Sadiq Khan Backs Gatwick
This article on the BBC is entitled Sadiq Khan urges swift decision on Gatwick expansion.
Doesn’t most of those living and/or working in london and the South East?
This is said in the article.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has urged Theresa May to make a quick decision on airport expansion in the South East.
Mr Khan said the new Prime Minister should make the final decision on whether a new runway should be built at Gatwick or Heathrow a top priority.
This decision has been kicked further into the long grass for years, ever since Harold Wilson cancelled Maplin Airport in 1971.
With Brexit on the near hotizon, what better way to say the UK and London is open for business, than by deciding on the next runway in the South East.
I don’t believe Heathrow should build another runway for the following reasons.
- Building another runway would cause endless problems as the M25 is diverted., if what happened when it was diverted for Terminal 5 is anything to go by.
- Gatwick will have better rail connections.
- Heathrow has annoyed a lot of influential and powerful people and organisations in West London.
- The site is too small, even after demolishing the odd village.
- I don’t believe they’ll solve the pollution problem.
- I don’t like planes approaching the airport over Central London.
- It is the more expensive option.
You can probably say similar things for Gatwick.
But at least Gatwick’s owners don’t seem to be as greedy and unco-operative as those at Heathrow.
At least Gatwick’s plans seem well advanced, as this visualisation shows.
Gatwick With Two Runways
This appears to me to be a good efficient design.
- South is to the left.
- The existing runway 26L is on the left.
- It looks like the secondary North runway 26R, used when the current main runway is under maintenance, has been made larger.
- Between the two runways is a massive new terminal.
- Note the station in the bottom right corner, with the Brighton Main Line going across.
- The red line is a shuttle, that takes passengers between the current North and Main terminals, the new terminal and the train station.
- Little demolition seems to have taken place.
But in some ways, where the new South-East runway is built is irrelevant, if Crossrail and the improved Thameslink work as they say on their trains.
Luton, HS2 and Eurostar.
I feel though, that because of Brexit, we’ll see a decision before the end of the year and possibly in the next few weeks.
British governments have fiddled for far too long!
Could More Pedestrianisation And Better Public Transport Be A Weapon Against Terrorism?
Protecting against the sort of attack like the one in Nice last night , must be every policeman’s nightmare.
The City of London put a ring of steel around the Square Mile and there hasn’t been a serious attack since. But it caused lots of other problems.
I actually think, that we now have so many areas where large crowds congregate for work, shopping and sporting events, that we need more and more traffic restrictions like those proposed for Oxford Street.
Intriguingly, the City of London is going the same way and wants to remove a lot of traffic from the area around Bank.
So is this pedestrianisation, perhaps linked with better public transport, one of our best weapons against terrorism?
The Mind Of A Terrorist
I don’t know, as I’m at best, a poor amateur psychologist, but it strikes me there are two types of terrorist wanting to create mayhem and kill lots of people.
The first group, are those who want to leave a bomb or device and get safely away.The Bishopsgate and Baltic Exchange bombings which in today’s money together caused over a billion pounds of damage, are examples of this type, where no-one was ever prosecuted, or even publicly named.
The second group are the much-more suicide bombers, who generally strike without warning
Incidentally, I only think one Irish bomber was killed by his own bomb and we can all be thankful for that, as if suicide tactics had been employed, we would have seen many more deaths.
The City Of London’s Ring Of Steel
The City of London is protected by a so-called Ring of Steel, which is a network of barriers, check-points and 649 CCTV cameras.
It certainly seems to have protected the City from further bombings and made terrorists seek out alternative targets outside the Square Mile.
It has had one very positive effect, although at times that doesn’t seem to be as effective as it was. The City inside the ring, is now a very pleasant place to walk about and explore, as traffic is much-reduced.
Also, at weekends, the City is now a very quiet place for much of the year.
