Heavyweight Backing Expected For £1.5bn Crossrail Extension
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on New Civil Engineer.
This is the first paragraph.
Government infrastructure tsar Sir John Armitt is this week expected to throw his weight behind a £1.5bn extension to Ebbsfleet.
The article also says.
- Circumstances have changed greatly since the 2008 Crossrail Act.
- Canary Wharf Group, who contributed £150million to the building of Canary Wharf station, may be prepared to contribute, as this will give access from their site to Eurostar.
- The extension could support the construction of 55,000 new homes and 50,000 jobs.
The extension would take ten years to design and construct.
Eurostar
After my forays to and from Europe recently by Eurostar, I feel that a Crossrail link to Ebbsfleet will be heavily used.
- As more destinations are served by trains from St. Pancras, more passengers will find Ebbsfleet a more convenient station for the Continent.
- Ebbsfleet will be linked directly to Canary Wharf, the City of London, the West End and Heathrow.
- Crossrail will give an easy Undergound-free link between Wales and the West Country and Ebbsfleet stations with a single change at Paddington station.
- When HS2 opens, there will be an easy Underground-free link between the Midlands and the North and Ebbsfleet stations with a single change at Old Oak Common station.
- St. Pancras only has four platforms with no space to expand, but it could be relatively easy to add capacity at Ebbsfleet.
If I was in charge of designing and building the Crossrail extension, I’d make sure that Eurostar made a contribution, as they will be big winners from the extension.
The City Of London
The extension may be beneficial to the City of London.
- The extension would add more stations within easy reach of terminal stations in the City.
- The extension might give an easier route to and from the City.
- After Brexit, I suspect the institutions of the City will want more good connections to Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris.
,Perhaps one of the big City companies might like to finance construction and charge a royalty on each rain?
London City Airport
Should the project to build the extension also include building a Crossrail station at London City Airport?
This would mean that passengers between places like Aberdeen, Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Isle of Man and Manchester, and Continental destinations served by train would have a more convenient interchange in London.
Ebbsfleet Valley
Ebbsfleet Valley is a proposed new town of 16,000 homes being built on brownfield land close to Ebbsfleet station.
£300million of government money has been pumped into the project. But according to Wikipedia, there has been criticisms of the project.
London Paramount Entertainment Resort
London Paramount Entertainment Resort is described like this in Wikipedia.
London Paramount Entertainment Resort (commonly referred to as London Paramount) is a proposed theme park for the London Resort in Swanscombe, Kent. The project was announced on 8 October 2012 and it was estimated to open by around 2023.. In June 2017, it was announced that Paramount had pulled out of the project[2]. However, London Resort Company Holdings still insist the project is going ahead.
I’ve never been to a theme park, as I prefer the real thing!
But others will like it!
Conclusion
The beneficiaries of extending Crossrail to Ebbsfleet, include a lot of big players with possibly large financial resources.
I would suspect that some could be persuaded to fund particular parts of the project.
After all, if a housing developer invested say £10 million, in a new station for a development and then found it easier to sell the houses, there comes a point, where they make more profit and house buyers get a much better place to live.
SS Canary Wharf Is Approaching Launch
Canary Wharf station is starting to resemble a large cruise liner, as more and more of it gets completed, in the dock beside the towers of Canary Wharf.
Although, Crossrail will not open until 2018, I have read that some of the shopping centre on top, will open earlier in May 2015 according to this information.
I suspect too, that the walkway to the Docklands Light Railway at Poplar station will be in place before 2018.
The Shard Mucks Up My Journey Home
I had lunch today in Carluccio’s at Canary Wharf and afterwards went to the excellent Waitrose there to get some shopping that is difficult to find closer to home.
As the DLR wasn’t running due to engineering works, I decided to get the Jubilee line home. I can either change to the Overground at Canada Water station or go to London Bridge station and get a 141 bus home.
But on windy days like this, only a large person would go via London Bridge, as the wind around the Shard makes the bus station a rather unpleasant place.
So I used the Overground!
From Canary Wharf To Walthamstow Central
On a quick examination, Canary Wharf and Walthamstow Central, are both important transport hubs in their parts of London and probably there is significant commuter traffic between the two stations.
After my trip on the cable car, I took the Jubilee line to Canary Wharf, where I had a coffee.
After looking at some other things, I found I was running a bit late for lunch in Walthamstow.
I suspect the fastest way is usually to take the Jubilee line to Green Park and then change to the Victoria line. Using my mother’s rule on seventeen stations and one change gives 39 minutes. but there was one flaw, the Jerrylee line wasn’t running past Waterloo. At least, I wouldn’t have to walk miles in the tunnels at Green Park.
The obvious choice seemed to be to take a DLR or the Jerrylee line to Stratford and then get a bus. I chose the DLR, as I was nearer, and after a few minutes wait, I was on my way.
It was then that I made the wrong choice. The first bus to arrive was a 257, which treated me to a mystery tour of Leyton and parts of Epping Forest.
When I arrived late at my lunch, I’d taken quite a bit over an hour.
So what does the Tfl Journey Planner say?
It did suggest one all Underground route via London Bridge and Kings Cross, which was fourteen stations and two changes. Or 38 minutes according to my mother!
the others suggested were verging on the exotic, in that they generally involved taking a Central line train to Leyton or Leytonstone and then getting a bus. One even suggested getting off the bus and taking the Overground.
I think all of this illustrates the problem of going north and south in East London, unless you can use the Northern line or the East London line.
Crossrail might improve the journey a bit, as you should be able to reach Bond Street a minute or two quicker. But will the change to the Victoria line, require superhuman stamina?
