• More possible options for a Euston-Canary Wharf express tube (CityMetric)
• French rural railways await possible M. Beeching (RailwayTechnology)
• Bus stations don’t have to be second rate (TreeHugger)
• Two abandoned Milan rail yards to become parks (Revitalization)
• Catchment if you can – 2nd station entrances improve ridership (Conversation)
• NYC’s Miss Subways Pageant (CityLab)
• San Diego’s elevated LRT line work at half way point (ENR)
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Both propsed alignments between Euston and CW appear to cross areas which are fairly comprehensively tunnelled already.
A few questions arise, in no particular order:
How deep?
Where will trains be stabled and maintained?
Any connection with existing lines?
Power supply from?
How big are new tube tunnels these days?
How long will interchange distances and times be?
Where would it be dug from?
Finally, won’t the line colour on the Tube map have to stray beyond the visible spectrum?
Might as well change HS2 to be a tunnel from Old Oak Common, via Euston, The City, and then Canary Wharf.
Instead of the stupid Euston Terminal.
[I am well aware this is probably also a really stupid idea.]
As the Canary Wharf Crossrail station and branch will only be running with half the frequency of trains as the core, could this diverge before the existing convergence with the Stratford side? Crossrail 2 has already done the early feasibility work for Angel and Euston. Leaves the possibility of doing one of the northern branches too. Too many junctions?
Does anyone – anyone? – have the faintest idea what the traffic on this route would be? Or what it would cost to build?
It takes 25 minutes (average) to travel from Euston to the Wharf at the moment. Yes, it’s horribly crowded at rush hour but once Crossrail eventually opens you have to presume it’ll be a lot more bearable.
I’m with GrahamH in struggling to see any likely cost benefit on this idea.
Even if CWG paid for the whole thing it wouldn’t be built…. Not unless it fits into a longer route that would be used outside of the rush hour….
“New Civil Engineer also understands that should Crossrail 2 not be built, the new line would ease pressure at Euston with the arrival of the High Speed 2 services in 2026. It would also provide additional capacity at Canary Wharf with the arrival of Crossrail and the development of Wood Wharf, a new district to the east of Canary Wharf. When complete in 2023, the new district would provide over 3,300 new homes, nearly 2M.ft2 of office space, and a further 490,000 ft2 of shops, restaurants and community uses.”
Surely Taz’s NCE extract is the telling point.
This is a transport scheme proposed into the Government’s market-led rail schemes, and believed to be in the short-list, by a group with past form for leveraging better links to underpin major new London and international scale property development.
A commercially-led BCR would factor in property value and rental gains, new development yields, and agglomeration effects across the whole Canary Wharf estate, not just a narrow transport benefit/cost assessment.
Remember the Waterloo & Greenwich Railway transitioning into the JLE via an East London Rail Study? Re-read the LR article on this point (for example: https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/diving-fleet-part-5-canary-wharf-years/)
So now we see a ‘EuDrain’ train proposed – where the possible routeings are interesting but not a fundamental constraint – to enable further growth in the northern half of the Isle of Dogs. I would guess around £4-5 bn for a twin-track scheme with 2 to 3 multi-entrance stations (and a mini-depot etc). Any intermediate station might be marginal or beneficial, depending on the route and location chosen, and the local property scope and transport benefits there.
My instinct is that be effective, any ‘EuDrain’ would need to tap the St Pancras and Kings’ Cross commuter corridors as well. (Crossrail does for Liverpool Street/Moorgate.)
We probably shouldn’t under-estimate the abilities of Canary Wharf Group to aim and define how to leverage funding, even without the Thatcher-Reichmann tie-in — or possibly work on leveraging a scheme transition into something rather different. Even though they were undermined last time by the market shortfalls which occurred.
Recall the 2016-17 Bakerloo branch scheme from east of Elephant to Canary (South Dock) then to Greenwich and Charlton Villages? Might we find that aspiration re-attached to a ‘EuDrain’? Or might it becoming a starting point for Crossrail 3 planning?
And – a difficult question – how much might a ‘EuDrain’ undermine the argument for Crossrail 2 to be the next priority major cross-central London rail project? Are the projects complementary or ultimately competitive for attention, managerial resources, public funding allocations, and for underground space and interchange connections in the ‘Euston Cross’ area?
