More Dangerous Staircases
I went to Bruce Castle Park again today to see the museum. I took a few more pictures of staircases to go with the previous ones at Stoke Newington and White Hart Lane.
I had a brief chat with one couple with a baby in a buggy. They weren’t impressed with the staircases either.
Connecting Hackney Central and Hackney Downs Stations
It says this in Wikipedia under the entry for Hackney Downs station.
The station is a short walk from Hackney Central, on the North London Line. Until Hackney Central’s closure in 1944, a passenger connection linked the two stations. However, when Hackney Central reopened in 1985, the footway did not reopen, and passengers transferring between the two stations are obliged to leave the station and transfer at street level.
Last night, I took the Overground to Hackney Central and then walked to Hackney Downs station.
It was quite an easy walk, but not the most obvious.
These pictures show how close the lines are and some of the local area.
It may not be possible to reinstate the walkway, but surely something better can be done, incorporating sensible bus interchanges as well.
I see this very much as an opportunity for Hackney.
How Do We Revive Tottenham?
What caused the riots that happened last week is very much a matter for others to decide.
I’ve known the area for years and quite frankly parts of it haven’t changed much since the end of the Second World War. As an example, the scruffy garage where I parked my bike in the 1960s to go to see Spurs is still there and it looks as if it hasn’t been painted in the last fifty years.
Transport is a major problem and it is even worse when Spurs are at home.
In the short term, I’d do three things.
In the first place, bring the area maps and the bus information up to the same standard that Londoners expect and get in other areas like Islington, Hackney and Westminster.
And then I’d put some investment into the railway that runs between Hackney Downs and Silver Street, by trying to improve the dreadful and dangerous steps. Escalators are expensive, but certainly a single escalator with a double width staircase could be used to improve safety at White Hart Lane. Lifts should also be selectively installed, so that step free access for the disabled is available at probably White Hart Lane, Seven Sisters and Hackney Downs.
One of the problems of the railway is that entry and exit at some stations is quite low. Could this be because it’s a difficult climb, whereas the nearby buses are just a step on and off? Also the trains are not Oyster-friendly! That would be the thrd thing!
So perhaps as I said earlier, should this line and the other Lea Valley lines be added to the Overground? Yes, I think it’s a no-brainer.
Incidentally Hackney Central on the Overground has substantially more passengers going through its doors than the nearby Hackney Downs.
Lots of things need to be done, but let’s improve the transport first.
The second thing that must be done is that Tottenham Hotspur decide quickly what they are doing with White Hart Lane stadium and the derelict land north of it. If they moved the stadium further north, it would actually be nearer to an upgraded White Hart Lane station. The station could even be renamed as Tottenham Hotspur.
Should We Add the Lea Valley Lines to the Overground?
There are effectively three surburban Lea Valley lines.
- Liverpool Street to Enfield
- Liverpool Street to Chingford
- Liverpool Street to Cheshunt via Southbury
Some count the line through Tottenham Hale as another Lea Valley Line, but I prefer to think of that as part of the West Anglia Main Line to Bishops Stortford and Cambridge.
I know the lines quite well and they are not in the best of health with stations that need investment, disabled access and to be incorporated into the Oyster fare network.
You might say it is just like the North London Line of a few years ago!
Except there is one major difference. The trains may be old, but they are in a much better state than the travelling urinals of the old North London Line.
The lines are also not badly connected to both the London Underground and the Overground.
- Seven Sisters and Walthamstow Central are shared stations serving both the Lea Valley Lines and the Victoria line.
- A footpath is planned to connect Walthamstow Central with Walthamstow Queen’s Road on the Overground.
- Hackey Downs used to be connected to Hackey Central on the Overground by means of a path at track level. This interchange could give the Overground a quick way to get to the city as an alternative to walking from Shoreditch High Street on the East London Line.
The more I look at this, the more I like it!
The lines are already built for eight car trains and frequencies approaching ten trains per hour. All they need is punters to fill them and that is where the expertise of the Overground comes in. They certainly have a track record of doing it on the current lines.
Transport for London also have good project management expertise, as they showed at the Dalston Curve, where the project was under budget and early. They also know about making stations disabled-friendly.
So I think we should go for it!
More Steps At Stoke Newington
I took the train back from White Hart Lane station to Stoke Newington station in order to get a seventy-free to the Angel for some lunch at Carluccio’s and also do some shopping at Waitrose.
Platform Access at Stoke Newington
These show the steps up from the train to street level. And of course there is no lift! This was illustrated by a rather large fit guy carying a woman’s large buggy and two children up the stairs, just before I took the picture. Surely we can do better than assure access by having to rely on the kindness of strangers.
The bus stop to go south from Stoke Newington is a large double one, but it doesn’t have one of those displays that tell you how long you’ll have to wait. These are important and really help passengers, as often you have more than one option. For instance yesterday, if I’d had to wait too long for a 73 or 476, I might have changed plan and gone home directly on a 76 via a pub.
Return From White Hart Lane
I returned to central London, by taking the train from White Hart Lane station.
It is another station that has seen better days and it doesn’t seem to have improved much since I used it in the 1960s to go to see Spurs at White Hart Lane.
White Hart Lane Station
Note the stairs in the picture. In common with most stations on this line they are rather steep and given the numbers of people on match days at White Hart Lane, surely something better should be done.