When I was still driving and needed perhaps to park a car for the evening or overnight, I would also park it prominently on a meter or legal parking space inside the ring, as I knew it would still be there in the morning.
The Future Of The City Of London
The City of London is pushing ahead with a policy of pedestrianisation, improved walking routes and better access to the Underground and rail network.
They have one great advantage compared to most other local authorities. Land is so expensive in the City and therefore fortunes are spent to create buildings that will earn billions, that if the City says to a developer, can you put an Underground entrance in your building, the answer is usually yes.
At the present time, Bloomberg are creating a new headquarters building called Walbrook Square, that will incorporate a second entrance to the Waterloo and City Line.
Other cities across the UK and the wider world are not so lucky!
Crossrail and the upgraded Thameslink will have their effects on the City, because of the positions of their stations and other factors.
- , Crossrail will have a massive double-ended station stretching from Liverpool Street in the East to Moorgate in the West.
- Thameslink will have a line of stations; Fasrringdon, City Thameslink and Blackfriars, down the West of the City.
- Crossrail and Thameslink will have their important interchange at Frarringdon.
- Crossrail will have a major interchange at Whitechapel serving the East of the City.
- Thameslink will also have a major interchange at London Bridge, just across the River from the City.
- Crossrail and Thameslink will be running two hundred metre long trains at a frequency of twenty-four trains per hour in both directions.
Add to that the existing services of the Central, Circle, District, Metropolitan and Waterloo and City Lines of the Underground and National Rail services out of Cannon Street, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street and Moorgate, all of which will be upgraded and I believe that at some point in the future, the City of London, will take the bold and very green step of making the whole area a pedestrian-only one, with the only vehicles allowed in the day, being approved electrical ones.
It would be a bold move, but it have several positive effects.
- Air quality would improve.
- The City would be the place to work!
- The City would become one of London’s major tourist attractions, with visitors able to walk all across from St. Pauls to the Tower and the River.
- Innovation would work to provide the services a city needed despite the restrictions.
Would terrorists realise that the sort of spectaculars they love, would be more difficult and go elsewhere?
We could see a return to suicide bombers on the Underground!
Conclusions
The City of London will reinvent itself, as it does periodically with great success.
Given that Oxford Street has said that it will pedestrianise by 2020, are we seeing a green transport revolution?
I can think of a few other cities and towns, that could follow London’s example.
The Attack On La Promenade Des Anglais
I know the area of the despicable, cowardly and ultimately tragic attack well, as over the last thirty years or so, I’ve been to Nice several times and stayed just off that road and even walked down the road, which runs parallel to the beach. There are even pictures of the area in Wandering Around Nice.
Years ago, when we had the house in Antibes, I seem to remember one Bastille Day going to see the fireworks. It was chaotic, as they still allow traffic to go through the area. Which I think they did last night!
Protecting against this sort of attack, must be every policeman’s nightmare.
Losing The Plot?
David Aaronovitch in The Times today has a piece about the Labour Party and its leadership election.
He says this.
On the very day that Theresa May was, in effect, transfigured into prime minister, Corbyn was at a meeting of the Cuba Solidarity Committee, recommitting to the dynastic dictatorship of the Castros, just as he has been doing these 40 years.
Was Corbyn getting advice?
I am virtually Corbyn’s age and I can remember the ardent, often heavy smoking, left-wingers we had when I was at Liverpool University, in the 1960s. Prominent amongst them was that pillar of the left; Robert Kilroy Silk, who incidentally was C’s tutor and persisted in smoking Capstan |Full Strength all through tutorials, despite C being pregnant at the time.
I have checked the Internet for all the left-wingers, that I remember from that time and all seem to have vanished without trace. I wonder how many are living in semis in Pinner, Mossley Hill and Edgbaston, with a Mondeo outside and 2.4 children?
A Space Too Good To Leave Empty
I took these pictures in the space between the Southbound Thameslink and Westbound Metropolitan platforms at Farringdon station.
