look for efficient ways to cost them. FWIW, while there may be a touch of left-right politics in CR2’s slowdown, it has much more to do with being (a) too expensive and (b) being a London scheme. The latter implies it must wait until after Northern Powerhouse Rail has something more concrete to show and the former implies some heavy cost-cutting. If CR2 does happen I expect it to look less and less like the CR2 we saw in the last consultation. For North Kent, my “bigger scheme” has been mentioned before.

    @ngh, Thanks for the info that Gravesend journey will be faster via CR1 even if all stops. I was pretty sure that was the case, but it does emphasise why extending CR1 is not a silly concept, but raise again as to why new tracks are needed except at Dartford)

53. Re Stephen C,

    faster – but only if they have segregated tracks Abbey Wood to Dartford Jn otherwise you can just run a very limited number east of Abbey Wood and slow them down to make all the junction moves (Crayford Spur A, Crayford Creek and Slade Green Junctions) work with either current of future proposed SE services to make viable paths.

    Shifting the semifasts to CR would allow far better timetabling opportunities on most the rest of the SE metro network (i.e no via Herne Hill / Bellingham service benefits but the other metro services would all gain more timetabling flexibility.)
    E.g. makes TfL’s aim of more Vic – Dartford services far easier to achieve – 4 track east of Abbey Wood isn’t just for CR…

54. @Stephen C -service groups are not set in stone;most of them exist because they are operationally convenient historically – but that is not say that they couldn’t and shouldn’t be rearranged to tap new markets and that may or may not require some larger or smaller investment. Much better to think in terms of journey patterns and their investment needs, rather than service groups.

55. Graham H,

    Same as Leon Daniels insists that they don’t think in terms of bus routes when deciding what bus service to run. But when have you heard a councillor asking for an improved service to cater for a traffic flow rather than wanting improvements to a specific route?

56. @PoP – well, I’m a local councillor … (admittedly only of a parochial nature, but you need to read my seminal paper on “Local bus services in Witley parish”!). Actually, I agree that most elected representatives have only a simple understanding of what they are talking about when it comes to transport matters. I found particularly frustrating having to argue that we didn’t need a thrice weekly bus service which carried no passengers on its “freehold” section of route but which colleagues wished to retain to show solidarity with a neighbouring parish (and more to Leon Daniels’ point, where the settlement in question could have been even better served by an another route serving the same major destinations swapping one empty double run for another a few times a day) . But such is , err, democracy.

57. Don’t really understand the attraction of extending to Ebbsfleet. A longer distance Kent commuter coming in high speed can go to Stratford and take a fully traffic segregated short walk through the shopping centre to board Crossrail or just use the tube from KX/St. P.

    Dartford would be a good destination though, providing more direct connections that Abbey Wood. A completely separate alignment could go behind Slade Green depot and follow the river to a new terminus just to the north of the existing station on industrial land, linked by a bridge. That might avoid disruption and cost of alterations to the existing layout.

    I support improvements to the pedestrian link between Northfleet and Ebbsfleet stations but that it is a good idea regardless of Crossrail extension.

58. Mark: The point of Crossrail going to Ebbsfleet would not be to provide the main service between Ebbsfleet and anywhere else – as you say there are generally better routes already in place. Travel from Stevenage to central London is rarely done on a Stevenage stopper. But it would, perhaps, provide a range of interchange opportunities.

    Having said that, even if not used much, a boast of through trains to “Canary Wharf, Tottenham Court Road, Heathrow and Reading” would look pretty good on an estate agent’s brochure, and might thereby raise possible house prices and make the developer readier to stump up some cash.

59. @Malcolm – these interchange opportunities – huge, are they? BTW what is the point of getting developers to brass up for something that may not, in a rational world*, be a high priority,or even, no priority at all. We’ve surely had enough of developer-led system extensions.

    * I do understand that we don’t live in a rational world…

60. No, not huge. Ashford to Dartford, say, with one change instead of two. Hardly earth-shattering.

    And of course I would prefer that the transport improvements which I think desirable should be paid for (1) out of national taxation as a national investment, or (2) by developers whose customer really need the improvements. My third option (paid for by slightly misleading marketing) is an inferior choice, but one which I still find better than (4) not built at all.

61. There’s no physical reason why Crossrail to Ebbsfleet can’t then go on to Gravesend.

    I’d imagine though that would basically mean closing Northfleet station. Then again, ending at Gravesend means that there would have to be residual Charing Cross services to keep the link to Strood and Medway a high enough frequency.

62. @Malcolm: I’m all for interchanges, but that does not really depend on its being Crossrail, does it? If someone were to conjure up the money to construct a spur from Swanscombe to Ebbsfleet, then surely some trains to serve that spur could be found in the Southeastern timetable, say, extending some of the present-day Dartford terminators.

63. @Malcolm – without wanting to prolong the philosophical discourse, (4) is wrong if it diverts resources (such as rolling stock) and distorts a rational plan to the system as a whole. In other words, sometimes nothing is better than something. In the case of Kent, this would be so if, for example, extending CR1 became a spoiler for CR3 (which, of course, is not very likely in my lifetime).

    @Si and if Gravesend, why not Canterbury (or Paris)? The point of the frivolous question is that there has to be a good reason for doing something,not just doing it because it can be done. [See previous para]. (Devotees of the late FM Cornford will recognise the “Doing nothing having no consequences” argument here…)

64. Henning and Graham: Of course extending Crossrail to Ebbsfleet should not be done if it should not be done. My interchange and estate-agent-publicity arguments are nothing like sufficient in themselves to justify such an expensive bit of extending – just tiny little contributions to something that would have to be mainly justified by something else. As I do not see many something-elses appearing over the horizon, then I cannot really take this argument any further.

    Just that if Crossrail is to be extended beyond Abbey Wood, it has to be to somewhere. And if extension can only be afforded by bringing in some of this perhaps-mythical house-builder contribution, then it has to be to (or through) somewhere with big house-building possibilities.

65. @Graham H

    Gravesend is a very viable Crossrail terminus in the SE – it’s where the current safeguarding ends and is a large town. This article is about such an extension and no one has said it was outlandish to take Crossrail as far east as I suggest, though some have propose alternatives.

    What I talked about is totally different to your nonsensical straw man that has a lengthy extension just because I dare suggest extending it to the favoured terminus 1 stop beyond an alternative terminus. It’s like saying “Crossrail beyond Maidenhead to Reading? Why not Bristol or Penzance?”.

    My point was that the two main options for a terminus east of Dartford are not mutually exclusive, contra some of the debate upthread about serving Ebbsfleet.

66. rational plan said on 6 April 2017 at 20:29
    “How much extra capacity would be required at Dartford too end the need for rounders services, so all services at least start at Dartford.”

    I have in front of me the Winter 1963/64 Southern Region timetable. It is only during the rush hours that some trains do not go into Dartford. A few are shown as going between Slade Green and Barnehurst, but most of those not reaching Dartford are from the Woolwich line going out of service at Slade Green, so I guess were turning in the depot. At the time, I believe that Dartford only had three platforms, but the sidings beyond the station used for reversing trains were much as they are today.

    Off peak services were 10 trains per hour in each direction through Dartford. The service patterns were:
    * three trains perhour via Sidcup (the “Dartford Loop Line” for those old enough to remember the terminology) terminate at Dartford
    * three trains per hour via Bexleyheath terminating at Dartford, Gravesend, and Gillingham (all stations)
    * four trains per hour via Woolwich two terminating at Dartford, one at Gravesend, and the fast one (after London Bridge calling only at Woolwich Arsenal, Dartford, Gravesend, until Strood where it divided into Maidstone and Gillingham portions).

    Therefore, as the current service is roughly twice as many trains, it would seem that at least two more platforms are required at Dartford, and possibly a couple of extra reversing sidings to help cope with the inevitable delays. Then perhaps there would be no need for off peak “rounders”. Add Crossrail to the mix and Dartford would probably need to become an eight platform station. As others have pointed out, the site is a bit tight for that!

67. @Si – you mistake my point – the questions are why extend it all, and if there is any spare capacity ,at what point does any extension use it up? The answer to the latter question could be anywhere between, say, Bexleyheath and Ebbsfleet (or any of the strawmen you dislike) . Don’t be lured by any specific town without suitable evidence. The fact that town X is slated for growth is irrelevant, it’s the question as to where the spare capacity (if any) runs out. The issue is exactly the same as BLE, as someone has recently pointed out, with the substitution of Gravesend for Hayes.

68. @ Graham

    Many people, including the authors of the document that this article (about extending to Gravesend) is discussing, are talking about extending to Gravesend – so why single me out for mentioning it rather than address your remarks to the wider room?

