The Anonymous Widower

London Overground Extension To Barking Riverside Gets Go Ahead

The title of this post is the same as that of this article on IanVisits.

This is an important extension, as it unlocks a valuable housing site at Barking Riverside, where 10,800 homes will be built.

A Cost Comparison

It is going to cost £263million, which works out at £24,000 for each house and flat.

By comparison, the billion pound Northern Line Extension to Battersea will serve around 50,000 houses, or £20,000 for each.

And the Lea Valley Rail Programme is a £170million project, that will serve 10,000 homes at Meridian Water with a new Meridian Water station. This is slightly cheaper at £17,000 per home, but a double-track railway was already in place.

Note that in all these schemes, the developers have made contributions. Some have been larger than others.

There are a surprisingly close set of figures for cost per home, considering that the developments will probably be at different points on the luxury spectrum.

So if we are building a large housing development in London, of say 10,000 homes, should we be prepared to spend around £200million on providing decent rail or some other fast and accessible public transport access?

At the smaller end, if say a developer is building five hundred new homes, this could mean it is worth spending up to ten million on updating an existing station. The new Lea Bridge station seems to have cost around this sum and seems to be supporting hundreds of homes.

Proposed Developments In London

So how does this figure fit in with proposed developments in London?

Brent Cross Cricklewood

Brent Cross Cricklewood is described like this in Wikipedia.

Brent Cross Cricklewood is a planned new town centre development in Hendon and Cricklewood, London, United Kingdom. The development is planned to cost around £4.5 billion to construct and will include 7,500 homes, 4,000,000 sq ft (370,000 m2) of offices, four parks, transport improvements and a 592,000 sq ft (55,000 m2) extension of Brent Cross Shopping Centre. The developers of the scheme are Hammerson and Standard Life.

Construction was planned to start in 2018 and be completed in 2021-22, but in March 2018 a delay was announced to January 2019.

It will be served by a new Brent Cross West station.

Wikipedia also says that £500million could be spent on transport developments, including new roads and rebuilding of stations

Kensal Green Gas Works

This site will be redeveloped with 3,500 homes, according to documents on the Internet.

It also sits beside the Great Western Main Line and Crossrail, but no station is currently planned.

But applying the the formula, should mean that on a site like this, £70million should be available for public transport developments.

Southall Gas Works

The Southall Gas Works site has planning permission for 3,750 homes.

The site is close to Southall station, which will be on Crossrail.

Plans exist to update Southall station, but the plans look very inadequate.

In my view this site would e ideal for a driverless shuttle that took residents and visitors too and from the station.

Sites Outside London

My knowledge of the country outside of London is not so good, but some new stations have been built to support new housing and other developments.

It certainly seems, that in the UK, we’re building stations and new lines to improve the accessibility of developments.

December 27, 2018 - Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , ,

3 Comments »

  1. The station at Meridian Water is more a replacement station than an additional station as its planned for it to replace nearby Angel Road Station which is less conveniently located and will close when Meridian Water opens.

    In a way what is happening at Angel Road / Meridian Water might be applied elsewhere where present old stations are inconveniently located or expensive to upgrade could be replaced by a brand new station better located for today’s layout and being a new station better built re accessibility, platforms matching present day trains etc .

    There are also many places where the original private railways built their own stations in order to collect fare revenues but this now means you can have 2/3 stations near each other whose lines cross and so a single station built with modern accessible interchange could combine stations and have the benefit of reducing costs !

    I believe it’s time for local stations in London to transfer to Mayoral/ TFL ownership allowing proper plans to integrate stations to be developed. Something that it’s not worth private rail companies with just a 5/7 year franchise is plan given new stations takes many years to plan and deliver.

    Comment by Melvyn | December 27, 2018 | Reply

    • I agree with you about local stations being moved to Mayoral/TfL or some other local control. If it was a rural sration it could come under the control of the town or parish council. The interesting station is Welwyn Garden City, where all the facilities are in a retail development. Southport station is too and opens out onto a pedestrianised High Street. We should perhaps look at all stations and see if there is a better way of operation, than at present. Many are on large sites, so perhaps these should be rebuilt with housing or other developments on top.

      Comment by AnonW | December 27, 2018 | Reply

  2. […] In London Overground Extension To Barking Riverside Gets Go Ahead, I listed a few developments in London, where developers and their financial backers, were prepared to put up around £20,000 for each house to fund decent rail-based transport links. […]

    Pingback by Axed Rail Routes May Be Reopened Under New Department for Transport Plans « The Anonymous Widower | December 27, 2018 | Reply


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