I’m All For More Of This!
This article from Global Rail News is entitled Toronto park plan for downtown railway.
The article describes how Toronto wants to purchase the air rights over a 21-acre railway through the City Centre and put a park on the top.
There are certainly places in the UK, where this approach can be used to create parts, housing or commercial buildings over the railway.
Especially in Londom, where land is so expensive.
Look at this Google Map of the rail lines into Liverpool Street as they pass Shoreditch High Street station on the East London Line.
Lines Through Shoreditch
Surely, a better use could be found for the space above this railway. I estimate this space must be about ten hectares and if properly developed could contain lots of buildings and a green walkway connecting Shoreditch High Street station to Liverpool Street station.
And what about the waste of space that is Euston station?
Euston Station And The Approach Lines
Hopefully adding HS2 to the station will improve things.
Meridian Water Gets Its First Planning Permission
This article in the Enfield Independent is entitled Planning permission given to first batch of Meridian Water homes. This is the start of the article.
Work will soon start on the first homes in a £3.5billion development after getting the planning green light.
Enfield Council’s planning committee has given permission for the first phase of Meridian Water, agreeing to the construction of 725 homes, as well as retail space, play areas, a community centre and a new train station which will have the facilities to include the planned Crossrail 2.
The decision follows the announcement last month of Barratt and SEGRO as developers for the scheme, which the council hope will provide 10,000 homes and 6,700 jobs in Edmonton.
London certainly needs this development with all its houses and a replacement for Angel Road station and I doubt that few will mourn the passing of the industrial wasteland that the area is now.
Ed’s Shed
This house is in the heart of De Beauvoir Town, which is the area of London, where I live on the Northern edge.
Ed’s Shed
It is an unusual modern house to sit amongst all the Georgian ones. It is not the only one in the Conservation Area.
It’s called Ed’s Shed and there is a web site.
I like it!
Why don’t we get more adventurous modern houses? Architects are creating the future and we don’t want uniformity!
A Waste Of Space?
I took this picture, as I rode through Kentish Town station on a Thameslink train.
A Waste Of Space?
I’d never realised there was quite so much space.
This Google Map shows the Midland Main Line as it passes through the station.
Midland Main Line Through Kentish Town
I do wonder, if this site would be one that could be used to create housing or other buildings above the railway.
- In a few years time, there will be upwards of eight Thameslink trains an hour through the station.
- After the rebuilding of Camden Town station, there is the possibility of upwards of thirty trains per hour on the Northern Line.
- Kentish Town West station on the North London Line is not far away.
- Just off this map to the West, is the large site, where J. Murphy and Sons have their offices and Central London base.
It would appear to be a well-connected place for homes, offices, schools, colleges or hotels, and I’m sure Camden Council are doing their best, to improve the area.
Barking Riverside Development To Get A Boost
BBC London is talking about a large boost to the development of housing at Barking Riverside. This article in Building entitled L&Q buys out Bellway at Barking Riverside, gives a lot more detail. This is a visualisation of the development.
Barking Riverside Development
It looks to be a lot of much-needed housing, a proportion of which will be affordable.
According to TfL’s maps and drawings it looks like Barking Riverside station will be a couple of hundred metres or so directly inland from the T-shaped pier.
What A Waste Of Valuable Land
I took these pictures as the train passed the Southall Gas Works site to the west of Southall station.
As can be seen these days it is mainly used as a car park for passengers using Heathrow Airport.
That is a terrible waste of a site, that could be cleaned up and used for much-needed housing. This Google Map gives an impression of the extent of the site.
Southall Gas Works
But things are happening and there is a web site called The Southall Gasworks, put up by the Berkeley Group, who are developing the site.
In this post entitled Could The Golden Mile In Hounslow Get A Station?, I postulated that the gas works site could be linked to Hounslow’s Golden Mile and the Thames by a tram and concluded by saying this.
I think that there are possibilities for a well-designed solution in the area to connect the Golden Mile to Southall station for Crossrail.
There are certainly possibilities to link everything together.
- Southall station will be served by Crossrail’s high-frequency trains.
- The Brentford Branch is an underused working railway.
- The Southall Gas Works development needs good public transport links.
- The Golden Mile needs rejuvenating.
I do think we’ll see lots of small-scale connectivity to Crossrail and this would be an easy one to build.
Is This One Of The Most Valuable Sites For New Development In The UK?
I don’t question the engineering behind the Windsor Link Railway, but I do question whether the project is viable financially.
Property Development
Obviously, the key to financial viability is the property development opportunities that the building of the Windsor Link Railway will enable.