    It strikes me as needlessly antagonistic, especially given my remarks are in the realms of ‘could’ not ‘should’ and irrelevant to the point you are making.

69. @Si – sorry if you feel personally targetted; you just happened to be the most recent proponent. My remarks apply equally to the others. Of course, CR1 “could” go to a multitude of places but,in mentioning one place in preference to others, one also needs to mention the determining issue for selecting it. Practicality is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

70. @ Graham H – “most elected representatives have only a simple understanding of what they are talking about when it comes to transport matters”. A masterful piece of understatement.

    @ PoP – TfL may well plan bus routes on “flows” but there is a huge element of operational convenience and financial constraint applied to whatever the models may say. I struggle to believe that TfL have suddenly found an enormous untapped flow from Brixton / Kennington / Lambeth Bridge to Russell Square that fully underpins the proposal to reroute bus 3 from Oxford Circus to Russell Sq. More likely it’s a case of “oh heck we’ve run out of stand space at the former and oh look we’ve got a spare stand at Russell Sq since we curtailed route 7. Let’s send the 3 to Russell Sq”.

    @ Si – I may be wrong but I just think Graham H is applying the sort of “challenge” that any proposal would get in the corridors of Whitehall. It might appear blunt but all proposals will be subject to the interrogation by “non believers” to see if proponents can actually provide a robust and convincing case for their project or initiative. I don’t think any of this is personal at all. Mr H often uses this technique here to try to make people pause and appreciate that real life is a world away from comments on a transport blog.

    Having had to sit on approval committees you learn to spot gaps, inconsistencies or just plain nonsenses. I’ve also had been on the other end of the challenge from lawyers and financial advisers when drafting large scale PFI contracts. They have no real understanding of transport so you’re put through the mangle to convince them a particular clause or obligation is necessary. If you’re spending public money there really should be a robust case. In terms of extending CR1 beyond Abbey Wood I think it’s pretty clear from PoP’s article that no one has really established a solid case for an extension *yet*. It may come in time and it will be interesting to see what does actually emerge as a plan and then if it can be funded.

71. “Reasons for extending”
    Operational “balance” ??
    How “far out” is Reading, or even Maidenhead, & ditto Shenfield?
    Now how far out are Abbey Wood / Ebbsfleet / Gravesend?
    [ Doesn’t even remotely match up, does it? ]
    Also, without the trains being utterly rammed from, say Woolwich inwards, how far out could one realistically extend further East?

    Except, in response top WW
    I think it’s pretty clear from PoP’s article that no one has really established a solid case for an extension *yet*.
    Except that the original proposal was to either Dartford / Ebbsfleet / Gravesend & it got trimmed to keep certain vested anti-railway interests quiet

72. Distance-wise, Bedford to Brighton is as far as Oxford to Ashford (Kent). Were there similar discussions when deciding how far Thameslink should extend, and if so, what is the difference between TL and CR?

73. @WW – Yes, I do try and challenge the assumptions of “believers” and I’m sorry if I sometimes sound blunt in the process; my”natural” mode is oblique* but experience shows that most people – especially those who are convinced believers – don’t do “subtle”. Indeed, these days, those who don’t share the belief are often then roundly abused as elitist experts, or worse. I do think, however, that the quality f sites such as this – here comes my manifesto – are improved in the proportion that the debates are lead by facts and analysis rather than personal opinion; these are the few weapons we have against political mumpsimus.

    *visitors to the H household,which is entirely populated, I’m sorry to say, by ex-public servants with a taste for language and whimsy often complain that conversations verge on the weird – and they are being polite.

74. @Graham H (and WW). “most elected representatives have only a simple understanding of what they are talking about when it comes to transport matters”. As the former Clerk to a large and busy Parish, I would add “or anything else”.

75. Greg: It is entirely reasonable to try to “balance” the passenger flows on two branches, or on two ends, of the same line. Balancing the lengths in kilometres seems, however, to be quite unnecessary. Nobody suggests extending the Piccadilly line north from Cockfosters on the grounds that Uxbridge and Heathrow are further out of London.

76. @Littlejohn – And if you thought that parish councils were populated by amateurs, you are lucky to be spared the horrors of a Neighbourhood Plan committee – largely staffed by self-appointed airheads and developers for whom opinion=fact and where everyone is an expert on everything (and in the case of my own parish, egged on by a clerk who knew remarkably little that was accurate or truthful – fortunately she has now left to ply her trade elsewhere, before we sacked her, leaving us to try and sort out the mess).

    PS If we hadn’t just backfilled said clerk’s job, I might have urged you to apply… 🙂

77. Greg: The history of what was originally proposed, assuming you are right about it, does not form any part of a “solid case for extension”. I was originally planning to be the leader of the world, but then I became 5 years old and some difficulties with that plan began to dawn on me.

78. A potential problem that seems to be being ignored with regards to CR1 Ebbsfleet is that it could just turn the entire car park into a commuter car park given its proximity to the A2… There is already a certain amount of that I’m sure… But CR1 to Ebbsfleet would surely just aggravate the situation?

    Also the area North of Dartford station (along Mill Pond Road) is currently being developed into flats (Langley Square), so there is a less than zero percentage chance of the station expanding in that direction…

79. Greg Tingey,

    Except that the original proposal was to either Dartford / Ebbsfleet / Gravesend & it got trimmed to keep certain vested anti-railway interests quiet

    Can we please stop having these unsubstantiated conspiracy theories? It was trimmed to build a more solid case for the rest of the project – both in BCR and in terms of keeping the cost affordable. As mentioned in the article it was also trimmed because very pro-railway managers were concerned that it would be unworkable with reliance on [at the time] Connex SouthEast running a remotely reliable railway – and that was something that was just not happening.

    One need hardly add that, at the time, the idea of going to Ebbsfleet was based on a link to the Eurostar service based on projections. As we have now seen the Ebbsfleet element of the Eurostar service is very small indeed (and Eurostar are rumoured to be slightly reducing their Paris service soon). So maybe cutting it out saved enormous embarrassment.

    The idea of having branches being the same length is beneficial is preposterous and not based on any logic. Being isochronous (same time taken to traverse each) makes more sense but really isn’t necessary. As Graham H has tried to emphasise, it is the passenger flows that matter. You really, really do want to have roughly the same amount of passengers on each branch. On that basis one should extend about as far as necessary but certainly no more so that the number of passengers in peak times matches the number of passengers on the Shenfield branch. In practice you would want to keep it slightly lower in order to avoid going slightly higher as from day 1 the Shenfield branch will probably not cope very well without the additional Gidea Park – Liverpool St (high level) service.

80. @Graham H. Sorry, I am too busy fighting off pleas to return and sort out the problems caused by my three successors (all short term). I tried to tell councillors what qualities were needed and which candidates to avoid but they wouldn’t listen.

    Note to Mods: Not entirely irrelevant to LR as a huge amount of difficulty can be caused in transport planning terms and in public perceptions by both councillors and officers who are not up to the job.

81. SHLR: And a commuter car park is a Bad Thing? (I suppose it depends what you contrast it with – bad compared to door-to-door train commuting with a nice healthy walk at each end, but good compared to car-all-the-way commuting).

82. A minor point about “balancing lengths” is that you do not, of course, want the lengths (or journey times, really) to be so far out of balance that different train types are required – so Leeds to Tattenham Corner, or Abbey Wood to Hereford, are completely out of the question. But the differences under discussion on Crossrail are nothing like as extreme as these.

83. @Malcolm: It would make parking potentially less attractive for those wanting to use the Eurostar service, even now if you arrive in the late morning, then a large part of the car park is full, making it a long slog to the terminal.

    Gravesend by contrast has no real commuter parking around it, so might be a better destination not via Ebbsfleet….

84. Adding to the point about flows on the branches, the ideal is to be able to split the service 50:50 then both branches can have a regular interval service that feeds into a regular interval central service. 2:1 leads to uneven frequencies on the majority branch and is sub-optimal.

85. Given that Erith is beside the River Thames then perhaps the extension could be made to cross the river to interchange with C2C Tilbury route and then cross the river again to another station thus creating two new river crossings in an area that lacks river crossings and could build a case for the project based on linking communities on north and south banks .

    A ride on a route 99 bus from Bexkeyheath to Woolwich runs through this area and it’s noticeable how much development potential this stretch of riverside has but is hampered by poor transport links.

86. Just a thought: if we’re thinking about extending Crossrail eastwards, then if:
    – the construction of it would appear to be relatively easy as far as Dartford; and
    – the highest growth in terms of housing would be in Greater London rather than beyond…

    …then why not look at extending Crossrail to Dartford in the first instance?