The Class 315 trains were built in the early 1980s and despite being thirty years old aren’t that bad. They are certainly better than the slam door stock, that I used to use all those years ago.
The slam door stock did have the great advantage in that as you approached Enfield Town station, you could fold the door back, so that when the train had slowed to your running speed, you could jump and start running to be first in the queue for the old 107 bus for Oakwood. I never had an accident doing that and I won’t now, as sadly slam door trains are no more.
I can just about remember the old compartment stock used with the steam tank engines on that line and others out of King’s Cross. As the compartments on these trains were essentially private, one game played by many, but not me, was seeing if you could have it off between stations.
Walking Along Tottenham High Road
From Bruce Grove, I walked up Tottenham High Road, intended to get as far as White Hart Lane station.
There is some sign of looting and arson.
The Gutted Aldi Store on Tottenham High Road
This Aldi store had seen its last, but on the other side of the road, things were different.
Opposite the Gutted Aldi Sore in Tottenham High Road
The criminality seems to have been very selective. This Grade II Listed building at 639, seems to have been untouched except for the windows.
639 Tottenham High Road
But had they been boarded up before? Let’s hope someone finds a worthwhile use for the building.
It was just opposite the Carpetright store, that is now completely flattened.
One thing I noticed was that the bus and location maps that are so common in Hackney and Islington seemed to be totally missing from the bus stops.
An Almost Information-Free Bus Stop
As this area gets more visitors than most because of Tottenham Hotspur, surely they should be on every bus stop. And whilst on the subject of buses, there are not too many light-controlled crossings in the area, which doesn’t make it the most pedestrian-friendly of areas, as often to get to your bus stop, you need to brave the traffic.
On To Bruce Grove
Bruce Grove station is a few stops up the line and is really at the south end of Tottenham High Road, where the riots started last week.
Bruce Grove Station
The line has been on an embankment since Hackney Downs and there are again steep steps to get down to the road below. Wikipedia makes this claim about the station.
Despite being in the heart of Tottenham and being at one time a busy station, Bruce Grove ticket office is rarely open.
I was using my Freedom Pass, so it didn’t bother me.
Hackney Downs Station
I wanted to go to Tottenham today, to answer a few questions that had arisen in my mind after the trip yesterday to IKEA.
I started at Hackney Downs station.
To say it is a dump would not be fair, as I suspect that staff try hard to keep a station that has lacked investment for years, working well.
It could be a very good station and I think it could be made into a major interchange by just a few changes and perhaps by borrowing ideas from the Overground.
The access to the platforms, which is by steep staircases, must be improved. I’m not disabled, but do appreciate the problems of those who are. In a wheelchair, unless accompanied by say four of Her Majesty’s squaddies, you wouldn’t stand a chance.
It is dark and dingy too and desperately in need of an imaginative repainting. Hackney has lots of artists, so perhaps they could help or design a scheme. Has a station ever been converted into an art gallery? I know the Musee d’Orsay was formerly a station, but they threw the trains out. Babies and bathwaters come to mind.
How about adding a food shop and a coffee bar?
The interface to the buses underneath the station is poor, as the picture in the gallery shows. There should be a light-controlled crossing over Dalston Lane.
But there is a lot going for the station.
It is close to the open space of Hackney Downs.
It is well served by services going to Enfield, Tottenham, Chingford, Cheshunt, Hertford and of course, Liverpool Street.
A walkway did link it to Hackney Central and this could be reinstated to create a true rail interchange for Hackney.
Is The London Overground a Success?
The three most important lines of the London Overground are now well established. I like it and I use the system several times a week. Admittedly, I have a station at the end of my road, but it is still about a kilometre away. The trains are comfortable, clean and I’ve only been late once.
But do others feel the same way as I do?
So I typed “London Overground success” into Google to see what I got.
I found this article, which is sub-titled, Tangerine Dreams. Here’s a flavour.
That the London Overground has been a success is difficult to deny. Whilst it has certainly had its share of delays and difficulties (such as with the rollout of the 378s), its current performance and satisfaction figures accurately portray the step change in service that has happened on the NLL and elsewhere since the Operator effectively made its debut in 2007. In a city where other Operators such as South Eastern are increasingly feeling the heat from passengers over the level of service they provide, London Overground’s performance also serves to highlight that there are effective ways to address the challenges that London’s railway infrastructure brings.
The rest of the article should be read and it is generally positive about London’s newest railway.
Politician’s of all colours will claim that the success is all down to them. In my view, given how the Overground built on successful ideas, rather than try revolutrionary new ones, I would say you’d have to be really stupid to make the project fail and be an unloved railway.
For a transport project to be successful, you have to locate it so that it takes people where they want to go. The Overground does this well, although you could argue it needs more links to the Underground, as Highbury and Islington, Whitechapel and Richmond aren’t really enough. But West Hampstead will come and possibly there will be others if the politicians decide to invest in success.
One factor that helps, is it is the least claustrophobic and most photogenic of London’s railways, with the possible exception of the DLR. I would recommend both the DLR and the Overground to visitors who want to get a different perspective of London.
Overground Train on the Embankment South of Hoxton Station
I’ve used this picture before to show how different the Overground is. This view even ended up in Modern Railways to illuastrate an article about links between the City and transport projects.
I think the next question is can we build on this success?
The Anonymous Widower 