What might help though, is if the services to Walthamstow are improved, when the Lea Valley lines come under the control of the London Overground. If the Hall Farm Curve is rebuilt, services from Walthamstow to Stratford could be of the order of twelve minutes, giving a time of Canary Wharf to Walthamstow Central of about twenty five minutes.
Tfl have the figures for the traffic, but surely creating a good service between Chingford via Walthamstow to Stratford would relieve the Victoria line, by giving those in Waltham Forest, an alternative route to Central London.
TfL haven’t published any plans for the Lea Valley lines and I’m waiting to see what they propose. If I judge them on the current Overground, it’ll have a few surprises and innovations.
Is This Going To Be A Beautiful Roof?
The roof on the Canary Wharf Crossrail station is coming on, as these pictures show.
Is it going to be a beautiful roof, using some of the best technology at our disposal?
After all, when Barlow, Brunel and Cubitt created their grand stations, they used the best and created masterpieces for us to enjoy nearly two centuries later.
Will they be joined by some modern masterpieces from Crossrail?
It’s Only A Railway Station!
One of the reasons, I went East today, was to take some pictures of the roof structure of the new Canary Wharf Crossrail station. I went to Poplar on the DLR and these are some images that I took of the new station.
It is looking that it could end up being the most spectacular station in London.
But then the station bit will probably a bit boring, buried deep under the edifice, you see in the pictures.
Most of what you can see will be an upmarket shopping centre, with a garden on the top under the open timber roof.
It certainly isn’t a bad effort at a station on an underground suburban railway.
But then it is probably best to think of this station as part of the Canary Wharf Estate, rather than part of Crossrail. After all they are paying over half a billion pounds to build it.
How many shopping centres are integrated into the transport systems of the city or area they serve? The answer could be written on the back of a postage stamp, without disturbing the adhesive.
Cinderella Is My Friend
Most Sundays, I go South and East from where I live to Canary Wharf, the Thames or Greenwich. Today was no exception, as I wanted to see the new roof on Canary Wharf Crossrail station and get a bit of shopping in the excellent Waitrose at Canary Wharf.
Today, I picked up the Docklands Light Railway at Shadwell, as I often do.
I’ve referred to this line as Cinderella before, as in the current vogue for grand railways and other schemes, she seems to get forgotten, as she trundles passengers reliably around the East of London, giving superb views of the canals, docks and buildings, both old and new.
But then she is like me; a London mongrel, with an ancestry from all over the place. The railway was born out of the need for to create a transport system on the cheap. The trouble is, that the engineers and staff, felt that despite the budget, they could create something special.
And they did!
They’ve now even created audio guides to each line, as this poster advertises.
Advertising The DLR Audio Guides
I don’t think they’d work so well for the Underground.
Cinderella just has so much to show you!
And where else can kids of all ages, play at driving the trains? Copenhagen and Turin.
But why oh why, is there not another use of the technology in the UK or the wider world? I just think, Cinderella isn’t sexy enough for the great and good. But then she’ll still be here, when all of the current bunch of idiots are pushing up the daisies.
Is This Enough Clocks?
The number of clocks here, showing the time around the world could be considered excessive.
Is This Enough Clocks?
But I think it’s a good display.
I took this picture from a 277 bus, which was easiest way to get back from Canary Wharf, as being Open House weekend, there was engineering works on the DLR and the Northern line.
Paranoid Moi? But The Devil, She’s Getting At Me Again!
Today looked like being a good one, after looking at the weather about nine.
But it didn’t start well, as when I went to get the Sunday Times from my usual newsagent, none had been delivered and he said come back around twelve.
I did go around East London and over the cable car, as I often do on a Sunday, to see if there’s anything happening on Crossrail, that I could include in this blog. I didn’t have any problems with the trip and the cable car was unusually quiet. Perhaps it was because I was early.
Carluccio’s in Canary Wharf wasn’t busy either, when I arrived there for a late breakfast or an early lunch. I’d been looking forward to an eggs florentine, but as they didn’t have any gluten-free bread, I skipped it and just had a cup of tea. To even rub it in, the young lady on the next table had a delicious eggs benedict with normal bread and ate it with gusto.
So I then moved on to Waitrose to get the paper. But I was before twelve and so it wasn’t exactly shut, but you couldn’t buy anything. Surely, in this day and age, in summer when you want to encourage tourism and business, shops should be able to open when they want!
I then decided to cut my loses and try a paper shop round the corner from Waitrose. They were open, but they’d sold out of Sunday Times, as not that many had been delivered.
I then decided to come home and took the Jubilee Line towards London Brifge, where I hoped to get an elusive paper. I then remembered that Canada Water had a nice paper shop. But it didn’t have any Sunday Times.
So I took the Overground home and finally got the paper in the Co-op at Dalston Junction station.
However, the Devil was not finished, as the Liverpool Manchester United match wasn’t on Radio 5. They were commentating on motorcycle racing.
The sooner I get some fibre optic broadband the better!
From Poplar To Canary Wharf
I walked from Poplar Station to Canary Wharf, taking pictures of the Docklands Light Railway and the building of the Crossrail station at Canary Wharf.
It’s going to be an architectural masterpiece when it’s finished. Or I certainly hope so!
One of the great things about using the Docklands Light Railway is that on a hot day like yesterday, it is a great way to explore the Eastern parts of London. Most of the stations have lifts and give good views of what is going on. The area is steeped in history and some great architecture from the old to the very modern.
The ticketing system is effectively, hop-on and hop-off, so you just use your Oyster once or buy a paper ticket and you’re away.
Someone needs to write a proper tourist guide to the Docklands Light Railway.
The Anonymous Widower 