    Also, when it comes to housing and transport provision around London, the demand for housing is such, that the phrase ‘build it (i.e. the railway) and they will come’ would most certainly apply. Looking at the two stations closest to me – Southall and Hayes & Harlington – almost all the brownfield land that was available within walking distance to those two stations (including the massive airport car park to the north of the GWML and to the west of Southall station) is now full of cranes and concrete structures in various stages of completion. All of this features Crossrail prominently (google Southall Riverside as an example), as currently passengers trying to board at Southall or Hanwell in the AM peak face waiting up to 30 minutes to actually be able to physically get on.

    My point is that – were Crossrail to be extended towards Dartford – I’m pretty sure the cranes would start arriving at construction sites within weeks of that decision being made.

87. @Straphan: Dartford will be expensive, Have a look at Streetview level… Best to go no further than Slade Green.

    I also doubt that any developer will put a shovel in the ground until they see shovels being put in the ground for the actual extension.

88. The problem is not finding possible places to extend Crossrail to, it is finding the money to pay for it and ensuring there is enough spare capacity to make the extension worthwhile.

    To get the money to pay for the extension, there has to be a rate of return on that investment. Whilst developers would love for Crossrail to be extended, they are not queuing up the help pay for it. Whilst councils would love for Crossrail to be extended into their area, they are not queuing up to help pay for it either. Generating more passengers may help, but only if there is spare capacity to carry those passengers – filling up the trains further out doesn’t add any more overall passengers, so little extra income.

    So whilst discussing options is good clean fun for a while, eventually you have to work out the economics – this stuff doesn’t just happen because lots of people like the idea, somebody has to pay for it.

89. @Anonymous – well said; until those things are sorted, everything else is a mildly amusing (eventually mildly irritating) waste of time.

90. Oh I am probably more aware than others that railways don’t spring up out of the ground for free. But while developers will definitely not pay anything up-front for an extension, they will have no choice but to get taxed to help out if a mandatory surcharge of some sort is introduced. If memory serves me right, TfL was able to take out loans against future ticket revenues to finance some of Crossrail as well? Or was it the Northern Line extension to Battersea?

    I also sincerely doubt this branch of Crossrail will run out of capacity in the foreseeable future, particularly if trains are extended to their maximum length.

    @SHLR: Aside from Mill Pond Road (just alongside Dartford station) I can’t see any serious obstacles to widening the alignment to 5 tracks… Except that some embankments will have to be replaced by retaining walls…

    Also bear in mind that – at the intermediate stations – only two of the four tracks would need platforms.

91. @straphan – the issue is not whether the Abbey Wood branch will run out of capacity (it probably won’t in a hurry) but where and when it would do so if extended.

    Bring back DLT!?

92. Straphan; TfL have taken out loans against future ticket revenue and future revenue from the business rates supplement to help fund Crossrail. There is a similar loan to help fund the NLE, but the financing arrangements are slightly different if I recall correctly.

    As a result, one suspects that TfL are pretty close to being ‘maxed out’ on the credit card. Hence the need to find new sources of revenue. Property development must be right in the crosshairs.

93. Clarification from Lord Dawlish:

    Development Land Tax (DLT) was introduced by PM Wilson c1965 (and repealed by PM Heath c1970), but did what it said on the tin. I believe it paid for some of the Victoria line indirectly.

94. @ SFD – I wasn’t aware of the loans against business rates aspect for Crossrail but it’s certainly in place for the NLE to Battersea. I believe Crossrail has benefitted from a levy on all developments over a certain size within Greater London that’s been in place for many years. Crossrail has also had a significant contribution from the City of London and will also have higher than expected revenues from over station developments in the Central area. TfL do have to earn phenomenal revenue surplusses from Crossrail to help pay back the loans taken against fares revenue. Let’s hope the economy doesn’t catch a cold!! Battersea also benefits from the fact the Battersea Nine Elms opportunity area has been designated as an “enterprise zone” which should attract inward investment and new businesses. A bit of a repeat of what was done for Canary Wharf.

    I agree with you about the “maxed out credit card”. TfL’s business plan is seeing a serious fall in reserves over the next few years and the maximum permissible amount of borrowing. This is not really sustainable and risks TfL getting to a point where its credit rating is harmed. That would have horrible consequences for the future. TfL say they will ensure that reserves at held at a level which protects the credit rating but we shall see if that happens. One can argue that the scale of reserves held under Boris Johnson’s tenure was extremely high but we now risk going in the opposite direction.

    @ Graham H – I didn’t know the Hairy Cornflake (Dave Lee Travis / DLT) was a potential source of revenue for extending Crossrail. 😉 🙂 (sorry, someone had to do the gag!)

95. @WW: I believe Crossrail has benefitted from a levy on all developments over a certain size within Greater London that’s been in place for many years

    The London-wide Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy (MCIL) (sounds a bit like the DLT), plus Section 106 contributions for commercial developments within 1km of Crossrail stations – which are meant to continue until £600 million is raised (I think they are about halfway there) – although there is reference in the linked document to a review this year and possible “MCIL 2” to continue from 2019, with some suggestion that money raised beyond the £600 million would go to other transport infrastructure.

    Somewhat controversially the MCIL covers developments even if they are nowhere near Crossrail – an annoyed London farmer* had to pay the Crossrail levy for his new barn. I believe an exception was made for the Battersea developers who were allowed to divert their part of the levy into the Northern Line extension instead (a subtle subsidy for the ‘no cost to taxpayers’ scheme).

    * a rare breed (London farmers, that is, not annoyed farmers)

96. @WW. All business property in London with a rateable value of more than £70,000 (as of last week) pays an extra 2p in the £ on business rates, specifically to pay for the Crossrail loans.

    https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/business-and-economy/promoting-london/paying-crossrail-business-rate-supplement

97. If this is the future for the way in which transport projects are funded, I cannot see how on earth any other part of England & Wales will get any rail ‘investment’! Or even CR2.

98. @LBM

    Development Land Tax (DLT) was not abolished until 1985. British Rail reputedly paid more DLT (up to 20% of the total collected was claimed) than any other party. This was because large amounts of land acquired a long time ago were being sold. It was a complicated tax to negotiate with the Inland Revenue, so there was a high cost to one part of the public sector paying another. After the tax was abolished nobody had the will to carry on with all the outstanding cases and a “lump sum” settlement of all claims was agreed.

99. @LiS – thank you for the 1985 date – are you sure that that wasn’t the date when the outstanding cases were compounded? (I seem to recall when I dealt with TSG in the early ’80s,being told by the GLC that they couldn’t quantify their bid for grant precisely because there were still outstanding cases from the Victoria Line construction despite the tax having been abolished so far as new transactions were concerned,many years before – they may have been lying, of course – that had been known…)

100. I’ve been considering writing an en spec piece on economics, development and railways for a little while although not quite sure when it would be squeezed in alongside everything else…

     One snippet is that while corporation and income taxes have high deadweight costs (economic activity that doesn’t happen because of these taxes), land value taxes have fairly low deadweight costs. A switch to LVTs would enable development that would increase the value of the land around it to be paid for by borrowing against the increase in LVT that would be caused by said development. This would help capture some of the value added to existing landowners who benefit from new public works as well as preventing negotiations with developers from being a near zero-sum game.

     If anyone is interested in an expansion of these and related arguments, let me know…

101. @moosealot -before putting finger to keyboard, you might find it helpful to research the Treasury views on the shadow price of public expenditure (something which influences the TDR rate, of course).

102. @Moosealot

     Personally, I’d be very interested in reading such a piece.

103. Re: Moosealot et al – not sure if it’d be within the scope of the putative study, but one thing that would interest me would be some evidence on whether – and if so then why – it is more difficult to approve investment in a given quantum of infrastructure than elsewhere. Obviously anecdata abounds*.

     My personal hunch is that there is a difference – why else would the UK be good at wringing capacity out of its assets? – and that it is somehow related to our not having had an anti-monarchy revolution at the right point in history when it was necesary to show that the state was doing things for the masses. The culture of statecraft, if you will.

     I find it telling that the front door of 10 Downing Street asserts that it is the residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, rather than someone dedicated to the betterment of the people, for example. And I note that Graham H has weighed in pointing to HMT!

     *”I went on holiday to France and the train was so fast and comfortable” / “They’re so good at building things in Dubai” / “It was so easy to use the uncrowded airport in Malta” / etc.

104. @Balthazar – having worked with or for most European governments (and many others in Africa and Asia),I have found that most states have very similar rules and tools for managing investment, even the poorest such as Macedonia and Kosovo or Tanzania. Those who splash the cash like Dubai either are undemocratic administrations who can select investments on the basis of prestige or the personal preference of the ruler, or are amazingly corrupt and untransparent* (you mention a prime example). Whether the UK’s ability to wring more out of its assets is a product of its history is something I particularly doubt – similar attitudes apply in Germany or Denmark or Estonia or Ireland – states with radically different pasts.

