A Modest Proposal To Improve Crossrail

By · April 16, 2012 at 11:58 am · 69 Comments · Miscellaneous · Report an error ·

We recently became aware of the Daily Mail Science Correspondent’s concern that Crossrail, the £14 billion rail project, was on the wrong track. Having reviewed Michael Hanlon’s observations we were moved to action.

But first, to review Mr Hanlon’s important observations: the elephant in the room, he suggests, is connectivity — it’s startling to see that no one has thought about this, not one person, even as the diggers hit the ground!

Firstly, Crossrail doesn’t go to Heathrow Terminal 5! The new, flagship terminal! How on Earth will people get from Terminal 5 to London!

Secondly, Crossrail doesn’t go from Heathrow to Reading! An oversight surely? How else to get to Berkshire’s county town?! Heathrow’s on a spur, you see, so you need a westerly line…

Thirdly, this line doesn’t go to St Pancras! Unfathomable! If you just flew in from Paris, and want to get a train to Brussels, you’d have to change trains! How they think people will do this we just don’t know. Hanlon notes, “No one but the clinically insane would plan to spend £16bn tunnelling across north London and not provide a link to Britain’s only international high-speed rail link, right?” For some reason it goes along ‘Oxford Street’ stopping at rural halts like ‘Bond Street’ and ‘Tottenham Court Road’ rather than serving the core of the city, at St Pancras.

Fourthly, Crossrail does not link up with Euston either! The future home of High Speed 2 — why choose to go through the middle of the city when you could go to then-unplanned railway stations on the northern edge?!

Hanlon hit’s the head on the nail when he spots that “Crossrail does not really do anything that the Central Line plus the Heathrow Express does not.” We all know the Central line is pretty underused, the slackers only run the trains every 120 seconds or so, and they really do crawl along. The scheme as-it-is will be an unused failure if something is not done…

We therefore propose a few modest changes to the existing plan (see Figure 1, below) to build a Crossrail that we can be proud of:

First, we add Heathrow Terminal 5 via a new tunnel, with onward connections to the South West and France via ferry (Mon-Fri, supplements apply). Moving east, the line stops at the HS2 station at Old Oak Common before continuing to Bond Street, where it diverts south to Green Park (for Buckingham Palace is also omitted, in the Jubilee year no less!) and to South Ken (Tourists, the museums, you see) and then to Chelsea (no tube station there at all! Can’t leave that out!) While we’re south we circle by Battersea Power Station (where new links are needed to assist the redevelopment) before relieving the overcrowded Northern Line with an interchange at Kennington.

Waterloo is very strained, and a key station for reaching Surrey, so is our next stop. Then, on to Victoria to take the strain off the Victoria Line. We then head back to Green Park (Duh! It’s the DIAMOND JUBILEE!) before stopping by Oxford Circus (the constrained site will require some demolition).

Then north to Euston, for that important HS2 link, with another stop 150 meters later for St Pancras (HS1 for Paris). A hard right then takes us south to the British Museum (it used to have a station of its own, and deserves one now), before getting back on track to Tottenham Court Road. Covent Garden is a tourist must-see and the lifts are a pain, so that gets a stop, before we recognize the importance of our legal sector with a new station at Lincoln’s Inn.

Then on to Bank — heart of The City — and north west to Farringdon for interchange to Thameslink (could be omitted, who goes to Faringdon? No one we know). A bold new station, Northcliffe International, is then built on the former site of Highbury Fields. This is to provide connections with as yet unimagined railway lines, airports, hovercraft services and Virgin Galactic operations.

Then to Hackney, so long without a Tube station — justice for the North East at last — before we split: one branch heading to Stratford (and Stratford International — it’s a long walk), and then Shenfield as planned. Our south-eastern branch calls at Canary Wharf, Custom House and Woolwich, before joining HS1 to serve a range of European capitals (trolley service will check passports) as well as popular skiing destinations (in season).

