Former Waterloo International rebuild.

[rockershovel]

If it hadn't been built, what is your proposed alternative in that era?

Construct the trace to Ashford/Ebbsfleet, as was planned in conjunction with the 1974 Channel Tunnel and subsequently Construct CrossRail as originally planned, as a link from there to Central London and on to LHR (i.e., what would become the Heathrow Express Link; why do you think this ends abruptly on an outlying suburban platform at Paddington?)

 

Better still, not support the Channel Tunnel at all at that time, having missed the opportunity to construct the supporting infrastructure in advance, as the French did...

[Red Baron]

Construct the trace to Ashford/Ebbsfleet, as was planned in conjunction with the 1974 Channel Tunnel and subsequently Construct CrossRail as originally planned, as a link from there to Central London and on to LHR (i.e., what would become the Heathrow Express Link; why do you think this ends abruptly on an outlying suburban platform at Paddington?)

 

Better still, not support the Channel Tunnel at all at that time, having missed the opportunity to construct the supporting infrastructure in advance, as the French did...

I take it you have never been on HEX ?

[rockershovel]

I take it you have never been on HEX ?

Not in recent years. I would sometimes arrive in LHR and travel to Kings X for ECML, and found from experience that the additional transfer at Paddington meant that I might just as well take the Piccadilly Line, at 25% of the price. Same applies to travel KX to LHR.

 

Then my travel office rejected an expense claim BECAUSE of the difference in fares, and I've never used it since.

[Bomag]

Not in recent years. I would sometimes arrive in LHR and travel to Kings X for ECML, and found from experience that the additional transfer at Paddington meant that I might just as well take the Piccadilly Line, at 25% of the price. Same applies to travel KX to LHR.

 

Then my travel office rejected an expense claim BECAUSE of the difference in fares, and I've never used it since.

 

I think you have missed the point (irony) of the query since HEX has never used the suburban platforms at Paddington. Also unless you have gone Paddington to KX via the Circle or H&C platforms instead of the quick way via Oxford Circus then you mast have been unlucky in going slower than via the Piccadilly line.

 

I avoid HEX mainly because I try and fly from anywhere else than Heathrow. If I do I get a through ticket (if available) which saves a bit. VEC seem to have canned them.

[rockershovel]

I think you have missed the point (irony) of the query since HEX has never used the suburban platforms at Paddington. Also unless you have gone Paddington to KX via the Circle or H&C platforms instead of the quick way via Oxford Circus then you mast have been unlucky in going slower than via the Piccadilly line.

 

I avoid HEX mainly because I try and fly from anywhere else than Heathrow. If I do I get a through ticket (if available) which saves a bit. VEC seem to have canned them.

We are both at cross purposes, I think. HEX charges a substantial premium for a quick direct service; why would I pay that premium, then pay an additional fare, with its attendant issues, and change again? Especially as experience indicates that I may end up paying the difference from my own pocket. It was common, for a long time, to encounter HEX staff canvassing for passengers as you exited LHR, which tells you all you need to know. As well to take the slower, cheaper service. My point is that the whole concept of HEX was irretrievably compromised once the original intention - to provide a direct link between the main line stations and LHR - was abandoned.

 

I'm no great fan of LHR but the newer terminals are quick, which is all that really matters

[Wheatley]

It would be cheaper to buy them a car, but to provide enough road for them all to move around by the same amount would probably take more money than running the NHS, not to mention the housing crisis caused by knocking down most of the houses within 20 metres of a main road..

I should perhaps also point out that the original discussion arose purely in the context of one TOC hiring in stock and crews from another to run the Cleethorpes - Barton on Humber branch, not the most heavily used bit of state funded infrastructure even in Lincolnshire Rail Users Group's wildest imaginings. It wasn't a serious proposal to out-do Serpell.

[D854_Tiger]

I don't begrudge spending on the railway, wherever it is needed, but what confuses me about this project is that surely Waterloo Internaional was already a fully functioning station.