     * The recent order for an additional 15 Duplex TGVs to be built at Belfort is a classic case – the requirement was to keep the Belfort works going, but EU state aids rules prevent any direct subsidy,nor could the SNCF make the business case (which would also require additional subsidy which would breach EU rules). However, under the guise of transferring responsibility for services to the Regions, the French government gave the Regions sufficient extra funds to buy – 15 extra TGVs. More, to avoid having to put the order out to competitive tender (which Belfort might lose) , a hitherto unknown extension clause to the last order of TGVs was “discovered” and invoked. Job done…therefore . No need to pay attention to any boring rules about investment appraisal.

105. @ Graham H

     DLT was abolished by Section 93 of the Finance Act, 1985.

     Incidentally, DLT was introduced by the Development Land Tax Act 1976. Possible some other tax was being referred to in earlier postings. There were changes to how land was taxed in 1963, and capital gains tax, still with us, dates from 1965.

     There was a House of Lords oral question on the impact of DLT on railway station development on 23 November 1978. Report at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1978/nov/23/railway-station-development-land-tax#S5LV0396P0_19781123_HOL_8

106. @moosealot: A switch to LVTs would enable development that would increase the value of the land around it to be paid for by borrowing against the increase in LVT that would be caused by said development

     This is a very common means of financing transport infrastructure in the United States, especially the Western half of it – usually authorised by local referendum.

     @Balthazar: An obvious difference between the UK and most other democratic countries is that decisions on what infrastructure to build have historically been much more centralised in the UK (though this is changing). Most largeish Western countries are federations, where local transport planning is the responsibility of sub-national units (but the federal government generally has most spending power and takes some responsibility for funding capital projects). In somewhere like Germany, the local/Land government decides what to build, and so long as it meets a BCR threshold, central government automatically kicks in half the cost. Unimaginable for the UK Treasury.

     @Graham H: If you think the French are dodgy, just wait to see what happens in the UK once all the EU procurement rules no longer apply… (for a foretaste, look at how the design contract for the Garden Bridge was awarded, for example).

107. Graham: … and of course I’m sure you can confirm that it would never occur to a British Civil Servant to devise such a scheme to get round some boring rule or other where conforming might be inconvenient…

108. Re: Ian J – that would indeed qualify as a “difference in the culture of statecraft” between the UK and other – nominally comparable – countries.

     Re: Graham H – I did not suggest that other countries haven’t got investment appraisal processes; I asked whether the outcome of these processes is different between the UK and other parts of the world. It is an observable fact that, for example, large British provincial cities do not have underground rail systems whereas Lyon, Barcelona, Medellin, etc.
     do. It seems also obervable that the UK has a particular difficulty in delivering extra capacity in infrastructure; but perhaps it is only anecdote that some people express a preference for continental hub airports over Heathrow. My suggestion, and it is no more than that, is that (a) there is a difference between the infrastructure investments that the decision-making process permits to be delivered* and (b) this is due to a difference in state culture regarding what government is there to do.

     Public discourse on this subject is full of anecdote of course, the classic example being the earnest comparison between one’s morning peak commute in Britain and the lovely half-empty TGV one took on holiday in France.

     *i.e. actual built outputs are lower in the UK than elsewhere.

109. Balthazar: large British provincial cities do not have underground rail systems…

     Glasgow, Newcastle and Liverpool would like a word with you.

110. @Ian J – I fear you may be right, although I’m not sure that I agree with the implication that it is the EU that has kept us on the straight and narrow.

     @Balthazar – I’m sorry but I don’t see any usefulness in a sweeping generalisation about “statecraft” (whatever that means). For every example of a centralised state favouring vast publicly sponsored investment projects, you can find another that didn’t (cf France and Austria-Hungary, or even the France of Napoleon 1 with the France of Louis Phillipe ); for every highly devolved state which leaves such investment to its components (or the private sector), you can find another that does it centrally; tellingly, compare and contrast Rooseveltian New Deal US with the US post-Eisenhower. Same political culture, different outcomes. I don’t believe that historians these days do “sweep of history”, “human progress”, or “historical dialectic” any more.

     Put another way, different outcomes in different states are more easily explained by reference to the situation in that state at that time rather than by reference to any disembodied long-term trend or statecraft. In post-Keynsian Britain, we have blown hot and cold on major state-led investment often regardless of political party in power, with right wing governments sometimes deciding to build the Channel Tunnel or HS2 and sometimes leaving it to the private sector (toll roads, ports, freight terminals). What seems to explain best the difference in outcomes as between different states is a political consensus over what should be done,maintained over a long enough period to actually deliver something. France is very good at that, possibly to the point where the plan being pursued has become wildly out of date, in other countries, regardless of historical background, this is less the case.

     @LiS- thank you for the detailed reference; I guess what was happening in 1983 was surprise that DLT cases from the ’60s were still current and having to be addressed. There were ugly – and probably entirely well-founded – rumours about the size of the building accommodating the staff working on old DLT cases.

111. @ Graham H

     What was being laboured over in the ‘sixties was probably the remnants of Land Tax, abolished in 1963. See https://nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/the-land-tax-1692-1963.pdf. I suspect this was what complicated the Victoria Line acquisitions.

112. @Ian J

     “Most largish democratic countries are federations, and local transport planning is the responsibility of sub-national units”

     This is also the case in the UK, with transport planning largely under the control of the Scottish, Welsh and NI assemblies. It is only in England that transport planning is managed at “Federal” level.

113. Bexley council is certainly not messing around

114. @ Graham H – I think the consensus point you make is the crucial one. If you can manage to keep the opposing political factions “on side” in the UK you stand half a chance of something happening – the current Crossrail being a good example. Of course it wasn’t always true for Crossrail’s earlier iterations. Unfortunately you can have an apparent consensus that then falls apart when one Minister changes – rail devolution in London being a casualty of this despite cross party support in the London Assembly and with London MPs. As you say France is pretty good at maintaining agreement on transport infrastructure plans although some light rail schemes have foundered when City Mayors have changed in France.

     @ Timbeau – not sure I entirely agree about “federal” England. London plans a lot of its own transport investment, there are Integrated Transport Authorities in the old Met county areas with some neighbouring authorities now added on to give regional planning scope. Most new railway stations have only come about because of local political initiatives and pressure. I’d agree a lot of the money comes from the Treasury but not all of it. Manchester has managed to get round the “curse of Darling” over Metrolink expansion by agreeing a devolution deal and securing a funding transfer plus local arrangements for extra finance. It then simply got on with expanding Metrolink as fast as it could before someone tried to turn the money off. I think there is an important lesson there for other authorities. However we have a new curse, the curse of Grayling, that is putting the kybosh on further devolution in the North and the West Midlands which will limit what can be done for the next decade or so.

115. @Balthazar – SFD’s point is telling. One can beside the success stories such as Manchester or Nottingham, equivalent cities such as Bristol or Leeds,which have utterly failed to devise, let alone deliver significant transport investment, and the differences reflect not political culture or statecraft or history but questions of poor scheme selection, timing, mode of finance or lack of consensus. And these differences exist all within a common polity with a common history.

     Behind these essentially local issues, there is a wider strategic point about the nature of scheme selection and scheme generation, but, here, too, it is rare for these things to be driven by “statecraft” -offhand, I can think only of such things as the Plan Freycinet (setting aside GosPlan and the electrification of the Soviet Union, as being rather special cases of little general significance).

116. Isn’t population density a factor in the ease of developing major infrastructure projects? With the UK’s being more than two and a half times that of France it is much more difficult to build stuff without upsetting lots of people.

117. Interesting thoughts – thanks to all.

     Admittedly I had the larger conurbations of Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham (and their respective hinterlands) principally in mind and hadn’t considered Tyne & Wear properly, but I was thinking along the lines of local transport systems that are segregated from the national rail network, whereas Liverpool* and Glasgow** are integrated in that respect, although it is becoming less apparent in the former case.

     *Assuming we are not discussing the Overhead Railway, but I did specify “underground”.
     **Assuming we are discussing the subsurface suburban rail operations, rather than the Subway which personally I barely consider as a “system”.

118. @RogerB: I think you have that the wrong way around… The lack of population density hampers the building of effective Public Transport Systems.

     Even a city such as London is remarkably low density when compared to continental cities, which makes it difficult to get a transport within range of potential users.

     You are correct though in that the Nimbys don’t help!