This small additional investment now will be welcomed by all Londoners in years to come. Some journey times will be a touch longer, but without changing trains there really isn’t a better way of doing it…

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  • Tim Boddy

    Brilliant :D

  • http://twitter.com/zefrog Nicolas Chinardet

    I think the bit between Whitechapel and Canary Wharf should be extended to take in Camberwell, Lewisham and Greenwich…  no tube service in those parts and it’s only a small detour

  • Stephen C

    Now that would be a strange route! That said, the Southerly half of London really could benefit from some improvements, one option is Waterloo to Stratford – http://ukrail.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/swanlink-crossrail-for-sw-london.html

    • http://twitter.com/zefrog Nicolas Chinardet

      That would solve the problem of the extension of the Bakerloo Line in one easy stroke

  • http://twitter.com/zefrog Nicolas Chinardet

    There should also definitely be a stop in Derry Street, near High St Ken…. Just to smooth Mr Hanlon’s commute to work in the morning. It’s the least we can do to thank him for pointing out all the glaring oversights in the project.

  • http://twitter.com/johnnyfoxlondon JohnnyFox

    Thanks for the laugh James.  Apart from the fact you made it go through my house, of course :-)

  • Failwatch

    Daily Fail at it again I see. Brilliant reposte though I suspect your wit and intellect would be lost on the Fail’s journalist!

  • Obrien Daisy

    This is great!! 

  • Michael Jennings

    “Crossrail does not really do anything that the Central Line plus the Heathrow Express does not. Ah yes, the classic “I do not commute by train or tube at rush hour, and I therefore fail to understand that relieving congestion at rush hour in the key and sometimes only driving factor for upgrading infrastructure and building new lines” fallacy . That is a very familiar one. 

    He might have added “plus the Jubilee Line” in there too, given that getting people from Central London and elsewhere to Canary Wharf is the other key role, and there are fairly hideous rush hour congestion problems there, too.

  • http://twitter.com/kyleharry Kyle Johnson

    Isn’t Crossrail going to stop at Stratford (or International) anyway? So if one really wants to land at Heathrow and get on a Eurostar they can change there?

    • Michael Hanlon

      In theory, yes. But Eurostar says it has no plans to let people get on its trains at Stratford. No idea why. ‘Security’ I imagine, plus border-control malarkey. 

      • http://www.facebook.com/harris.jj Jeremy Harris

        As far as I’ve been able to divine, it’s basically:

        • The cost of the requisite border security
        • The extended journey times caused by the stop
        • The cost of staffing the station for international trains

        Oh, and the fact that they’re already managing to fill the trains, and don’t have any more paths through the tunnel as things stand.

        Still, the French got it more wrong when they built a station in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. At least Stratford International makes some sense for HS1 domestic services.

  • http://twitter.com/els76uk elliot herman

    This is great. But couldn’t it go in a slightly different shape in order to draw a picture of a kitten or something, in order to make it appealing to ladies? :)

    • Anonymous

       The shape thing was considered, but it started going to dark places…

  • Daniel Tonks

    Just as I expected,  my comment was not approved. I explained in detail why the Crossrail route is as it is. Unfortunately that contradicts the article.

    • Anonymous

      Feel free to repeat it here, Daniel (if you kept a copy). It might be useful to those less familiar with the project.

      • Daniel Tonks

        Didn’t keep a copy, but essentially I detailed how it is intended to create a direct link between the affluent Thames Valley Suburbs to the City and Wharf without overcrowding Paddington and dealing with the necessary tube changes from there, as well as removing the busy Shenfield Metro services from a crowded Liverpool Street. One of the other main aims is to relieve the Central Line as the only way to get more capacity out of that would be to do the unthinkable, close it and re-bore it.

  • Julie Shrive

    What about the issue of vibration caused by heavy loads through the night which could be causing structural damage [ GOBLIN- North London line ].
     Why is there a rule for lorries on roads & not trains & why is Dept Transport actively supporting  this whilst  the Government is showing Neighbourhood groups  such as Walthamstow support ? Then there is the Glenda Jackson Primrose Hill issue ??!!

  • Michael Hanlon

    Well, as the author of the Daily Mail piece I feel I ought to respond.
    You have drawn a silly map of a railway line that links every tourist site in London. And this proves … what exactly? I never said Crossrail had to go to Covent Garden or Buckingham Palace. Why would I? I simply said it was daft that a big, expensive new east-west line under London does not have a single direct interchange with ANY of the other new railway routes. And furthermore that NONE of these new lines connect in any way whatsoever. This is because these routes were all decided by different groups of people often decades ago, in isolation. It is of course possible that the system will be patched up in the future, but this will take (even more) decades. Crossrail is a farce. 