 

Apart from tearing down a few barriers, getting rid of the security and perhaps some trackwork on the approches surely it was ready to go.

 

Unless I'm missing somehting here, which is likely.

[Zomboid]

It was more like an airport terminal than a station, designed around a couple of (big) trains per hour over the 5 platforms, not in any way suitable for a commuter service.

Though the signaling and track alterations are not exactly minor activities either, and at the entrance to one of the busiest stations in the country...

[DY444]

I don't begrudge spending on the railway, wherever it is needed, but what confuses me about this project is that surely Waterloo Internaional was already a fully functioning station.

 

Apart from tearing down a few barriers, getting rid of the security and perhaps some trackwork on the approches surely it was ready to go.

 

Unless I'm missing somehting here, which is likely.

 

The circulating areas (which are all below platform level) were designed for a couple of international arrivals and departures an hour with security, immigration and customs inspections for all passengers.  The resultant tortuous walking routes and limited capacity are wholly unsuited for peak hour commuter operations hence the requirement for a rework.  I think the platform heights might be wrong also having been built for Eurostar.

[Pacific231G]

Interesting...and utterly sickening to see even MORE money being spent in London.

Without its rail network London simply couldn't function. Without London's massively net contribution to the economy the country would probably be bankrupt or very much poorer. Greater London has an eighth of the UK population but generates between a fifth and a quarter of its GDP.  Commuters who come into London from elsewhere contribute £13 billion of income tax each year so maybe it's worth spending money on them. 

 

Britain does have an unbalanced economy far too dependent on London's ability to generate wealth and with the most of the country simply not puling its weight economically. Investment will be needed to change that but it'll take generations and it certainly won't be achieved by strangling London's economy.

[Chameleon]

Why does it need to be completely rebuilt? It was a Spanky new setup when it was built and wasn't exactly overused.

[The Stationmaster]

The circulating areas (which are all below platform level) were designed for a couple of international arrivals and departures an hour with security, immigration and customs inspections for all passengers.  The resultant tortuous walking routes and limited capacity are wholly unsuited for peak hour commuter operations hence the requirement for a rework.  I think the platform heights might be wrong also having been built for Eurostar.

 

Actually it was designed for four arrivals and four departures per hour and assumed a fairly high load factor on all of those trains.  The principal problems in converting it for any other sort of use must cenrtre around the very specific passenger flow arrangements  designed to separate arriving and departing passengers and the time lapse between the two at any platform or any pair of island platforms - those arrangements are very different from the sort of layout you need to cope with peak passenger train flows where there is no need for security checks in one direction and customs and immigration checks in the other.

 

Operationally there are other differences in that for international trains there was effectively a single line approach/departure route between Nine Elms Jcn and Carlisle Lane Jcn and limited capacity for parallel moves to/from the platforms as a conseqence  - i.e. again something not suited to an intensive suburban operation. And finally the platforms were not designed to deal with rolling stock to C1 clearances - that was not needed.

 

So redeveloping it for use by 'ordinary' trains and traffic flows was obviously always going to be a major task.  At one stage it was considered as a terminus for a potential rail link to LHR via a new connection in from the Feltham area but that foundered for, I believe, mainly financial reasons.  The end of using the International station for its intended purpose came when London & Continetal etc decided not to proceed with the original plan of having two London termini for international trains and to concentrate on St Pancras with its direct link to CTRL instead of also continuing to use Waterloo and its longer, and slower, conventional connecting route to CTRL.  The major problem that decision created was to more completely isolate North Pole Depot from Eurostar operations hence the need to build a new smaller depot at Temple Mills although that could be smaller in any case as it didn't have to cater for either the Regional Eurostar services or the overnight trains.

 

Effectively Eurostar moved from a situation where its strategy was being largely led by a number of political imperatives and decisions to one where everything was seen in the cold harsh light of strictly commercial decisions and strategy.  Whether that also had the impact of cutting off Eurostar from its competitive position in the marketplace south of the Thames is another issue completely.  