119. @Roger B/SHLR
     you are both right! Compared with, say, France, British cities are much less densely populated (many more people live in houses with gardens) but the overall population density of the country as a whole is greater. (French cities are further apart, and much more densely populated). The result is that not only will a new transport facility (road/railway/station) typically serve fewer people in the UK than it would in France, but there is less open country to put such facilities in.

     @Graham H
     Bristol and Leeds may have failed to deliver new transport schemes, but they have devised several.
     http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/leeds/
     https://brlsi.org/events-proceedings/proceedings/18088
     http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/jan/24/avon-light-rail-transit-bill-lords

120. @Timbeau/timbeau – perhaps I should have added the word “successful” (Even some quite small settlements have had, of course, schemes devised for them). The Bristol case is quite instructive in that had they not been distracted by the Avon metro (which was way too expensive back in the day) or subsequently spent the time in a slugfest between the districts and their councillors, there were several windows of opportunity in which Ministers might well have looked favourably on a modest LRT scheme. Experience with administering the TSG system (and indeed managing nationalised industry investment) showed that there were times in the economic cycle when those with shovel-ready schemes backed by a consensus could strike lucky.

     Why hasn’t this occurred more frequently? To answer my own (and Balthazar’s implied) question, I would point to a number of factors specific to the UK – lack of a “living” tradition of LRT systems and their suppliers by the ’70s (further hampered by antiquated legislation and then by bus deregulation), the curse of the new (here I won’t mention the m word), lack of proper devolution of local heavy rail to the PTEs coupled with BR’s inheritance of some really very out-of-date urban tat (Manchester-Bury for example) which meant that the foundations for an S-bahn system were missing in most conurbations (Glasgow an honourable exception) , and later, the spectacular failure of schemes such as Edinburgh to control costs (which will have disastrous consequences for LRT for years to come – just as we all believed the tide was turning).

     Notice, however, that Politics and Political culture have had little to do with these factors, whose roots are various and reflect local conditions and technical context.

121. Graham H: “One can beside the success stories such as Manchester or Nottingham, equivalent cities such as Bristol or Leeds,which have utterly failed to devise, let alone deliver significant transport investment, and the differences reflect not political culture or statecraft or history but questions of poor scheme selection, timing, mode of finance or lack of consensus”

     There has generally been a consensus in Bristol. Unfortunately when Avon was split in the 90s the northern boundary was gerrymandered so half of north Bristol falls in Tory South Gloucestershire, who put the block on all schemes Bristol has tried to do. The tram plan fell apart due to that.

122. Re: WW 10.03 – West Midlands devolution at least may not be in as bad a state as you fear. The combined authority (WM urban metropolitan area) has recently municipalised the tram system and is pushing ahead with its 10-year strategic plan, while the role of WM Rail (whole region – metropolitan area and shire counties) is unchanged for the franchise that starts in October, i.e. it remains the leading partner – the other being the DfT – for managing the local business unit.

     The only effect of Grayling’s pronouncement has been to alter the official view of what happens from the mid-2020s on, in the *next* franchise after that. Given the usual tenure of SoSs for Transport, together with the distinct possibility that it is the current SoS who is out of step with a growing consensus, I am rather unconvinced that there will be any lasting effect. Unlike in south east London, of course.

     Obviously there will be ongoing challenges nationwide in terms of rising costs (both real and perceived) and shrinking budgets, but that is not directly coupled to devolution.

123. Eddie – gerrymandered or not – clearly a lack of consensus. Those of us in the department faced with a controversial bid reacted accordingly

124. @ Timbeau
     Urban density as a factor in transport planning:
     Although your claim is commonly believed, the data seems to point otherwise: according to newgeography.com Greater Paris has 10.87 million people at 3,700 per km2, while London has 10.35 million at 5,600 per km2.
     Comparing smaller areas: according to Wikipedia, Meudon, 9km SW of the centre of Paris has 45,682 people at 4,600 per km2, while Merton, 11 km SW of the centre of London has 204,600 at 5,400 per km2.
     So maybe there just is less space in London to accommodate new transport links?
     (Similar thought posted earlier but failed to appear, please edit as appropriate)

125. @Roger B
     As City Metric has pointed out, the definition of a city and its boundary is not easy. There are many definitions of what constitutes a city or city region and few are directly comparable. Thus the definition of the City of Paris in administrative terms is Paris ‘within the walls’, that is, within the Boulevard Peripherique. The definition of the City of London in similar terms is the famous square mile. So much depends on what is considered to constitute the city region. From the population figures you quote, I suspect that new geography includes a considerable chunk of suburban and semi-rural areas around Paris, which will necessarily bring down the density a lot. The usual population figures for Greater Paris are in the 4 million or so mark, so more than half would be outside the traditionally quoted area (whatever that may be). The Greater London figure would seem to include a much smaller amount of green belt and semi-rural areas given that the Greater London population is now over 8 million.

     It’s really a question of “you pays your money and you takes your choice” when it comes to comparisons like this.

126. Thanks Quinlet,
     it would be interesting to know how the boundaries could be drawn to give the answers we expect. Perhaps it can’t be done by administrative areas as these all contain a range of densities?

127. @RogerB – why would you expect any particular answer? It depends entirely on what the purpose of the question might be. For example,in the case of commuting, youmight want to look at travel-to-work areas; in the case ofagglomeration effects, it could be something quite different. Depending on why you are asking the question,London can be anything from England south of the Trent and east of the West Country to just the CAZ. [The sameissue arises,ofcourse, with most major conurbations – “what is Manchester?”or indeed even quite small county towns.

128. you can see some of the arguments spelled out here:
     http://www.citymetric.com/fabric/which-largest-city-europe-2878
     http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/where-are-britains-largest-cities-slight-return-2044

129. @Moosealot
     I would be very interested in your article.
     I was also intrigued by your statement that ‘while corporation and income taxes have high deadweight costs (economic activity that doesn’t happen because of these taxes), land value taxes have fairly low deadweight costs.’
     This is a very old idea in economics (think Ricardo) but (maybe my ignorance) I don’t think I’ve seen a paper demonstrating this empirically. If you could substantiate your statement with UK data, you may have a publishable paper in that alone.

130. @Graham H
     ‘Shadow price of public expenditure’
     I don’t quite understand this; could you please explain?
     Is this related to ‘crowding out’ of public borrowing; the idea that private expenditure inherently provides greater benefits than the same quantum of public; or something else?

131. @Balthesar
     Is the outcome of investment appraisal processes different between the UK and other parts of the world?
     As the other commenters have implied, national differences are largely the result of structural or ‘political’ (writ wide) differences rather than technical issues or the nature of the state.
     One major difference between the UK and many of its neighbours is that the infrastructure approval process is less stable and, notwithstanding Graham’s French example, more open to non-publicised political intervention than elsewhere.

132. @answer=42 – the shadow price for public expenditure is a reflexion of a belief that any public expenditure is less economically productive than the same sum invested by the private sector. And no,I wouldn’t like to set out the detailed calculation which goes into such issues as the pricing of financial risk. Whether you believe it to be so,is a different matter.[Note, this is not quite the same as the shadow cost of taxation, which assumesthat money left in private hands will be better employed than state spending].

     I’m not sure I understand what you mean by the approval process being less stable in the UK than elsewhere. I can’t think of many cases where approval, once given has been revoked, although NR’s tergivisations with its electrification programme may tell us differently. It’s certainly the case that we, in the UK, tend to take big schemes in small bites – partly due to a systemic mistrust of long-term planning and partly due to the influence of Mr Pareto.

     Nor is it clear that there are more unpublicised state interventions than elsewhere. Interventions in HS2, for example, have been pretty well publicised. In fact, unpublicised attempts by Sir Douglas Corridor (sorry, a CP Snow reference/Whitehall joke) to stop CrossRail met with ultimate failure and on my watch,I found Ministers keen to invest and regretful that there weren’t more shovel-ready projects. Ministers were pretty open about rejecting Picc Vic and Avon metro – they could hardly have been otherwise.

133. Thanks for a clear answer.

     On the infrastructure approval process, I’m not trying to say that a project, once approved, can be revoked. Instead, at least from the public perspective, the process required to get to the point of a conclusive green light appears to be less stable and usually less public than elsewhere in Yoorp.
     May I use your CrossRail argument as evidence – the Sir Douglas rearguard action must have had some chance of success or else it would not have been fought. And on what grounds was it fought?
     I can only partially sympathise with the Ministers who regret the lack of shovel-ready projects. It is they or their similar predecessors who have built the system.
     Maybe the UK has in consequence an inbuilt bias against infrastructure projects; I can think of other countries where there is a bias towards them for the wrong reasons. I wonder what the loss function looks like.

     PS I read ‘Corridors of Power’ many years ago but remember very little. I was probably too young.