    • Daniel Tonks

      Thankyou for replying on here Michael, though let me discuss it with you. Crossrail is not intended to do what your article suggests. It WILL however have a link with HS2 at Old Oak and a connection to the London Termini post-Crossrail 2. It’s purpose is to relieve the traffic between the West end, City and Canary Wharf, as well as provide direct links to these sites for the Western Suburbs (which currently have to negotiate Paddington and the Sub Surface Liens) and the Essex Suburbs. Crossrail is simply the first phase of a number of new high capacity routes across London. I can undertand your concern that it does not serve Terminal 5, though there is an easy connection between it and the Central Terminals, as well as a link to the often forgotten, Terminal 4.

      • Daniel Tonks

        I would also like to apologise if my comments offended. Your article just seemed to miss the point of Crossrail, in a similar vain to those who think HS2 is about getting to London from Birmingham a little faster when it is in fact – and always has been – about capacity (the speed is a bonus).

      • Michael Hanlon

        Daniel. You are wrong. Everyone keeps banging on about Old Oak but the fact is that NO DECISION has been made regarding an interchange here. When Crossrail opens there will be no station at OOC… one may be built in the 2030s or thenabouts but until then … As to new terminus links ‘post Crossrail 2′ – I will be an old man, or dead, before that happens. 
        It has been pointed out to me that you can get an ‘easy connection’ between Farringdon and St Pancras and indeed between T5 and the Heathrow hub. 
        OK, try it in rush hour with a load of bags and jetlag plus a couple of kids and zero knowledge of London. People do not want to get off a plane, get on a train, get off a train, get on another train, then walk through a station, wonder what the hell an ‘Oyster Card’ is and where you can get one, get another train, get off a train, walk across another station from the domestic part to the international part, then get on another train to Paris or wherever. They want to get off a plane, then onto a train to Paris ideally or, failing that, get off a plane, get a fast train to a big railway station and then get their train to Paris.
        As current plans stand, Crossrail, HS1 and HS2 all stand in isolation and this is insane. They had an opportunity to design a new, fully-integrated high-speed network linking Heathrow, the north of Britain, London and the Continent and they blew it. 

        • Tom Grayman

          Ah yes, all those people that fly to Heathrow – because it’s the nearest station to Paris isn’t it!

          • Tom Grayman

            *Airport rather!

          • Michael Hanlon

            Silly comment. People fly to Heathrow from places that do not have direct connections to Paris. We want to reduce air travel and increase train travel, right? So why make it hard for people to get a train connection to their final destination?

        • Daniel Tonks

          Old Oak common hasn’t been confirmed because the route of HS2 out of London is still a matter of controversy and is still being discussed. The chances of it not happening are slim if that.

          Regarding the Heathrow Interchange, how is this any different to getting the train to Gatwick (South Terminal) and transfering to the People Mover to the North Terminal? Trains between Heathrow Stations are free to use, fares only apply if you leave the complex. Though again, this is not the primary purpose of Crossrail, it’s a commuter service. You are also forgetting the Heathrow Spur that is planned for HS2.

          • Michael Hanlon

            Well, we will wait and see what happens with HS2. My bet is it will be delayed by at least five years. Probably ten. The economic case is iffy to say the least. People will not be able to get direct trains from LHR to a station with links to Birmingham and beyond until the 2030s at best. 
            Heathrow: the interchange is indeed free, but it is far more of a faff than the inter-terminal dedicated train at LGW.
            What was needed:
            1) A line from LHR to somewhere – anywhere –  in London other than Paddington, a station in a part of the city where hardly anyone lives.
            2) A line between LHR and Reading and even – why not, let’s live a little –  LGW. 
            3) A direct connection between LHR and HS1 at the very least. There is not even going to be a proper interchange at Stratford for crying out loud (Crossrail stops there but sadly the Eurostars do not. D’oh!) 
            I cannot think of another European country which has not linked its primary airport with its high-speed rail network directly. 