It’s just too good to leave empty!
But at least it’s a convenient almost step-free way to interchange between the two lines. Say from.
- Liverpool Street to Gatwick.
- Bedford to Paddington.
It’s just a pity that all the other connections at Farringdon, seem to be lots of steps.
The New Bromsgrove Station
This is the new Bromsgrove station, which opened this week.
It is not what you’d call a spectacular station, but it certainly fulfils the objectives of the design.
- Act as a second Southern terminus for three trains per hour on Birmingham’s Cross-City Line.
- Be able to accept trains up to nine cars on the Cross-Country route from Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford through Birmingham and onto the East Midlands and Yorkshire.
- Provide a step-free interchange, between trains, buses, cars and cycles.
- Provide a Park-and-Ride station for Birmingham.
But as it has four platforms, will soon be electrified and have connections across the City, will it after the timetable has settled, become an important interchange that takes the pressure from Birmingham New Street? I think it will, as Reading does for Paddington, Stratford does for Liverpool Street and Clapham Junction, does for ictoria and Waterloo, in London.
It is also not finished and needs a shop and coffee stalls. In some ways it has a similar aura to the new Lea Bridge station in East London. Both stations shout that they are open for business, so please send us some trains and we’ll make the passengers happy.
It could turn out to be a masterstroke.
The electric trains on the line that will work the electrified service are Class 323 trains. There are forty-three, three-car units of which London Midland have twenty-six units, or just thirteen six-car trains, which is the train-length, the line obviously needs.
Will they get the other seventeen units from Northern, as that company gets new rolling stock, to create a fleet that could serve the line adequately?
They could also be looking at new trains. Something like four-car Class 710 trains, which are being built for similar urban routes on the London Overground, would be ideal. And in these Brexit times, they are built in Derby.
If Class 710 trains were to be used, they open up the intriguing possibility of fitting some or all of them with on-board energy storage.
This would enable the following routes.
- Bromsgrove to Worcester is only a dozen miles, and doesn’t include the notorious Lickey Incline, which will soon be electrified. So it would be possible to run a frequent Birmingham to Worcester service using onboard energy, which would also serve Droitwich Spa and the new Worcestershire Parkway station.
- The Camp Hill Line provides an alternative route across Birmingham City Centre. It is not electrified, but as it is short, it would be well within onboard energy storage range.
- On the other side of Birmingham, it is only about twenty-five miles or so from the electrified Cross-City Line to the electrified West Coast Main Line at Nuneaton.
So could we see a second Cross-City Line in Birmingham from Worcester to Nuneaton via Bromsgrove, Camp Hill, Water Orton and Coleshill Parkway?
It would need no new electrification and just appropriate track and station improvements.
Is This The Most Significant Public Transport Development Of This Century So Far?
This article on Rail News is entitled Contactless export deal will help London fares freeze.
Whether the deal does keep fares down is irrelevant to me in London, as I get London’s extensive transport network for nothing! The only benefit, I’ll see is new services paid for by licencing revenue.
But how long will it be, before, when I go to say Birmingham, Berlin or Bucharest, that the only thing I will need to use public transport will be a contactless bank card?
Everything is now in place for all cities to use a similar system to London!
The only reason, it won’t get used in a city or public transport area, is that mistakenly because of NIH syndrome, politicians have gone their own route, which are incompatible with contactless bank cards and mobile devices impersonating them.
Say for instance Paris, Venice or New York didn’t allow the use of cards and devices, how would their visitor revenue drop?
I trawl the Internet extensively for reports of contactless cards used on public transport in London.
- I have not found one adverse report on the media, although I have found a couple of travel sites recommending using a bank card as a ticket in London.
- Remember that you get the same price as Oyster, which is less than cash, without having to use a special card.
- Oyster use is dropping in London.
- Carrying umpteen cards is so twentieth century.