If you want it to find a use for it off-peak, balance the flows, and provide a major benefit to rail users in the SE: extend it by 50% to Lewisham and pick up the Hayes branch (and other trains using those unsafe, curved platforms).
Getting under the Ravensbourne might be a bit tricky, but I reckon it’s do-able.
It becomes CR3 and, given capacity constraints at Charing Cross and Cannon St, probably has a better BCR than CR2.
@JR – The proposal certainly struck me as another potential vehicle for achieving much improved covered pedestrian links between Euston and St Pancras/KingsCross. If the platform tunnels replaced or paralleled the CR2 facilities, they might at least share access arrangements at both ends. The route might also be extended to the west, perhaps with a tight curve under Euston to join the DC lines, to free up further terminal capacity and provide direct connections to the Willesden/Old Oak Common area (I doubt passengers will be encouraged to use Oyster on HS2 expresses for this local transfer!). From thereabouts the line could become an alternative destination for Heathrow Express, and any other residual Thames Valley fully electric outer suburbans using 387s to release Paddington platform capacity for long distance GW or Chilterns growth. Lots of crayon there, sorry!
@JR -you are right to mention cautionary words about the scheme’s appraisal being different to a conventional transport project. The flipside of that is that the scheme is effectively a cherry-picked slice of what should be fitted into a wider picture, which may or may not be financeable if the “best” bit is already taken. London is littered with such orphans, of which the Drain is one. The scheme should be considered as a spoiler, unless it provides a range of links and connexions (eg with TLK); this is especially important in relation to its income – would it be freestanding, or would it be what is frankly a parasite on the existing Travelcard pool?
I am amused to see the continuing power of the small (and in transport terms, insignificant) settlement of Hayes as the perpetual go- to destination of choice for anything running vaguely SE. Come on crayonistas, you can do better than that!
@Graham H
All crayonistas live in Hayes; didn’t you know that?
I don’t really see a sufficient business case for solely Euston Cross to the Wharf, however… adding a midway stop at Shoreditch High Street (to grab the ELL traffic) and extending (albeit a distance) into London City Airport and the case could be made for the fast HS2 LCY bringing all day traffic.
Maybe?
(Though having seen so many “great ideas ™ ” in the past I’m more inclined to just throw this one on the junk pile without further delay.)
@GrahamH 16:45
Do you have a better solution for sorting out Lewisham than putting Hayes, Orpington slows and Dartford Loops into a tunnel?
@The Orange One – 🙂 I had long suspected that!
@Alison W – again, who knows what traffic there would be*, what the cost would be (I suspect the idea you mention would increase JR’s estimate to substantially more than £10bn) and the extent to which it would cannibalise the revenue on the existing system. It is absolutely essential to realise that the business case for the present network and any additions to it rests on a combo of user benefits and farebox revenues; a commercial addition to the network, such as this, will almost certainly generate little if any new traffic but will remove a chunk of the benefits from the existing system and whilst it may generate more revenue if it isn’t in the Travelcard scheme, if it is, it won’t and will therefore add to the system cost base without adding any extra revenue. This is why it is so difficult to justify new lines.
@All – Surely, if you want to build CR3, shouldn’t we plan the job properly, not spatchcock into something that may be wholly irrelevant? This is the sin of CR2 repeated.
@Roger B – my point is that whatever is done at Lewisham is better done by addressing the problem directly, not by grasping at passing nearby straws.
@GRAHAM H
This method would deal with Euston to CW not being another ophan.
As I think I said before, If you want to link HS2 from Euston to just Canary Wharf then do it using HS trains. This makes sense, as passengers would be able to start/end at Canary Wharf.
It’s as easy to dig a tunnel for HS trains as it is for a DLR or any other train. If no intermediate stations are needed, then extending the HS train service coming from Birmingham/Old Oak Common and Euston in a tunnel would make the most sense to a long-distance traveller.
It is my belief that there would be room above the existing DLR station and sidings at Poplar DLR to put a two-platform HS train terminus station.
This might work from a TfL view too: the service wouldn’t need to integrate as a TfL service, just be an extra national rail station.
Quite how many of the HS2 services would extend from Euston to CW is a good question. Perhaps just 4 trains per hour?