            Sorry, the more I think about all this the more cross it makes me. It really is monumentally, crazily, even heroically stupid. Funny even, if it wasn’t costing us so much money.  

          • Daniel Tonks

            The only delays that HS will now suffer are down the NIMBY’s.It has cross party support afterall and should have been built decades ago.

            Crossrail WILL provide a line to other parts of London to LHR, as will Heathrow Airtrack if the Nimby parade stop complaining (a bridge over the tracks at the more problematic of the level crossing sites would have helped, worth the extra investment in my opinion). The reason we have not yet linked our primary airport is because we are still in the early days. We only have one line at the moment, the second line WILL serve two Airports (BHX and MAN) and later LHR.

            Reading will gain a direct rail connection to LHR with Airtrack, again if people stop moaning and let them get on with it, and let us not forget that there is a – as of yet undeveloped – proposal out there for linking Heathrow and Gatwick directly.

            If you want this to happen all at once, you should expect a massive increase in the Transport Budget, something I do support.

          • Michael Jennings

            How expensive would it be to build bridges at the key level crossings on the Airtrack line and solve that problem? Or is it a NIMBY problem that prevents this? Anyone know?

          • Stephen C

            I wrote up one option for the Richmond area here – http://ukrail.blogspot.com/2012/02/richmond-crossing-improving-windsor.html (although most Airtrack objections were further west). No solution is cheap, but if passenger numbers continue to grow, a solution will have to be found.

          • Anonymous

            In each case there are properties adjacent to the crossing that would need to be demolished to provide the bridge ramps. There’s no easy fix.

          • Michael Hanlon

            So do I. 

          • Michael Jennings

            “A line from LHR to somewhere – anywhere –  in London other than Paddington, a station in a part of the city where hardly anyone lives”.
            We could have got a line to Waterloo via the Airtrack project, of course. Certainly that would have helped all of us who live in South London a lot.

          • Michael Jennings

            More than anything else, Crossrail is about relieving peak hour congestion on the most crowded tube lines (primarily the Central and also the Jubilee) and on two congested mainline terminal stations (Paddington and Liverpool Street). Improving capacity matters. 

          • Daniel Tonks

            Indeed, as I have stated countless times now. The minutes (available on this article) state that this is not designed for tourist traffic, it even advises that Air Passengers use the Heathrow Express instead as it is designed for baggage carrying tourists.

        • Test

          Why would anyone want, or need, to fly into Heathrow, get Crossrail to St Pancras then get a Eurostar to Paris? Surely you’d just fly to De Gaulle? Or if there’s no direct flight from wherever it is, fly to Heathrow and catch a connecting flight to De Gaulle from there?

          • Michael Hanlon

            But we want to discourage short-haul flights in favour of fast electric trains, don’t we? Yes of course you can get a connection to CDG but then you have to get into central Paris. Timewise, with security, transfers and so on this could take three or four hours. 
            It would be great to get a train from LHR to Gare du Nord. 

          • http://twitter.com/zefrog Nicolas Chinardet

            Perhaps the government should ask the French to pay for it, as a way to easy congestion at CDG (if they have that problem)

          • http://www.facebook.com/harris.jj Jeremy Harris

            Apart from the fact that Paris has its own major international hub airport, I think it’s surprising that nobody has yet pointed out the following:

            There is already a direct rail link from all Heathrow terminals to St Pancras. It’s called the Piccadilly Line. It takes just 58 minutes and offers a very frequent service (every 10 minutes from T4/5 and every 5 minutes from T1-3). And it’s really, really cheap compared to anything involving BAA’s expensive tunnel. It is 15 minutes slower than taking the Heathrow Express and tube via Paddington, assuming that the tube via Paddington works properly, but it’s a small price to pay for a crisp tenner and not having to heave luggage up and down stairs at Paddington.

            That said, Mr Hanlon, I do give you a deal of credit for coming on here and facing your critics in a constructive manner – seriously. Crossrail is expensive and imperfect, and I have some sympathy with some of the points you have made. For example, serving all terminals at Heathrow would make more sense, but would probably only be achieved by axing the Heathrow Express. Given that that would free up platforms at Paddington and four paths an hour on the fast lines, it would make sense, but BAA fear for their wallets.