- How much money do people have lying dead on Oyster cards, they’ve mislasid in old jackets etc.?
- There was a big worry from the left, that cashless and contactless ticketing would hurt the less well off. This Luddite-view has been shown to be totally wrong, with some of the highest non-Oyster use in London’s poorest boroughs.
- There has been a reduction of attacks on staff, as the only money they carry is now their own.
- I have been unable to find a report of someone using a stolen contactless card as a ticket.
The world will embrace London’s model and now, that Cubic has the licence, there is nothing to stop the march of contactless bank card ticketing.
Except of course stupid politicians!
What Will The Elizabeth Line Do For Oxford Street?
I have decided to use Elizabeth Line for Crossrail from now on, as most articles seem to be dropping Crossrail in favour of the operational name.
I had an e-mail from Crossrail today and they’re still using Crossrail.
I have written before about Crossrail being a line for shopping in Is Crossrail Going To Be The Shopping Line?, but today I found this article in Retail Week, which is entitled London’s Oxford Street anticipates £1bn boost from Crossrail. This is said.
The iconic London high street already generates £5 billion per year in sales and New West End Company hopes to hit an annual target of £6 billion by 2020 – two years after Crossrail’s Queen Elizabeth line is expected to completed.
With the Crossrail providing direct commutes for counties such as Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Essex, New West End Company hopes the three-mile shopping precinct experience a 30 per cent increase in visits.
In addition, 2000 new retail jobs are expected to be created, and the nearby Bird Street will transform into a new shopping precinct thanks to private donations and £200,000 from Transport for London’s Future Street’s Incubator Scheme.
Is Brexit figured in to these calculations?
I think that we may say more changes on Oxford Street, as surely Crossrail will enable other changes.
Oxford Street will have the following stations and entrances as you proceed from East to West.
- Holborn – Central and Piccadilly
- Tottenham Court Road (Current Entrance) – Central, Elizabeth and Northern
- Tottenham Court Road (Dean Street Entrance) – Central and Elizabeth
- Oxford Circus – Bakerloo, Central and Victoria
- Bond Street – Central, Elizabeth and Jubilee
- Marble Arch – Central
So could we see much of Oxford Street being pedestrianised?
The Mayor has said he would be in favour. According to this article on the BBC, it will happen by 2020.
I think that because of the number of the number of stations just North and South of Oxford Street, I do wonder if the pedestrian area could include Tottenham Court Road, Bond Street and Soho.
The main pedestrian routes would link up.
- Green Park, Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue in the South.
- The British Museum, Bloomsbury and Holborn in the East.
- Euston Road and Regents Park in the North.
- Hyde Park in the West
Where would all the buses, taxis and cars go?
I think that there will have to be a serious rethink, which could see drastic reductions in numbers of all three!
But there will be other knock-ons as Crossrail will for a few years give spare capacity, that could be used to advantage.
The Central Line Should Be Less Busy
The Central Line will have excellent connections to Crossrail at Stratford, Liverpool Street and Ealing Broadway.
It is expected that as some cross-London passengers, who now use this line, will switch to Crossrail, thus releasing capacity on the Central Line.
It would certainly create a high-speed shuttle between three of London’s main shopping centres; Westfield at Shephered’s Bush, Oxford Street and Eastfield at Stratford.
Updating The Central Stretch Of The Central Line
The central stretch of the Central Line will have two rebuilt stations with full step-free access after Crossrail opens; Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street.
Closure of the Central Line in Central London would be possible if needed fr engineering works, as the line has several turn-backs, so it could be run as an Eastern and Western section, whilst say major works were done in the centre.
This partial closure would enable the following.
- A step-free station to be created on the Central Line at Marble Arch.
- Step-free access to be created to at least the Central Line at Oxford Circus.
- Step-free access to be created to at least the Central Line at Holborn.
It is interesting to note, that during the building of Crossrail, access to the Central and Northern Lines has sometimes been restricted at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road and Londoners didn’t moan too much.