Also, passengers will be able to use Crossrail to get to Old Oak Common from CW for HS2: but you will soon have three choices (Liz, Jubilee and Central) from Stratford to Bond Street.
@ALISONW – A Shoreditch High Street stop could also be a catalyst for an out of station link to Liverpool Street with a new northern entrance for the mainline platforms, and a high quality surface pedestrian link to the new line and ELL.
@GH – It should be properly planned and integrated by TfW and DfT clearly, but that doesn’t seem to fit well with the current desire for these arms length market-led developments. I suspect some of Government market ultras have feverish dreams of a modern railway mania with scores of competing standalone companies building uncoordinated lines hither and thither across a blank canvas. Good luck with that in a major modern metropolitan area, and it all ended well in the 1840s didn’t it!
“It’s as easy to dig a tunnel for HS trains as it is for a DLR or any other train. ”
HS2 is to be built to continental loading gauge, which is rather wider than the DLR, and the trains (and therefore station tunnels) are to be 400 metres long (DLR 87 metres)
Second entrances improve ridership
They also reduce congestion at the barriers, and can separate incoming and outgoing flows if the catchments are very different either side of the tracks (e.g residential one side (catching a train in the morning) and commercial/academic on the other (arriving by train to go to work). A pity SWR (and SWT before them) have their heads in the sand over this, and resolutely keep one of the two entrances at my local station closed.
Double-ending a station can also improve catchment and reduce crowding in the carriages and on the platforms at one end of the train. An opportunity missed with the recent platform extensions at Waterloo (the country ends of the platforms are close to Westminster Bridge, which would be handy for both the DfT and Parliament!), and even more desperately needed at Wimbledon where the existing footbridge is grossly overcrowded.
The article on French Rural lines is close to my heart our local line where we have our French getaway Limoges -Angouleme has been closed for over a year. Rotten sleepers leading to gauge spread. Cost to repair is 150m euro It seems everyone is waiting on the new Nouvelle Aquitaine region to fund repairs. SNCF TER have done the most British of things and substituted with buses so the M.Beeching analogy is closer than perhaps the author realises
@Timbeau – It’d be a bit like trying to land an A380 at LCY!
I fully support the current two London station proposals (Euston and OOC) for HS2., Euston is the major turnround with the long layovers and servicing facilities as well as being a short taxi, bus or walk to the West End and City, while OOC provides the expanded range of easy connections, particularly for the wider Thames Valley and Heathrow Airport market, as well as a West London parkway role. Running the trains, probably much less than a third full, on an extended tour of east London’s Docklands makes no sense at all in my mind. CW is a big employment and at the centre of a large residential district but doesn’t represent much of a major regional interchange. Having only a small proportion of services extended could introduce a lot of interchange between trains at either OOC or Euston and wouldn’t provide much frequency for attracting other riders for the line, interchanging from Kings Cross and St Pancras main line services for instance.
@Brian Butterworth/Mark Townend – It is important to look at the numbers. HS2 is supposed to bring 18 tph max to Euston. On a typical max IC load factor of 70% (and that’s very good if it can be achieved!) that’s going to be 12-13000 pax/hr. Those will be far from being completely new passengers – perhaps half if you are lucky. Down to 6500. Many will want to go to the West End or the City (and elsewhere) which are forecast to continue to be very much more attractive than the Wharf in terms of size. Charitably, let’s say 2000 pax/hr to each of WE and City and 500 elsewhere. That seems to suggest that you’ll be lucky to get 2000 pax/hr going to the Wharf (plus a share of existing punters – say 4000 pax’hr in total.) Say 8tph fairly lightly loaded – and mainly in one direction.
Now think about construction costs. Mt suggests £8bn. This is a private sector enterprise so the promoters are going to face a full 15% pa rate of return plus depreciation (the bankers I advise are hard faced whatsits…) – 20-25% pa (!) . £ 2bn pa? Opex? Perhaps 1m tkm/pa extra, plus mtce plus stations – £500m? All this to be remunerated by perhaps 30-40m pax/pa. If the punters are to pay for it all, then they would be paying £50+ for the privilege. Alternatively, that’s a hell of a lot of added development value to be creamed off. If the CW promoters ever float, let me know and I’ll take out a put option…
PS for the more fanciful crayonista schemes, double the costs and increase the useage by ? 10% – better to set fire to the banknotes now.