            There remains hope for Reading-Heathrow trains – but since they wouldn’t go through the central section, I suspect they wouldn’t be called Crossrail or be controlled by the Mayor.

    • Tom Grayman

      But it will connect with both the new HS lines – at Stratford (HS1) and Old Oak Common (HS2) - how have you not noticed this? It would only have required the most cursory glance at the Crossrail plans…

      • Michael Hanlon

        But it won’t!! Yes it goes to Stratford – but the Eurostars do not pick up there and they confirmed to me that there are no plans to change this. OOC is NOT in the current Crossrail plans. It is a possibility, but no more than that. 

        • Daniel Tonks

          That is down to Eurostar, I am confident that when the interchange possibilites arise, Eurostar will eventually make use of the station.

          • Michael Hanlon

            I wouldn’t bet on it. Don’t forget that Eurostar have never given an entirely convincing explanation for scrapping Waterloo. Yes I know what they say, but it doesn’t quite add up. IMHO. 

          • Daniel Tonks

            Waterloo was scrapped because sending 1/4 mile long trains through the already overcrowded South London suburban lines – including the worlds busiest complex of junctions – was a silly idea in the first place. Moving it north gave it its own dedicated tracks. The Waterloo Platforms will be bought back into use for Portsmouth, Southampton and Weymouth services.

          • Michael Hanlon

            Yes perhaps – it was always a bit embarrassing trundling through Lewisham or wherever at 15mph after thundering across Flanders at 180. But that station cost more than £135m and is (or was) a thing of beauty and purpose. 
            As I understand it (and here I confess I may be wrong) the original plan was to continue to run a handful of services out of Waterloo after the opening of St Pancras but this was dropped in favour of mothballing Waterloo International altogether. 
            Eurostar cites (sort of) the reason you have given plus the logistical nightmare of shunting their sets around from south to north and back again. There is another reason – the largely spurious (and costly) ‘security’ that was brought in after 11 September 2001. (I asked Eurostar why they search passenger bags but the Shuttle does not and they were unable to answer). 
            But even all this I suspect does not add up to the real reason they closed Waterloo. 
            They have been ‘bringing the Waterloo platforms back into use’ now from some years but the place is still a ghost-station with no real sign of reopening. 

          • PhilD

            ‘But even all this I suspect does not add up to the real reason they closed Waterloo’So what then, you suspect, is the real reason they closed Waterloo? Apart from the perfectly reasonable ones quoted by others above.

          • http://www.facebook.com/harris.jj Jeremy Harris

            That would be money. The train paths on the congested lines would be expensive. Running two terminals would be expensive.

            Also confusion – two London termini for the same service could cause far more expensive confusion for the average tourist than buying a tube ticket.

    • Anonymous

      Cheers for posting Michael,

      What I’ve done is take your premise – that Crossrail must connect with lots
      of important things, without changing trains, irrespective of geographical or operational practicality – to the point of absurdity, to demonstrate through farce
      (and the punchline is in the tags) that you can’t fix every problem in London with one train line.

      Why Crossrail is the way it is is probably worthy of a proper post in future, but for those who get it I thought the silly map would be more entertaining.

      I’d recommend London Reconnections and its predecessors London Connections and Always Touch Out for some of the best insight into London Transport.

      Thanks for the inspiration.

  • Mr Vee

    Michael Hanlon: I’m no expert, but even I know there are lots of complicated and well informed strategy reasons that Crossrail has been designed as it has. It has been analysed by transport experts and strategists who as whole, sorry to break this to you, know a lot more about the transport issues close to this project than you do or probably ever will. 

    I know you write for the Daily Mail and feel entitled to ask whatever kinds of questions pop into your mind in the indignant manner that you have (purely in the interest of your millions of adoring readers I’m sure) but honestly: grow up.Crossrail 1 with its emphasis on a central horizontal transport line is but one component of a longer term vision for transport in the capital, another component being Crossrail 2 which will have a vertical emphasis and will link with High Speed 2 at St Pancras.As for Reading, I’d guess it’s mainly about making sure the trains aren’t jammed with passengers from the start so that there is room further down the line for passengers to board at later stations.