[Southernman46]

 

Operationally there are other differences in that for international trains there was effectively a single line approach/departure route between Nine Elms Jcn and Carlisle Lane Jcn and limited capacity for parallel moves to/from the platforms as a conseqence  - i.e. again something not suited to an intensive suburban operation.

 

I used to lay down the bullsh^t whist I was TSM at Clapham that I looked after the most important 2 miles of the entire route ... bar none

 

Anyone can look after brand new 186mph rated track .......... now 9-Elms Jn - a very different proposition .................

[Dunsignalling]

Without its rail network London simply couldn't function. Without London's massively net contribution to the economy the country would probably be bankrupt or very much poorer. Greater London has an eighth of the UK population but generates between a fifth and a quarter of its GDP.  Commuters who come into London from elsewhere contribute £13 billion of income tax each year so maybe it's worth spending money on them. 

 

Britain does have an unbalanced economy far too dependent on London's ability to generate wealth and with the most of the country simply not puling its weight economically. Investment will be needed to change that but it'll take generations and it certainly won't be achieved by strangling London's economy.

Unfortunately, I think the economic imbalance between London and the rest is something of a "chicken and egg" situation which will never resolve itself without political interference. Businesses do get "pulled" into London by the greatly superior infrastructure on offer and the solution to that is to improve it elsewhere.

 

There really aren't "generations" to play with before the London economy, at least in part, begins to strangle itself. There is only room for so much additional transport capacity before it becomes prohibitively expensive, prohibitively disruptive, or both; to increase it further. Consequently, there is a limit to the numbers of commuters that it is possible to deal with in a humane fashion.

 

The answer, in the shorter term, is to persuade more London workers who could work from home for a couple of days per week, to do so. The numbers who actually do has persistently undershot the predictions of the futurologists by substantial margins ever since it became a practical way of working.  

 

Hence HS2, which, however you dress it up, is primarily a means of getting even more commuters into London from even further out, within an acceptable journey time, but it's only a temporary fix and will probably be full up within a year of opening.

 

John

[Suzie]

It is not that workers don't want to work elsewhere - it is just that employers want them in London and won't allow them to work elsewhere, especially away from a desk where they can be monitored to the N^th degree. That is the nut that needs to be cracked.

[John_Miles]

Figures in the Guardian today suggest that public spending on transport in London is around £1600/head whereas for the rest of the UK it is around £450. It is arguable that the poor economic performance of the rest of the UK compared to London is in part due to the lack of investment.

[rockershovel]

London became the first "post-industrial" city in the 1960s. It was formerly home to major import and export docks, substantial manufacturing industry (JAP engines in Tottenham, to pull an example at random, were the largest manufacturer of proprietary engines in the world; Matchless and AJS motorcycles, at Plumstead, exported worldwide; Royal Enfield, manufacturers of motorcycles, small arms and other engineering; and many more).

 

Between 1960 and 1970, all of this vanished. Most of it had been driven into the ground between 1930 and 1945 and austerity (REAL, 1950s style Austerity) finished the job.

 

Don't hold your breath, waiting for investment. One obvious lesson of the EU is that the State-interventionist capitalist systems there, particularly Germany, France and Holland, produce much more in the way of actual results than our system. If our system could do that, it would already have done so...

[rockershovel]

It is not that workers don't want to work elsewhere - it is just that employers want them in London and won't allow them to work elsewhere, especially away from a desk where they can be monitored to the N^th degree. That is the nut that needs to be cracked.

The "Lloyds Name" problem.... Lloyd's of London was home to a notable market crash some years ago. The crux of it was, that to sustain its reputation for covering ANY risk, it had taken on various liabilities which would, in due course, produce huge losses. It had done this by accepting new Names (partners in liability, essentially) from outside its traditional recruiting arenas.

 

What would develop (and you might think this would have been obvious) was that the people who were in the building every day, meeting their coworkers and contemporaries, gaining ongoing first hand experience, knew considerably more about the nature of the business, than those who were (in effect) drawn in under premises which if not actually false, certainly weren't valid.