I don’t know much about property development, but from conversations with serious property developers over the last few years, I can say this.
- Some of the sums of money that can be involved are immense.
- Location is still as important as it ever was.
- Car parking can be reduced in developments above stations, which reduces construction costs.
An infrastructure investor from a large insurance company, also told me that developments with a new station and possibly a few new trains are easy to finance as a package.
Property Development At Windsor And Eton Riverside Station
Look at this Google Map of the Windsor and Eton Riverside station and the River Thames.
Windsor And Eton Riverside Station And The Thames
The railway and the adjacent car parks, use a surprisingly large amount of land, that would be released by the building of the Windsor Link Railway.
The Windsor Link Railway could be a single track tunnel, as the maximum frequency would only be four trains per hour in both directions, which would enter the tunnel around the end of the current platforms.
Obviously, all of the land where the current station and car parks would be available for development. There would just be a rail tunnel in the basement.
I also feel that done properly, this development with its superb location on the river, should be car-free.
If that is the case, then perhaps Windsor needs a station under this development?
As the development will be pretty grand and very desirable, I would design a station with the following characteristics.
- Single-platform able to accept twelve-car trains. We don’t want to build a restriction for the future.
- All trains could be IPEMUs running on batteries in the tunnel. Quiet, very green and no dangerous electrification.
- Platform-edge doors. They’re probably needed under EU safety legislation.
- Double-ended with one entrance in the development and another in Thames Street. If tourists can’t drive, they need to be in the centre.
I think with modern station design, that a single-platform station would be sufficient, although, it would probably restrict services to four trains per hour in each direction.
We’ve never built a combined up-market station and luxury development in this country yet, although there are quite a few stations like Dalston Junction with lots of dwellings on the top.
Windsor And Eton Riverside could be the place to start.
Property Development At Windsor And Eton Central Station
If the Riverside site could be properly developed, what about, where the Windsor Link Railway are proposing to put their proposed Windsor Royal station.
This is a Google Map of the area to the West of Windsor And Eton Central station.
Note how the area is dominated by coach and car parks. Visitors want to come to see the river and the castle, socialise a bit, have a drink and a meal, and perhaps buy some tatty souvenirs. They don’t want to look at car and coach parks.
In Connecting The Windsor Link Railway To The Slough To Windsor And Eton Line, I looked at the engineering and I don’t think building the rail connection is impossible.
It is my view, that you build the railway and the station in the best way for train operation and passenger convenience. The station would probably have the following characteristics.
It could be a traditional surface station or underground, with minimal buildings above the surface.
I prefer the underground station, as it has other advantages.
- There would be lots of entrances facing in all directions. Think fosteritos!
- It could have a single-platform or a double-platform/island layout, capable of handling twelve-car trains.
- Platform-edge doors.
- A single track would lead to Slough and also to the tunnel under Windsor.
In the hole for an underground station, it would also probably be a good idea to build an adequately-sized underground car and coach park.
But surely visitors need some form of decent Park-And-Ride using an uprated train service. Such a station is envisaged by the Windsor Link Railway at Chalvey Interchange, which is South of Slough close to the M4.
Once the new station and the railway is fully connected, there is a magnificent opportunity to create a world-class park and related development over the top, between the existing railway viaduct and the iconic Thames.
The redundant Central station and the unused part of the massive viaduct would be developed appropriately.
Let’s face it Windsor is rather a crap and tatty tourist dump at the present time. The Windsor Link Railway could give the town the opportunity to give the historic town and castle the environment and status, it needs and deserves.
The Trains
In The IPEMU And The Windsor Link Railway, I wrote how IPEMU trains could make the design and building of the Windsor Link Railway easier and more affordable.
I believe it is essential that the Windsor Link Railway is run using trains with an IPEMU capability.
I also believe that as I saw in Future-Proofing The Uckfield Branch, that all platforms including the bay platform at Slough station must be capable of accepting twelve-car trains.
I am assured that this is in the design.
The Central Tunnel
I would suspect that many people would feel that digging the central tunnel across Windsor will be an enormously expensive operation.
Construction companies put in cut-and-cover tunnels like this all over the world and especially in Germany. The last tunnel, I saw being built was the large Stadtbahn Tunnel in Karlsruhe right down the main street, which would take the German version of the Class 399 tram-train.
Whilst this tunnel is controversial and has its problems, it is much larger than that proposed through Windsor. The final cost estimate for Karlsruhe eas €588million for a double-track tunnel, which is 3.5km. long and has seven stops.
In the UK, the only similar tunnel is the Dalston Western Curve, where a new tunnel was dug along an existing alignment.