    • Daniel Tonks

      Regarding Reading, they have at least safegaurded Reading and are giving it the extra space/platforms it needs in the current rebuild just in case. Forward thinking on Network Rails behalf.

    • Michael Hanlon

      Yeah, right. Complex? Undoubtedly. ‘Well informed strategy’?  I wouldn’t bet 20p on that being the case. This has been a haphazard ill-conceived basket case of a plan from the start. You forget it was ‘transport experts’  and, no doubt, ‘strategists’, that gave us the expensive lunacy that is Britain’s shambolic, privatised rail network.   

      • Mr Vee

        Michael Hanlon:
        Assuming you actually are Michael Hanlon, which if you’re not, well I guess there’s a chance what I’m writing would be relevant to the real Michael anyway.

        When you say “Yeah, right”, you sound quite childish, which is why I’m wondering if you are the real writer now?

        Anyway… you have no basis for claiming it’s been “ill-conceived” beyond your own ignorance of the actual issues involved.

        You’ve stated it makes you “cross” just thinking about it all. It’s not Crossrail making you cross my friend, because you don’t actually know the issues involved, even if you think you do! Something else is making you angry and its nothing to do with Reading!

        Honestly, for God’s sake man do yourself a favour,and think about quitting the Daily Mail – it’s clearly stressing you out. From what I’ve heard, the place sounds like a nightmare to work, a place where you’re shouted at/required to shout at others on a daily basis, and humiliate each other. 

        This same culture is evident in your writing here and you come across like a rambling idiot.

        I would partly understand if you were selling your soul in return for good money, but when you then actually spend your personal time continuing to do it within the comments sections of other newspapers when you should be doing something much happier, then I think you’ve got problems. Being so cynical and angry is not healthy mate.

        Why don’t you quit the damned ‘Mail’ and do something less stressful where you can make a real contribution to society that makes a difference? Think about it, you’ll feel much better, don’t kill yourself for a newspaper that doesn’t really care about you.

        • Michael Hanlon

          You think it is me that is angry? You sound like you need a nice cup of tea and a sit down. 

          • Sean Baggaley

            Michael, if you want something to REALLY rattle Westminster’s cage with, ask them this simple question:

            How in the name of all that is holy can a simple 100-mile high speed railway line (which is hardly a new technology), through mostly rolling hills with few genuine civil engineering challenges, and with a mere handful of basic tunnels, cost a whopping £17bn., when the Swiss are building their Gotthard Base Tunnel under the *Alps*—including one of the world’s longest railway tunnels—for less than HALF that sum?

            The staggering cost inflation for building ANY form of new infrastructure in the UK is a subject of jokes even here in Italy. Seriously: I’ve seen and heard engineers here literally point and laugh at the UK’s inability to get *anything* built within a reasonable timeframe, and for anything remotely resembling a reasonable budget. And this is in Italy: a country with a proud record of endemic corruption and over-budget construction projects. 

            The privatisation is a shambles, yes. Maybe the current lot can do a better job of fixing it that New Labour managed. Maybe they can’t. But it is only *part* of the problem. The costs of road construction and maintenance are no less sky-high and there’s been no privatisation there. (Yet.) 

            The more interfaces and layers you have to deal with, the more it costs to use and maintain them. This applies to everything—it’s a basic design tenet—and the British government seems hell-bent on ignoring the value of the “KISS” principle. 

            THAT is your scandal. THAT is what should be screaming from the front pages of EVERY damned newspaper in the land. It’s no good demanding more tax revenues when the government is failing to ensure every penny is spent as carefully and effectively as is humanly possible.

            Fix that problem and many of the infrastructure issues will be a lot easier to solve. Airtrack becomes a lot more viable if you can now afford to drop the tracks into a tunnel to eliminate level crossings, remove the need for a new viaduct, and re-site the odd station to somewhere more convenient to boot.