So selective closure to get higher-capacity and step-free stations in the centre will not be the disaster it could have been, especially, if the improvements were done in a phased manner.
But all three are prime sites and there must be significant potential for over-site development.
Additionally, if you look at the railway lines on carto.metro.free.fr, this is a map of the lines between Holborn and Tottenham Court Road stations.
British Museum Station
Note the old British Museum station on the Central Line.
I wouldn’t know whether it is practical to reopen the station, but I suspect Transport for London’s route planners have looked at the possibility to give better access to one of the busiest museums in the world.
As the Central Line through Central London is effectively a loop of Crossrail, it gives the great advantage of creating a double line across Central London, that offers redundancy, if either line needs to be closed for serious engineering work.
The Central Line never had that luxury before, so expect serious improvements on any Central Line station between Stratford and Ealing Broadway.
The Outer Reaches Of The Central Line
I suspect that Crossrail will generate more traffic on the outer reches of the Central Line to Epping, Hainault and West Ruislip.
These sometimes forgotten parts of the line will undoubtedly improve and change.
Wikipedia lists some of the line’s Cancelled and Future Plans.
I think what happens could surprise everybody.
Crossrail 2
Crossrail 2 has just one interchange in the Oxford Street area at Tottenham Court Road station.
I would be very surprised in that in the massive rebuilding of the current station for Crossrail, that provision hasn’t been made to connect to Crossrail 2.
There have been surface issues around the station concerned with Crossrail 2, but given good planning of the project, I feel that the building of Crossrail 2 would only effect the area in a similar way to the replacement of a major block on Oxford Street.
Crossrail 2 will have two major effects.
- It will bring large numbers of visitors to the Oxford Street area.
- Just as Crossrail and the Central Line will work as a high-capacity pair, it will work closely with the Victoria Line to relieve that line.
This leads me to the conclusion, that the wider Oxford Street area needs to be and will be pedestrianised.
What Do You Call This?
I bought this rack for hot dishes just out of the oven from IKEA.
What do you call it?
IKEA call it a trivet, which is defined thus.
A metal stand with short feet, used under a hot dish on a table.
IKEA either can’t count as it has four legs, or they have done a great job in a redesign.
What Can We Expect From Theresa May?
I remember Margaret Thatcher well and from things I heard at the time, a lot of people felt they’d get the country they wanted, where criminals were hung and flogged and big business could run roughshod over the small man.
What we got from Mrs. Thatcher was not what everybody expected, because mainly she was an intelligent woman, who analysed what was needed in a crisis and then did it.
I always remember my Labour-supporting accountant at the time, saying that Thatcher and her Chancellors may have reduced the tax paid by high-earners, but they had certainly closed a large number of massive tax loopholes. My accountant certainly would have known.
Mrs. Thatcher certainly stood up to the problems, but then other Prime Ministers would. But I think, she did it in a unique way, which probably meant she could carry the country with her more easily.
I’m certain, that all important female leaders because they think differently to men and generally don’t have the massive ego, that many men do, tend to do different things or the same things in different ways.
For a start Angela Merkel always gives me the impression, she’s the wise aunt, that all families need and many have and Golda Meir made out she was tougher than any man.
Mrs. T always came across as the power-dressed professional and I’ve met a few competent female judges, lawyers and accountants, who put forward the same aura.
Theresa May will develop her own style and aura, as all politicians and especially prime ministers do. She’ll need to as, she has been left with a very bad set of cards.
What do I think she’ll do?
- As I pointed out in Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. I think Hinckley Point C will be cancelled.
- HS2 will be cut back in terms of cost, but increased in scope to create a One Nation Railway. As the changes at Sheffield, that I wrote about in HS2 Does The Right Thing At Sheffield, showed, good design of the railway can save a lot of money ande add more stations to the network.
I will add to this list.
The Anonymous Widower 