M. Colin Shearring
I am happy you caught my Monsieur Beeching reference. I in turn am most happy to have read your intra-lingual wordplay << the new Nouvelle Aquitaine region >>. Were either of the Aquitaine regions (nouvelle or otherwise) near the German or Swiss borders, one could add a “Neu” adjective as well.
@LBM – alas, Aquitaine, even in its latest extralarge size, is on the other side of France to Germany, although these French regions are becoming ever larger and ever less related to historic/economic/social reality. (There’s a serious issue here about the balance between managerial efficiency and democratic appeal, where the French are just as guilty as the British).
Graham H
CR3 is merely “Route 7” (IIRC) from the 1947-8 plans … aproximately Fincley Rd (GCR) to Lewisham ….
Colin Shearing
France had it’s “Beeching” long since – what’s being maybe proposed is Serpell … but down, largely to SNCF simply not caring about theor customers or providing information ( I think )
I am reminded of the 2013 Crossrail 2 Route Safeguarding Consultation which gave a Metro option proposing a DLR type of service in tunnel with 40 tph of 4 articulated units with a length of 120 metres, carrying up to 38,500 passengers an hour each way. The train type could also be like the Paris Metro line 14. A DLR tunnel diameter of 5.5 metres is less than the Battersea tube extension tunnels of 6 metres adopted for safety reasons, so a Crossrail tunnel cross section of 6.4 metres might be more likely for any new line. Is the land proposed for the original Waterloo – Canary Wharf private shuttle depot still available?
@Greg T – the trouble (one of many, of course) with SNCF is that they have had at least three Beeching rounds already, all to no apparent financial effect. There was the “Coordination” round after SNCF was formed, which did for most of the ng and tortillard network; there was another round in the late 50s and early 60s which removed the remaining branch lines, and there was a further round in the 70s that took out most remaining crosscountry routes. In the last 20 years, we have seen the steady attrition of the less heavily used “InterCity” lines, especially in the Centre, with the infrastructure being run down and extensive “temporary” bus substitution.
And yet, what is left on the classic network is still, after all these cuts, virtually unusable. Take nearly any pair of major cities not on the LGV network and you’ll be lucky to find more than two trains a day (if you can find out any info at all). Even more astonishing, in the Jura, where the Swiss have put money into reopening crossborder lines, SNCF’s response on their side of the border has to be to provide a twice a day service, usually at the unfriendly hours of 0600 and 1400 (ie a long shift), with the crew and unit holing up in between, meanwhile, on the Swiss side…
SNCF really is a basket case and an object lesson in how an obsession with high speed cannibalises the rest of the system financially.
Graham H
I get the impression that it is nothing to do with “high speed” & everything to do with navel-gazing. SNCF simply (appear to be) can’t be bothered to provide a service or information.
If they actually provided a clockface, one-train-an-hour service & ADVERTISED it, people would turn up in droves. But the railway is run for the benefit of the railway men, not the French.
Or so it seems.
@GrahamH
Your possible usage figures are very instructive.
I’ve looked at the figures using the timing curves I have for the several types of rail line to link Euston with Canary Wharf.
Using the existing tube, it takes 23 minutes from Euston to Canary Wharf either via London Bridge (Northern Line) or Green Park (Victoria).
Using the DLR (at 65km/h) from Bank to Euston would make a total travel time to Canary Wharf of 18:56 mins, about 17 % faster than the tube. This would mean new DLR platforms at Euston only.
Using the Direct train (at 112km/h) from Canary Wharf to Euston would make a total travel time to Canary Wharf of 5:36 mins, about 75 % faster. This would mean new platforms at Euston and Canary Wharf as well as depot in the Isle of Dogs.
My suggestion, using the HS2 (at 165km/h) from Canary Wharf to Euston would make a total travel time to Canary Wharf of 4:03 mins, about 82 % faster. The HS2 wouldn’t have time to get up to 300km/h in such a short distance. It would mean a HS sized station in Docklands, but otherwise use the existing HS2 stations, depots and trains.
[The suggestion in this comment has been removed. LBM]
Why stop at Hayes?