          • http://www.facebook.com/harris.jj Jeremy Harris

            The costs are increased by:

            • UK planning constraints
            • A large contingency intended to ensure the thing is delivered ‘on-budget’

            But also by the following more practical things:

            • The Swiss tunnels are tunnels. Stations are really expensive to build underground
            • We’re going to need a lot of new trains, which are part of the quoted cost.
            • The easy bits of the project were done before it started – the outer ends of the lines are already there. What remains is the expensive tunnelling.
            • Tunnelling through rock is hard work, but fairly simple to plan. Tunnelling under a capital city already chock-full of tube lines, sewers, water pipes, gas pipes, electricity and phone cables, medieval graves, culverted rivers, basements and the like is rather more involved. At one point the boring machines will pass just 2ft from the Northern line while it is still running.

            But yes, costs have also skyrocketed for building anything.

            Edit: I forgot to mention unexploded WW2 ordnance.

          • Sean Baggaley

            “The Swiss tunnels are tunnels. Stations are really expensive to build underground”

            Last time I checked, HS2 wasn’t going to get any underground stations either. Euston doesn’t count: it’s not “underground” by any stretch of the imagination, and it was going to be rebuilt anyway, so why the *full* cost of doing that has been nailed onto HS2′s budget escapes me.

            Much of the tunnelling now planned for HS2 is mainly to shut the bloody NIMBYs and BANANAs up.

            Yes, tunnelling under a city is difficult, but London isn’t the only city on Earth with utilities and other crud under its streets: Rome is getting on with a new branch to its Line B metro, as well as building Line C (which will be running right under the Colosseum and other parts of the historic core). Rome has a hell of a lot more archaeology under it than London, so it’s not easy building there, yet they still manage to do it for less money than the UK.

            New trains are going to be needed for the Base Tunnel project too. Granted, not as many as HS2 will likely use, but they don’t have that idiotic “force banks to loan money to a rolling stock owner who then leases the trains to a train operator” system there either. The more layers you add to a system, the more it costs to run. This is such a no-brainer, I do sometimes wonder how some politicians and civil servants ever learned to breathe.

            The Italians have had to build connecting lines to the new tunnel at their end. As Switzerland’s border with Italy is at Chiasso, which is *in* the Alps, this hasn’t been cheap or easy.

            As for WW2 ordinance: seriously? You’re going to claim London has more problems than countries like France, Germany and Italy, all of which saw invading forces, with bombers and very large artillery no less, on their own soil?

            Again: the Italians are building *multiple* tube lines, HSR infrastructure *AT THE SAME TIME*. In the UK, we’d spend ten years just bickering over which project should get “priority”!

    • Michael Jennings

      Quite. These things are always key considerations, but not obvious if you are not familiar with peak our travel patterns. Similarly, there were discussions of extending the East London line to at least Purley and possibly further south, but the extension only ended up going as far south as West Croydon. This was the same reason, if people started getting on at Purley, trains would be so crowded by the time they got north of Croydon that they would not not be useful for the people they were originally intended to serve.

      There are of course major problems at Canada Water station in the morning peak as is, with lots of people pouring off the East London Line and trying to board Jubilee Line trains, and the Jubilee line trains being full already. Crossrail will give many of these people an alternative route by changing at Whitechapel, and this is urgently needed. Where are the bottlenecks? How may we relieve them? For transport planners in London, this is a number one issue – well above serving new places. 

  • Kate

    Props to Londonist for managing to irritate a Daily Mail journalist enough for him to turn up and actually take some accountability for what he’s written!
    (And props to Mr Hanlon for doing so, I suppose I must add).
    I heart Crossrail, by the way.

    • Michael Hanlon

      Well thank you Kate. Daily Mail journalists … do we not bleed?

      • Daniel Tonks

        Maybe it is worth trying for a press event with Crossrail, one where supporters like myself and detractors like yourself can discuss with those in charge our concerns and appraisels and here the answers to our questions direct from the horses mouth as it were? I would be more than willing to discuss the issue at hand in a professional environment.

        • Michael Hanlon

          That sounds like a good idea. But too late to change anyone’s mind now

          • Ill Tonkso

            Let’s make this happen, I think it would be positive for both parties, some proper investigative reporting.

          • http://www.facebook.com/harris.jj Jeremy Harris

            And there we have it, nail and head in joyful union. It’s being built and nobody wants to risk buggering the budgets by changing anything. 

            It should continue west to Reading (for the simple benefit that it would remove a lot of tiny, crap diesels from the Paddington equation).