This article in the Londonist describes a visit to the tunnel before it opened.
Intriguingly, the Dalston tunnel was reportedly dug by a German sub-contractor, who specialise in getting trams in tight places.
We sometimes seem too conservative when we dig tunnels. I can’t think of a cut-and-cover tunnel built in the last twenty years in the UK? Not even one built to create an entrance to a car park!
In June last year I wrote Walking The Proposed Route Of The Windsor Link Railway. I felt afterwards that a single-track tunnel between the area of the Riverside station and a new Windsor Royal station to the North of the current Central station would be possible.
Since then, the IPEMU train has become a serious possibility and if trains on the Windsor Link Railway had this capability, then the tunnel could have these characteristics.
- Single-track tunnel.
- Built using cut-and-cover.
- No electrification.
- IPEMU trains only in the tunnel.
- Evacuation walkway like the DLR.
- No massive ventilation and evacuation shafts.
My project management knowledge tells me, that this is the sort of tunnel, that could be built without causing too much disruption to train services and road traffic, by getting all of the jobs in the right logical order.
Conclusion
The Windsor Link Railway, is a project that must be judged as a whole.
But do that and there is a lot of money to be made from property development, which would more than pay for the railway.
Developments At And Around Lea Bridge Station
These are the latest pictures I took of the station on September the 21st.
The pictures also show that around the area of the station are a large amount of industrial units, some of which couldn’t be described as high class, by any means. This Google Map shows the area.
Around Lea Bridge Station
The station is being built in the curve of Argall Way, where the railway goes under Lea Bridge Road. The dreadful bridge over the railway can be spitted where Argall Way branches away from the railway at the top of the image.
97, Lea Bridge Road is picked out as that is a site owned by Bywater. According to this report from the Guardian series of local papers, the site and several others in the area are slated for the development of a thousand houses. This is the first two paragraphs.
Two huge housing developments will be discussed next week as developers look to build hundreds of homes in Waltham Forest.
Separate sites in Leyton could be transformed into new neighbourhoods after ambitious plans are put to Waltham Forest council.
Is the station the chicken or the egg?
A Perfect Storm In Ilford
This article from the Ilford Recorder is entitled Redbridge Council leader says Ilford town centre has ‘the perfect storm’ for regeneration.
It talks about a billion pound of investment in the next six years.
So it does look like one of the more dreary parts of East London is going to be improved.
In my view, it shows how Crossrail is going to regenerate large swathes of London.
Although, in the article, I do think that that the design for homes on the Sainsburys site on Roden Street, is very much out of the design manual of Soviet Russia, that I saw in Nova Huta.
Before Crossrail 2 – Meridian Water
Meridian Water is a large property development in North London which sits in the curve of the North Circular Road between Edmonton and Walthamstow, with the large Tesco and IKEA stores on its Southern boundary and the Edmonton incinerator to the North. Wikipedia describes the current site like this.
The Meridian Water development site is centred 1.2 km south east of the town centre of Edmonton Green. It comprises an area of approximately 0.82 km², 0.72 km² of which is land capable of development.
In economic geography the site consists largely of vacant or ailing industrial/transport use, and in natural geography is characterised by the waterways of the mid-Lea which pass through or beside it to the east: theRiver Lee Navigation, the Lee Diversion, the River Lee Flood Relief Channel, and Pymmes and Salmons Brook.
It is very much a part of North London, that is not doing its best to boost the prosperity of the city. The developers have a £1.5billion plan for the development of the site. This Google Map shows the area.
Meridian Water
Most of the site is between the North Circular Road and the various rivers and canals, although a portion is on the north side of the A406. This aerial photograph with the development marked in red comes from this page on the Enfield Council web site.
Aerial View Of Meridian Water
What has this massive development got to do with Crossrail 2?
Note the loop in the red boundary to the top of the picture. That encloses Angel Road station, which is clearly shown on the Google Map.
Meridian Water needs good transport links and this report in the Enfield Independent describes what Enfield Council and the developers are doing about it.
Enfield Borough Council has named the firm it has chosen to turn Angel Road Rail Station into a ‘thriving’ new hub.
Atkins, a global design and engineering firm, has been chosen to design the new rail and bus terminal, which will see an increased service of four trains per hour.
It is also stated in some place that the station will be renamed Meridian Water.
As Angel Road is on the list of probable Crossrail 2 stations in the Lea Valley, only a stupid developer would not want to have their development directly linked to Crossrail 2 and all the cornucopia of destinations it brings.
I also wonder how much the developers would pay to have the upgraded Meridian Water station, as a terminus, from where trains could turn back under London.
The Anonymous Widower 