If the proposed Euston – Canary Wharf line is extended to Lewisham and thus on to the Hayes branch, this could surely become the London end of the extended BML2…
@Richard – and as we all know, BML2 is a waste of money anyway (at least no one has yet found a rationale for it that stacks up financially or in CBA terms).
Other exciting options include extending to Ashford to enable through running from the Gare du nord, or Hastings so that the inhabitants of Cooden bay can get a direct service to….
Maybe we find a way of connecting it from the Euston end to the Cathcart Circle in Glasgow (which was mentioned in one of last week’s Friday’s Reads and discussed in that thread)
PS: In which Control Period is the Irony Upgrade planned?
@Ronnie B – Irony Upgrade? Have you seen the equipment needed to meet the latest RSSB Irony standards?
We are starting to get a number of crayonista suggestions for the Euston – Canary Wharf link, so the waxings, satirical or not, have been removed to stop the outbreak. As a reminder, Reconnections is not the place for such musings, and there are other boards such as District Dave that have specific threads for this.
Further crayoning will be removed without warning. LBM
@GRAHAM H
Thinking about it from the “banker’s” point of view, I think I can see how to make the figures work a bit better.
Firstly, use the existing Canary Wharf Crossrail station, so there is no need to create any new station infrastructure in the Isle. Canary Wharf already “own” this station so they would just be leveraging value from their assets.
They might be suggesting that they provide a 4tph service (5’30” out and back, 4′ layover) in a single tunnel. A single tunnel would also only require a single platform at Euston (two platforms could provide a 19 minute layover).
The capacity of a 345 train is 450 seated, 1500 total: this would mean 1800 seats/6000 people capacity per hour.
By hiring existing trains, drivers and staff (from MTR Crossrail) this would keep operational costs down.
I note that the Stratford International to St Pancras HS1 trains (when I use them) charge a premium above the TfL zones on Oyster/Contactless and the trains are well used.
I can see a £10 charge working for Wharf-Euston direct in 5:30, the rest coming from – as you suggest – charges on new properties.
@LBM
If L-R policy is for crayonism to be discouraged, why on earth was the City Metrics piece on fantasy tube maps and the Euston – CW link posted in the first place?
Methinks you protest too much.
To further calm the excitement Jonathan Roberts letter was prompted by the short listed schemes arising from the Hansford Review, which said more should be done to open up the railway and provide a route for private investors to fund or finance rail projects.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/691714/rail-market-led-proposals-guidance.pdf
The Heathrow Access options are being assessed separately. Western PF and three Southern variants, why does a council funded proposal qualify as ‘private’ funding?
Rail minister Andrew Jones disclosed to Transport Committee chair Lilian Greenwood that the department is engaged with backers of 10 short-listed proposals submitted as part of the market led proposal (MLP) competition. There were 30 ideas submitted with transport secretary Chris Grayling saying “there are some good ones and some not so good ones rejected out of hand. There are some very interesting ideas there that we want to follow through with and take forwards.”
One of those was from Canary Wharf as a credible sponsor especially if supported by the Kings Cross Lands. The submissions had been made in confidence and “disclosure at this stage may prejudice the commercial interests of the proposers”.
For sure London could not be the only approved scheme nor does there appear to be a limit to the number of approvals. Interestingly they are rail ‘industry’ projects so not necessarily running lines, although two are believed to be up north.
Surely funding for Heathrow schemes would be contingent upon and timed with a third runway so not imminent.
The Heathrow rail schemes (to the West and South) appear to be desirable even without a third runway, so while they might plausibly be specified as a condition of building a third runway, I would expect them regardless, without waiting for development of the third runway.
I can’t see any of the market led schemes going anywhere without large wadges of government cash. And it will only happen if some off balance sheet accounting trick is done so they can pretend it is not really government debt (though it will be). If they can get 10 to 20 % private money they will be lucky, but I can see other extra local taxes maybe coming into it.
If a Euston Canary link is built a whole range of options could happen. I’m not sure anyone will be keen to build crossrail super size stations so maybe a 120m length stations linked by fully segregated DLR like line my be a cheaper alternative. Smaller stations …[SNIP – sorry, but we did request no further crayoning exercises to be displayed here. This is rough justice, and perhaps partly our fault for menioning a bit of canary yellow crayoning ourselves, but it has to stop somewhere. Malcolm]