134. To clarify:
     ‘process is less stable’ = process is more likely to change at short notice.

135. Very, very interesting discussion taking place regarding the problems of infrastructure development in this country…I am learning quite a lot!

     One question…..could someone please provide a clearer definition of what exactly is a ‘shovel-ready’ project, preferably using examples from this website (e.g. is Croxley link more shovel-ready than BLE to Lewisham, which in turn is more shovel-ready than Crossrail extension eastwards from Abbey Wood to Somewhere Else)?

136. The desire for ‘shovel-ready’ schemes may be understandable but it is hardly deliverable – or only exceptionally. By ‘shovel ready’ we must surely mean schemes which have all their approvals and final designs and just need to be tendered out. But very few schemes will go through all the approval process without some degree of certainty that funding will be available, and certainly not through final detailed design. Indeed, if a public inquiry is involved, the lack of committed funding could be enough to get a scheme rejected to avoid blight. And if funding is available then they will be tendered as soon as possible to avoid cost increases, possible revocation and so on.

     It’s quite hard to define schemes which still have to go through some of their formal approval processes as ‘shovel ready’ and even where this is completed, final detailed design may still take some time.

137. There appear to be many more highway schemes that are ‘shovel ready’ than rail schemes. This is most likely a consequence of highway projects going out of fashion for around around 15 years from 1997(ish) with rail projects becoming much more favoured politically. Many highway schemes that were designed and consented were swiftly removed from capital programmes of the county highways teams and the newly created Highways Agency.

     An example from history – the M1 widening from the M25 to Luton was designed and with all consents (orders) confirmed in October 1996. Shovels were not exercised until March 2006. One consequence of this ‘pause’ was that when it came to construction it had to be built as per the orders. Which is why we have 4 lanes with a continuous hard shoulder, entailing the reconstruction of every overbridge, and the widening of every underbridge. Schemes designed later (eg M25 widening M40-A1) were designed with an intermittent hard shoulder, with reduced costs as a result.

     (Incidentally the M1 widening had a BCR of 6.9, which is rather higher than almost any rail scheme of a similar size).

138. Well it depends on how you weight the variables which is why BCR is a dubious measure of whether something should go ahead. Rail schemes seem to attract more users than is generally predicted.

139. @Sad Fat Dad – is there retrospective evaluation if a BCR has been achieved? (and what happens if it hasn’t…?)

     For example, the linked article (subscription needed) seems to describe a classic case of induced demand where provision of extra capacity on the M25 has resulted in slower journey times.

     https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/53100/extra-traffic-prompts-longer-journey-times-on-widened-m25

     I wonder if the original BCR factored in time savings as part of the justification…?

140. @ Reynolds 953; according to the one year post implementation review report (available on line) the M1 widening actually achieved a BCR of 6.8, which I would argue is pretty accurate to the forecast. Of course, as BCRs cover a 60 year appraisal period, there are various arguments as to what time a post implementation review is best held.

     Anonymous @ 1151. Well, quite. However there has been a common methodology for assessing all transport schemes for a couple of decades now, it is at least a consistent playing field.

     However I would argue about rail schemes ‘generally’ attracting more passengers than predicted. Firstly, you will often hear that station / line X has achieved much higher than expected numbers in year 1. But rarely do you hear about year 5 or 10. There is some evidence (possibly anecdotal) that take up for a new project is quicker than expected, but levels off in later years. Secondly, it is simply not in the interests of a scheme promoter or funder to publicise when a rail project doesn’t achieve its forecasts. So you don’t hear about it (the Channel Tunnel being a notable exception). I for one would be interested to see the actual passenger numbers vs forecast for East Midlands Parkway, or the Airdrie – Bathgate reopening, for example.

141. @ Graham H – well done on maintaining your standard of “another new word I’ve never seen before and must check the definition” in every post. “Tergivisations” this time!

     @ SFD – the other interesting aspect of whether business cases are maintained over time is what is happening with the London bus network. A great many of the Ken era improvements in terms of extra routes, extensions and enhanced frequencies in Central London (in particular) are now being wound back barely 15 years on. TfL will have evaluated those changes with an appraisal period of probably 20+ years. Obviously a service enhancement rather than physical infrastructure is a different thing but it still has its costs and benefits capable of appraisal. The irony, of course, is that some of what is forcing the reversal are later Mayoral policies and their effects.

142. @SFD, Reynolds (%#
     Time savings account for typically around 80% of the benefits of road schemes. Not only are these usually made up of very large numbers of very small time savings per person (we have debated small time savings elsewhere) but it is assumed that these time savings will continue to accrue throughout the assessment period. In one sense rail appraisal works on the same basis, but what we do know is that every additional car on the road slows down the others while every additional passenger on the railway does not slow down everyone else (though it may make travelling conditions less pleasant). Thus, in reality, the CBR for road schemes tends to fall off over the assessment period.

143. @WW -but with my apologies for mistyping the word…

144. @quinlet

     Additional passengers do slow everyone else, in extended dwell times, longer times getting through barriers etc.

145. @Timbeau

     Fortunately not to the same extent as each extra car in traffic.

146. Mention on another thread of limited Parliamentary time for Crossrail 2 points to another distinctive feature of UK planning for large scale transport projects – the use of the legislature as a planning authority, considering the minutiae of projects and their objectors. In most countries, as with smaller scale projects in the UK, there would be an independently organised public enquiry, perhaps with a yes/no vote for legislators.

147. @Graham H, WW: It depends on which dictionary you ask, and thanks for another nice obscure word!

148. One of the important differences between countries (and different sectors within any one country) in their approach to investment planning is not process,which,with due respect to answer=42, is not labile – the tools and criteria remain constant in most polities over many years – but the process of scheme generation. (And here I concede to Balthazar that there can be differences of political culture).

     In some countries,noteably France,Spain and Ireland, national plans for infrastructure development are drawn up – often on political grounds rather than (macro) economic or financial grounds. But – and this is the key “but” – when it comes to specific projects, the process of appraisal is much the same as elsewhere and pretty “stable”. And the results of that do show, for example, as the later rounds of LGVs in both Spain and France began to fail standard economic tests, and Ireland began to resile from its ambitious plans to extend the metro to the airport.

     In the UK,by contrast, people tend to mistrust master planning on a grand scale,mainly because there is (a) a pragmatic doubt as to whether it is possible to plan and deliver twenty years out from the present, (b) the perpetual intellectual challenge as to whether a plan is or is not greater than the sum of its parts in economic benefit terms, and (c) the really tough Treasury point as to whether in generating scheme X, that scheme was the “best” that could be devised (as opposed to the most desirable politically/most expedient in construction or operational terms/merely opportunistic happenstance).

     Much changed – and this was a deliberate, targetted benefit – on privatisation. Before,schemes were generated by the sectors involved through arms length quangos (BR, LT, Liverpool Corporation Transport, etc). Some of these organisations had long term plans (LT especially); some (BR for much of its existence did not). Where such long term plans existed,they were not centrally or politically generated, but by the sectors themselves. On privatisation, no one was left to do this – a big payoff as far as HMT was concerned. As Colin Powell said apropos Iraq “the best way to kill a snake is to cut its head off”.

     Into the vacuum stepped the politicians – Heseltine, Adonis and the rest – with the fumbling and bumbling results that are dissected on this site. Schemes are generated and then revised and revised again because the political context has changed and there is no strategic planning against which to evaluate them – to that extent I would agree with answer=42. But the process of evaluation remains the same.

     Highways in the UK are an interesting case in point, where there was indeed a master plan for the motorway network back in the ’50s and it was designed on only the loosest of business or economic criteria (link London to the main ports as they were then understood,with London itself to be surrounded by an onion ring of motorways). That this wasn’t the network eventually built reflected partly a better understanding of transport planning techniques, and partly a realisation that some aspects of the plan were in the too difficult basket politically or in engineering terms (eg the M31 and the middle London ring road). No sign of instability, however, and a centrally-planned network that the French would have recognised… Difficult,however, to point to eventually differing outcomes as between polities.

149. GrahamH @ 18 April 2017 at 08:53

     Some of the bigger County Councils (Lancashire & West Riding for 2) did quite a lot of work about Motorways long before they were built.

     They were interested in important local issues such as:
     which side of each big town to build it
     conflicts with coal mining
     future economic development

150. Anyway, back to Gravesend…

     One option, which I don’t think has come up before now in the comments is to make SE run fast from Abbey Wood to Dartford and concentrating the Kent Thameside trains (those destined for Dartford and on to Rochester) along that route.

     Then Crossrail can take the all stations service up to Dartford.

151. @SHLR
     “One option, which I don’t think has come up before now ”
     See the second comment in this thread.

