LONDON TRANSPORT OVERVIEW
London is fi nally joining up the disconnected national rail lines that resulted from Parliament’s interventionism in the 1840s. Howard Smith, chief operating offi cer for London Rail at TfL, explains how it’s all coming together.
I
n March this year, another major step towards a true orbital railway for London
was taken with the opening of the section between Dalston Junction and Highbury & Islington. By the end of next year, the entire circuit will be up and running, by linking Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction using existing national rail lines and the construction of 1.3km of new track near Millwall Football Club.
Howard Smith, chief operating offi cer for London Rail for TfL, told RTM that the orbital railway is a long-held dream and a vital strategic transport objective.
He said: “During the height of the railway mania in the 1840s, Parliament stopped people building railways across the centre of London, and now, well over 160 years on, London still consists of a set of radial routes that basically bring you to the edge of town but no further.
“From the perspective of, say, a typical Asian city it appears extraordinarily odd: everybody gets out of these long-distance radial trains, then walks or Boris bikes or goes down to the Underground in great numbers, all transferring themselves up and down to get to another train station.
“The signifi cance of the orbital railway is that it cuts across the capital and resolves exactly those problems. It allows people to avoid coming into town; it allows them to make links around the edge of town, as the North London line very characteristically does. You can get off at Willesden, you can get on a different route at West Hampstead, you can travel from West Hampstead to Highbury, and avoid that journey into town.
“The other thing the Overground does, although we call it ‘orbital’, is to also provide cross-river links. The West London line up from Clapham and, obviously, the East London line, don’t go across the absolute heart of London as Crossrail will, but they do avoid the need to actually change while going between north and south London.
“So that’s the strategic importance, which was all effectively forgotten about. Certainly, 30 years ago, people were almost envisaging the complete closure of most of these lines and some of them didn’t exist. Now, we’re re-opening them, putting on more services, and our biggest challenge is actually coping with the latent demand you generate that comes forward when you offer people a reasonably reliable and high-quality service on these sort of routes. That’s the signifi cance.”
As RTM went to press, work was about to start on construction of 1.3km of new track linking the existing East London Line to what will be called Old Kent Road Junction.
But Smith said: “That slightly under-sells the importance of that stretch of track, because obviously the link itself is much longer than that; it goes on to Clapham Junction and creates the orbital network. We’ll soon be physically on site, starting work on Phase Two.
“It’s quite a short build period. We’re already well into 2011 and we will be running trains on the route from the end of 2012. Work will be ‘visible’ by the middle and latter part of this year.”
Once the link is complete and services begin, an intrepid passenger determined
rail technology magazine Apr/May 11 | 43
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