            It should receive stopping services diverted from the WCML into Euston (ex London Midland) to free up space for HS2 work or even permanently so that they don’t have to demolish stuff to squeeze more platforms in there. This would require very little extra track indeed.

            Both of these have been proposed, are considered plausible and sensible, but are being neglected for fear of mission creep.

  • http://twitter.com/roblugg Rob Lugg

    lol, Brilliant! As I live opposite Battersea Powerstation I’m all for it!

  • Pete Turner

    Michael Hanlon – I’ve read your thoughts and in addition to the well thought out arguments against your pov on here, I have just one thing to add; where is Birmigham as mentioned in your article? 

  • Audstu

    Sorry, dog’s dinner.

  • http://twitter.com/steinsky Joe Dunckley

    You forgot North Greenwich, a minor addition between Canary Wharf and Custom House. You’ll find a lot of people suggesting that one. And all that it requires is two extra under-river tunnels — simple!

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/KUHPJCGNJ3RERBHQEMHSEU5VEI M

    What a stupid idea to put it into Terminal 5 in the first place, firstly Terminal 5 has the HEATHROW EXPRESS which calls only at Heathrow Central then Paddington it would be FASTER than the Crossrail train, its also got the Piccadilly line for an all stops kind of route through West London and Piccadilly’s Heathrow hub at Hatton Cross. Heathrow Central is the main station, its pointless to connect Heathrow Terminal 4 to Heathrow Terminal 5. That means the overall journey for a person who wants to leave the Airport from 5 and go over to Paddington is made longer for no good reason by stopping all over Heathrow Airport. Frankly its much faster to use routes 482 & 490 buses to change between 4 and 5 above ground.

    To get from Heathrow to Berkshire is easy, all you need to do is go to HAYES & HARLINGTON STATION which for those people not familiar with the rail network is the next stop from Heathrow Central.

    As for that map the author put in, it is pointless if you have a metro which connects every single mainline rail station in Central London then Crossrail will be full no one in the East could possibly board one from Maidenhead or Heathrow and no one in the West could board one for Heathrow or Maidenhead. There are reasons why the Victoria Line handles certain stations and Bakerloo handles others and Northern handles others and the rest of them are all dispersed, what that diagram seems to want is a super metro like all the Piccadilly, Waterloo & City, Hammersmith, Victoria, District, Central, Northern, Circle, Metropolitan, Jubilee and Bakerloo lines joined together with First Great Western. Half the stations mentioned will continue to be served by the Central line like Bank AND Oxford Circus which you can easily walk to from Bond Street or Tottenham Court Road, if you needed interchange with some other line then change at Paddington for the Bakerloo line.

    To be honest I’d be glad that Crossrail didn’t link to High Speed services mostly because I would be using Crossrail from a station that should averagely have 10 trains plus a few First Great Westerns and for once would enjoy getting a seat in a non-crowded carriage rather than a congested, crowded, sweatbox, hopefully the Central line will continue to relieve this rail scheme at Ealing Broadway and under Oxford Street.

  • Andrew

    Great article! To address Mr Hanlon’s points.
    1 – Crossrail connects to Terminal 4, and Hex connects to T5. If crossrail went to T5 apart from platform capacity, no trains at all would go to T4! Or does that terminal matter to Mail readers?
    2 – no Heathrow – Reading connection, well recently confirmed spur near Slough (non crossrail) to be built to connect Heathrow west to Reading, Bristol, Wales etc
    3 – no connection to HS1… Well St Pancras has 6 tube lines connecting across London, as well as cross London Thameslink trains. The Pic line goes direct to St Pancras from Heathrow (no change), but Crossrail passengers can also change at Farringdon to the tube AND 24tph Thameslink in 2018
    for one stop.
    4 – No connection to Euston for HS2… No connection to unapproved project… Shock. ing! Although part of HS2 plans is to build stop at OOC for interchange. So yes station not currently being built as no point until HS2 Act passed. also Heathrow station planned and could be brought forward to stage one so no Heathrow passengers need to go to Central London.
    Extension to Reading is planned for at Reading and electrification programme fills the gap, but journey will still be faster changing at Pad to crossrail from non stop service.
    Finally connection to WCML has been proposed and maybe built but seems like they very busy at min!

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