     @Ian J
     “Mention on another thread of limited Parliamentary time for Crossrail 2 ”
     Even more limited following this morning’s news, which has thrown the parliamentary timetable in the bin.

152. I think the announcement last week of the £6bn Lower Thames Crossing (road tunnel) east of Gravesend might also play a part. The timeframe is 10 years which ties in with any Crossrail extension. The Lower Thames Crossing is intended to be privately funded but if Crossrail headed to the same area then the funding could come from the same interested groups as each scheme would complement the other and potentially be more attractive to bidders. There was much local opposition to the Lower Thames Crossing as it is to be built entirely on green belt land although it has the support of Kent County Council and the Government. However, despite the option of building a further crossing at Dartford the Gravesend scheme has the green light because of the supposed economic benefits (read house building) it will bring to the area.

153. @Alan griffiths – thank you for the local examples. I suspect a good many local authorities were quite good at devising integrated strategies for their areas and then devising specific projects to deliver those strategies – for example, the slum clearance and new housing strategies in towns such as Huddersfield which then extended their trolleybus network at cheap fares to match. Reading, is another example that springs to mind. All this was lost with the successive privatisations of the ESI, the housing stock, public transport etc etc. Devising public transport schemes in a contextual vacuum is very difficult and something the private sector finds it pretty well impossible to do.

154. @Graham H: The private sector is also very bad at planning roads where a bus or a truck will fit. That costs land and land is profit….

155. @The Other Phil: This really isn’t the correct thread for such discussion – however.

     ‘There was much local opposition to the Lower Thames Crossing ‘, is half a story as there was also large local support, simply looking at the number of responses to the consultation that were favourable show that.

     Also the ‘Option A’ (a new crossing at Dartford) was not solely discounted because of its lack of development options, but for many reasons (like allowing diversionary routes).

156. @SH(LR)
     The design of new housing estates has to be approved by the planning authority, in consultation with the highway authority, so it is up to them to make sure roads are suitable for buses. Given that the roads have to be able to accommodate refuse trucks and fire engines, midi-buses (at least) should fit without difficulty. The main problem is parked cars, and that is more of an issue with older estates. At least some of the new towns, Hatfield for example, were designed on the assumption that there would be one car for every two houses, whereas these days there are often two cars or more per house (and usually several more at the many houses in Hatfield that are rented out to students).

     Keeping to topic, I should be very surprised if the planned housing at Ebbsfleet did not result in feeder buses to the station. I wonder whether the developers will be required to make Section 106 payments to cover the cost of any unremunerative trips that the council may need to subsidise.

157. @LiS

     Ebbsfleet has a well-established public transport plan, which builds on the Fastrack routes already running between Dartford and Gravesend. This has several sections of lengthy bus-only road, with large sections provided by developers, as well as funding for services (in fact, that for The Bridge was considerably over-provided to begin with, at a peak frequency of every 5 minutes running through empty fields – but the principle of having the bus service in place ahead of the housing was at least established).

     Some more detail is here http://ebbsfleetdc.org.uk/the-vision/

158. Lower Thames crossing
     And rail implications therefrom
     So, it has been approved in principle that this new crossing will be built, but the comparison between this attempt to remove congestion & the continued “trapping” ( for want of a better word ) of rail freight in the possible exit-routes from “Thamesport” ( i.e. through & across London ) by rail are stark.

159. “Whilst Belvedere and Erith might be justified on housing development grounds, it is harder to imagine that a case could be made for Slade Green.”

     There is a strong case for Slade Green. To start with, much of the “Erith” developments are actually in Slade Green.

     Moreover the article is fundamentally ill-informed because the Slade Green railway village has a long-established dependency on rail for basic commuting. In fact the medieval Slade Green road was cut in two by Victorian rail, and is now passable only to pedestrians. In summary, Slade Green has never had much road capacity.

     The 2 (two) remaining 20 mph lanes (Manor Road, and Bridge Road) simply cannot cope with the hundreds (maybe thousands) of extra cars now emerging.

     Housing developers moved in after the initial Crossrail proposal (which was to terminate at Gravesend with a station at Slade Green) and these developers are still building new homes.

     Slade Green hosts a major depo that can berth Cross Rail EMUs, but having ready-made capacity to support Cross Rail is really only a bonus point.

160. @ Southern Heights

     Good idea about fast running between Abbey Wood & Dartford, I’d go even further and have the fast run extended to Gravesend calling only at Greenhithe and Dartford.

     Leave Slade Green, Erith & Belevedere to Crossrail, I’m sure they would welcome 6/8tph to the Docklands, City & West End all on one single line.

161. Re Gillingham Stan,

     The plan has always been to have crossrail services as limited stop to Dartford (no Plumstead already for example) as this costs less in infrastructure changes and Crossrail will already have faster journey times to the City. SE would get left with the All Stops services.

162. Re Glen,

     Slade Green is the most likely station between Abbey Wood and Dartford to get a CR station due to the need to allow changes to the SE Cannon Street loop services that will provide the all stops services.

     Slade Green hosts a major depot that can berth Crossrail EMUs, but having ready-made capacity to support Cross Rail is really only a bonus point.

     Complete rubbish I’m afraid:

     1. SE is already very short of depot and stabling capacity, they are even wet subleasing stock from GTR (in SE colours) with GTR still maintaining it because SE don’t have the space.

     2. SE will need lots more depot and stabling capacity early during the new franchise which will cost at least £100m to create the extra capacity.

     3. 1. & 2. aren’t new which is why the Crossrail act safeguarded land at Hoo Jn for the Crossrail depot site if it gets extended to Gravesend – they have know for along time there is negative spare capacity

     4. Slade Green needs lots of work again as the work ~26years ago was descoped to save money during the economic down turn at the time.

     5. Slade Green is also in the way of Crossrail.

     No bonus points – all negatives!

163. @ngh: I wonder where they have been stabling trains? For the last few months lots of trains have been covered in graffiti. It’s not just the odd tag or so, it’s whole carriage sides…

164. Re SH (LR),

     Health and safety issues with the removal of graffiti following an ORR prosecution of SE and one of their contractors last November (following 3rd rail electrocution of a cleaner)

     Hence it stays on the trains for along time and encourages more in the first place.

165. Southern Heights (Light Railway), ngh

     I have never really understood why they don’t do what they do on the Underground and have a shore power supply for stabling in the depot so they can switch off the 3rd rail before anyone gets near the train (other than to plug in the shore supply). Nowadays you can interlock the power supply so that the driver cannot drive off with the shore supply still connected.

166. @ngh Yes, Slade Green does look like a pinch point. In fact from Belvedere onwards (especially around the A2016) it seems (only from maps) like it could be quite tight/expensive.
     Is there a preferred scheme to tackle this – presumably someone somewhere has got out a rotring pen and sketched in an extra pair of tracks?
     What of Dartford station in particular – ISTR there were comments made in one of the RUS documents that it was cramped, curved, and something like 2 platforms less than ideal, not to mention only three lines from the west. Presumably any Crossrail reconstruction would have a big project here? 6-8 platforms?

167. Ben
     Certainly 6 longer platforms – it appears that, fortunately, expansion-space is available on the north side ….

168. Re PoP,

     Yes it does happen but only happens in parts of newer depots /post big refurbishments along with new stock (often with mini battery shunters (resembling a small bogie with a flashing light on top…)). Most recent uses have been for having dead areas in depots where OHLE stock is being serviced and access above the cant rail is required.

     Re Ben,

     The biggest capacity pinch point is the 3 track section* west of the station with other major but more easily solvable issues of current service patterns and current station track layout. For example running more trains further east instead of terminating would help with station capacity but would require more rolling stock and (preferably centre) turn back arrangement further east.

     It is worth remembering that Thameslink 2000 was designed using 4 Stabilo highlighters, rotring pens are dangerous tools.

     *4 Tracking west of Dartford was all that was envisaged as being required to run all services including Crossrail if services patterns were rejigged.

169. I was under the impression that Crossrail would call at all stations to Gravesend/Ebbsfleet?

170. @Greg: That space on the North side of Dartford station is largely space that no longer exists now the developers have turned up… Extension is possible Westwards, the sidings on the Eastern side are in a cutting.

     Ngh’s comment that trains should continue eastward is likely to be the best option.

171. A further platform on the south side of Dartford station might be plausible if necessary, tucked under the existing footbridge with the road arrangements remodelled as required to make space. With a 4 track approach from the west, through trains in both directions could be concentrated on the north island #3/#4 with terminators normally using on #1/#2, and the new #0 if required. The 3 lowest numbered platforms would have direct access to the sidings at the east to the east without conflict with the through movements.

