Will Brent Cross Thameslink Station Get The Go-Ahead?
This was said in this article in the Standard last night.
At the same time, the Chancellor is promising a £97 million downpayment for a new station at Brent Cross, a major redevelopment area highlighted in his National Infrastructure Plan with last December’s Autumn Statement. It could help start construction of 7,500 homes. Another £7 million will go to the Croydon growth zone, aiming to create 4,000 homes. A further £1 million will fund the new London Land Commission to help create a “Domesday Book” of surplus public-sector land and brownfield sites for redevelopment.
London desperately needs more housing and building it around the Shopping Centre and a new Brent Cross Thameslink station at Brent Cross, astride the North Circular Road on surplus railway land must be a good idea.
This is a Google Earth image of the area.
Brent Cross
The Midland Main Line on which the station will be built runs north-south at the western edge of the image, with Hendon station just visible at the top beside the M1.
The Shopping Centre is clearly marked and the A41 passes beside it towards the east.
The whole area is dominated by the roads and flyovers of the M1, A5, A41 and North Circular Road, which are choked with traffic. As the developers of the new Brent Cross Cricklewood development are spending £4.5 billion over the next twenty years and have stated they are improving the roads and other transport links in the area, together with creating four new parks, could we see all of these roads either buried in tunnels or more likely roofed over so that all traffic is put out of sight and mind?
According to the development web site, one of first things being done is this.
Renew and revive Clitterhouse Playing Fields and Claremont Park creating two beautiful community parks, as well as starting to create Brent Riverside Park.
Let’s hope this defines how they mean to carry on. Clitterhouse Playing Fields are at the south-east corner of the Google image.
The developers and their architects could have great fun with this development.
Looking at the position of the station, one place to put it could be where the Midland Main Line crosses the North Circular Road in an echo of how Blackfriars station was recently rebuilt over the Thames.
I can see in my mind, a shining glass palace with a roof garden above the roads with an enormous red rail sign, saying “I’m Brent Cross Thameslink, Ride Me!”
It would be the signature for the whole development.
The new station would also be a major interchange where passengers to and from the East Midlands and South Yorkshire changed between the new electric trains on the Midland Main Line and London’s rail system.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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