[Fenman]

Figures in the Guardian today suggest that public spending on transport in London is around £1600/head whereas for the rest of the UK it is around £450. It is arguable that the poor economic performance of the rest of the UK compared to London is in part due to the lack of investment.

That's a ridiculously crude comparison. Why don't you start by looking at population growth - since more people means more transport capacity is needed. London's extraordinary growth rates over the last few decades means that there are now millions more people there requiring transport. In much of the rest of the UK, population levels are stagnant or even declining. What growth there has been is, compared to London, very modest.

 

So, investment in new transport infrastructure seems to be focused on the area of most population growth. That's just sensible, isn't it?

 

Paul

[Dunsignalling]

London became the first "post-industrial" city in the 1960s. It was formerly home to major import and export docks, substantial manufacturing industry (JAP engines in Tottenham, to pull an example at random, were the largest manufacturer of proprietary engines in the world; Matchless and AJS motorcycles, at Plumstead, exported worldwide; Royal Enfield, manufacturers of motorcycles, small arms and other engineering; and many more).

 

Between 1960 and 1970, all of this vanished. Most of it had been driven into the ground between 1930 and 1945 and austerity (REAL, 1950s style Austerity) finished the job.

 

Don't hold your breath, waiting for investment. One obvious lesson of the EU is that the State-interventionist capitalist systems there, particularly Germany, France and Holland, produce much more in the way of actual results than our system. If our system could do that, it would already have done so...

Your last paragraph sums up the situation admirably and we can only hope that wiser counsels will prevail when it becomes apparent to the political class that the London economy cannot continue to grow indefinitely without reaching a point where it cannot be serviced adequately at reasonable cost. 

 

Unfortunately, in this country, taking the kind of uncomfortable decisions that will emerge from that realisation tends to be governed by the spacing of General Elections. 

 

Whilst I seldom agreed with the gentleman who coined the term "Northern Powerhouse", he did recognise that providing the wherewithal to stimulate economic activity in other parts of the nation to approach London levels is ultimately necessary for the well-being of the capital, too. 

 

John

[Bernard Lamb]

Figures in the Guardian today suggest that public spending on transport in London is around £1600/head whereas for the rest of the UK it is around £450. It is arguable that the poor economic performance of the rest of the UK compared to London is in part due to the lack of investment.

Just regarding the transport point.

That is taking a rather limited view of the actual situation.

If you add in private spending on transport in the provinces you get a clearer picture.

In London people are being encouraged not to have cars and to be supplied with an efficient affordable system of public transport to even further reduce the need for private cars. Getting the balance right seems to be the problem, with too many vested interests trying to prevent improvements.

Bernard

[Chris116]

The scandal linked to the Waterloo Eurostar station is that the planners knew at least five years before Eurostar moved to St Pancras and the builders should have been starting work a day later not waiting all this time to do what was obviously needed.

[melmerby]

London became the first "post-industrial" city in the 1960s. It was formerly home to major import and export docks, substantial manufacturing industry (JAP engines in Tottenham, to pull an example at random, were the largest manufacturer of proprietary engines in the world; Matchless and AJS motorcycles, at Plumstead, exported worldwide; Royal Enfield, manufacturers of motorcycles, small arms and other engineering; and many more).

 

 

Where in London were Royal Enfield?

Redditch, Worcestershire actually, AFAIK they never were in London! The ancestors of the company started in Birmingham.

 

Keith

[rockershovel]

Where in London were Royal Enfield?

Redditch, Worcestershire actually, AFAIK they never were in London! The ancestors of the company started in Birmingham.

 

Keith

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Small_Arms_Factory

 

Royal Enfield had a long and complex history!

[leopardml2341]

And includes trips like people popping a mile down the road to the service station shop for a pint of milk which isn't the sort of thing that rail travel is designed for.

 

John

Exactly, and neither are cars when used by people capable of walking - that's what legs are for!

 

Might also help the NHS budgets (as they were mentioned) as well.

 

Hat, coat and walking......