172. @Mark Townend – can’t quite tell from your post, but are you suggesting that SE trains heading west from east would cross the path of incoming terminators to the west of the station? Or would there be a westbound running line to the south of the sidings connecting into plt 0/1 for these to avoid flat junctions to the east?
     Is there any suggestion a flyover to the east could pair lines by direction rather than use, or would this be overkill for an service levels and reliability proposed?

173. @BEN – There are numerous possible options for detailed layouts at Dartford, and which is optimum will depend very much on what final service patterns turn out to be following Elizabeth line extension, if that ever happens. I was really just trying to point out that as part of any of those options there might be space for an additional platform on the south side if that was deemed necessary.

174. Re Gillingham Stan,

     Indeed but all current SE stations may not have CR platforms between Abbey Wood and Dartford hence the plan was to call at all crossrail stations not all stations.

     Re Mark, SH(LR) & Greg,

     The safeguarding directions indicate they seemed to be happy with 4 platforms but aim to widen several bridges (both east and west of the station*) which would also help improve line speeds into the platforms.
     *Hythe Street, Overy Road and St Vincents Avenue which would enable the sidings to the east to be reconfigured so auto centre turn back sidings might be a sensible option (like Westbourne Park) to reduce time in platforms.

     Given preferred route of the Lower Thames Crossing and associated new roads is now known an East Gravesend Parkway station half way between Gravesend and Hoo Jn might make sense as an addition.

175. Why not run Crossrail on dedicated line from Abbey Wood adjacent North Kent line to just beyond Belvedere, enter a tunnel under the River Thames surfacing alongside HS1, options of Purfleet, Thurrock for Lakeside Shopping, continue on HS1 to Ebbsfleet then Gravesend? Solves the congestion issue at Dartford. With HS1 now heading for ETCS, Crossrail trains wouldn’t require TVM450 to use HS1.

176. @Charles – and what do you think that mixing 186 mph services with frequent 40 mph services would do for line capacity?

177. Re Charles,

     What makes you think there is spare capacity on HS1 under the Thames?

     I think you mean TVM430…

     Standard ETCS on the 345s (or anything else in the UK) isn’t actually compatible with HS1 signalling as you need some additional on train electronics to make the ETCS interface with KVB/TVM430. More detail can be found in HS1 annual reports to ORR or ETCS technical documentation – I’d suggest SNCB documents as more likely to be in english than SNCF…

178. Seems like from Charles we have the classic crayonista problem-solving approach so beloved of BML2 and others.

     There is a problem getting trains through X. So let’s plan an alternative route to avoid this. Give ourselves pat on back for imaginative solution. Only flaw is that, although providing additional services through X is a problem, X is also a major traffic location that you want to serve.

     So, for:

     BML2, X is East Croydon.
     Crossrail 2, X is Tooting Broadway
     South Coast to London via Arundel, X is Gatwick Airport
     Thameslink, X is London Bridge

179. @PoP 🙂 Nearly a solution in search of problem

180. I agree with Pedantic that this “X-avoiding” phenomenon is widespread. There are some historic instances too. (E.g. extending from Ramsgate Harbour station was problematic, so they went another way and made all the tourists walk a mile from the new station).

181. PoP
     I might quibble about Tooting Broadway – does it really need serving by CR2?
     Ditto Arundel via Gatwick, for that matter – if you send the Arundels via Sutton again that creates spare capacity through E Croydon – 3 Bridges. Do you then run into terminal-capacity problems at Victoria, though?

182. Greg Tingey,

     Whether or not you agree that Tooting Broadway really needs to be served is irrelevant to this argument. The alternative suggested was not a direct route (which does have some benefits) but going via Balham instead. For various reasons (some transport related and others involving local politics) Balham is much less desirable than Tooting Broadway. The best solution in my not so humble opinion is to face up to the geological challenge and put it where it was originally decided was most suitable.

     Gatwick has a large workforce and many come from south west of the airport. It is where people want to, or need to, go. It is also a fundamental part of West Sussex’s county strategy which wants to see more employment at, or in the vicinity of, the airport. There is not much point in by-passing Gatwick to ‘solve’ a problem. And there are other ways of addressing that problem. East Croydon northwards it is more about capacity and less about where the trains came from. The Brighton Main Line is effectively four track (or better) all the way to south of Three Bridges. There are also plans to further improve Gatwick Airport station with yet another platform.

183. @PoP
     Given the proposals to bypass Croydon, London Bridge and Gatwick are/were not official plans, it seems odd to reject the unofficial direct-via-Earlsfield proposals as irrelevant to the discussion and only allow comparisons with the via Balham official alternative. But you need to do that to maintain a fiction where CR2 not-via-Tooting fits with the other examples.

     With the other examples, serving the interchange is unversally seen as a good thing, with bypassing it seen as a cost that some people view bypassing it as being worth the benefit of more trains to Sussex. eg BML2 understand that not serving Croydon is a problem, hence their plan to have a big South Croydon interchange station to try and mitigate that.

     CR2 going via the Northern Line is not universally seen as a good thing with many seeing its omission as a benefit additional to those benefits of taking a direct route. This is highly relevant to this discussion because not serving Tooting is not like the other stuff you propose

     Also, the type of problem is different – the others are all bottlenecks on the existing network (London Bridge fixed now), but Tooting is a geology issue, rather than a track capacity issue.

184. @MALCOLM 7 August 2018 at 11:24
     “…extending from Ramsgate Harbour station was problematic, so they went another way and made all the tourists walk a mile from the new station.”

     Seeing as there’s no longer any regular continental passenger or freight ferry services at Ramsgate, perhaps the A299 Ramsgate (or ‘Pegwell’) tunnel (built specially to get road freight to the port) might be converted into a railway and used with the old LCDR tunnel to create a new through rail route via a recreated harbour passenger station! There is some occasional freight in the port, including some car import/export business recently, that might use rail for UK distribution. Can’t see such a scheme having much benefit overall though, especially as the existing station track layout and signalling was completely renewed recently. Perhaps reconsider at next major renewal in half a century or so. I’ll get my coat and take my crayons with me!

185. @Mark Townend – mind you, there was an attempt to revive the international link in the late ’80s’. An entrepreneur. Michael Kingshott, got as far as some additional harbour works and persuaded Chris Green to lay on a demonstration non-stop train, London-Ramsgate in 70 minutes (we achieved it in 63 as I recall), where we ate the lunch, saw the presentation, and returned at a more sedate pace. Kingshott either failed to raise the necessary finance or found something better to do; he was dependent on a subsidy for the ship operation from the Belgian state-owned ferry operator. I had some illuminating exchanges with the Treasury on this – the Treasury objected to the subsidy on the grounds that the BNSM was state-owned undertaking and although that state was Belgium, not the UK, their subsidy would score against the UK public expenditure total “because the UK and Belgium were both in the EU and therefore the Belgian subsidy would work its way through to the UK PE total”. A wholly specious argument of course which the Treasury has chosen to ignore during the rail franchising process…

186. @GH – I remember reading about that in the railway press at the time, then it all went very quiet until the road scheme emerged. The tunnel portion of the road looks like it might have been planned to be rail compatible, climbing gently only about 4m in over 800m, with curve radius around 300m. The ramp cutting becomes steeper once in the open again at the west portal, so the impression is as if someone designed a rail tunnel then adapted the approach alignment to connect with the road network instead. With an independent rail approach, the tunnel might feasibly be a time segregated shared use alignment, like a long level crossing.

187. The Ramsgate road tunnel was justified on the (entirely specious) theory that better road connections would make the Port of Ramsgate more attractive for shipping companies. The fact that it is considerably further from Calais/Dunkirk and with no great advantage from Ostend would always count against it even if port charges were dramatically lower than Dover. Given the very limited service likely to operate, charges per boat would really struggle to match Dover. Only the subsidy from Thanet Council made it work at all.

188. quinlet: I agree. Just to quibble slightly, the new road tunnel does actually make the port more attractive than it was previously for shipping companies. What it completely fails to do is to make it more attractive than Dover. Which would, as you suggest, be a pretty tall order, given geography.

189. @Quinlet – Although Michael Kingshott was fairly silent on the cost of the works needed to adapt Port Ramsgate to modern ferry traffic, they seemed fairly extensive and therefore pricey, As far as I know, his contribution was to acquire a large quantity of stone for additional breakwaters, which was subsequently dumped at sea when the scheme was abandoned.

190. Along with extending the Bakerloo line to Lewisham, amongst the 67 projects in a new infrastructure framework backed by all 33 London’s boroughs is extending the Elizabeth line beyond Abbey Wood into Kent. source: https://www.theplanner.co.uk/2023/06/06/bakerloo-line-backed-london-councils

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