Cross your Heart (and hope to ride)
The new Elizabeth line crosses the heart of London, but where should it go next?
Fifteen years on from its approval (and 79 years on from its first appearence in the 1943 County of London Plan), London’s Crossrail project is finally wrapping up.
On the 24th October, the Elizabeth line platforms at Bond Street will be opened up to the shoppers of Oxford Street, providing interchange for passengers with the Jubilee and Central lines. Two weeks later, on the 6th November, trains will whisk their first passengers from Shenfield and Stratford right across the heart of London to Paddington. Likewise, the city folk in Canary Wharf and the Square Mile will, for the first time, have direct access to the most important international hub in Europe at London Heathrow.
Though designed as a single line, it will actually operate as two:
Half of the services will start from Shenfield, join the core at Whitechapel and terminate at Paddington.
The remainder will run on the branch from Abbey Wood, join the core at Whitechapel, and split west of Paddington, with some services travelling onwards towards Heathrow, and others along the Great Western Mainline to Maidenhead and Reading.
Whilst I would love to dive deep into the service patterns of the new line, the good people at London Reconnections have already done so. So instead, I want to focus on the future, and where the line could connect to next.
Bang for Buck
Astute readers will have realised by now, that when it comes to extending the Elizabeth line, there’s an obvious place to start. As planned, half of the trains through the core get cut short at Paddington, and extending these services further westwards would grant extra services and capacity for West London without the need for new infrastructure underneath the city centre.
To a certain extent, a westwards extension is already planned for all currently terminating services; High Speed 2, the company constructing a new intercity line from London to Birmingham and beyond, will deliver a station at Old Oak Common as part of its first phase. All Elizabeth line services will call at this new major interchange, opening up easy access to the city for those travelling in from afar on the new high speed services.
Nevertheless, this still leaves around half of services available for westward extensions. One suggestion on how to use these slots was provided by Network Rail (NR) in their aptly titled 2011 report, ‘London and South East Route Utilisation Study’: an extension to Tring.
At Old Oak, the Elizabeth line is just 750 metres south of the West Coast Mainline from London Euston (a line it should be noted that HS2 is trying to relieve). A short chord connecting the two lines would enable Elizabeth line services to take over the slow ‘local’ lines towards Watford and Tring, and perhaps onwards to Milton Keynes, with up to 8 trains per hour traversing the line to provide new direct connectivity through central London. Despite the urban environment and new tunneling required to enable the connection, NR have previously identified possible options for the alignment.
The business case for such an extension should be relatively strong, with NR assessing its Benefit-Cost Ratio to be around 2.2-2.6, and likely higher when accounting for any induced demand. Such are the benefits of providing new services directly through the centre of London by taking advantage of the route core that is now there; most of the infrastructure costs have already been sunk.
A further benefit of a Tring-wards expansion is the relief provided at London Euston. Originally, it was envisioned that the additional eight hourly platform slots freed up would make it easier for HS2 to redevelop the terminus for high speed trains, but given the decision last year to reduce the new station’s footprint, this is no longer as much of an issue. One problem Euston will still have, is how to manage with the large uptick in footfall as a result of HS2’s opening, which will likely push passenger numbers to, if not beyond, station capacity limits - particularly when the main relief for onwards passengers at Euston, Crossrail 2, is indefinitely paused. Any services that can instead shift passengers towards Old Oak Common should be welcomed.
Crossing the Chilterns
The West Coast Mainline isn’t the only line that runs in close proximity to Old Oak Common. A freight line runs from the site to Ruislip, where it joins the Chiltern mainline that runs through High Wycombe. As an alternative to a WCML link, Elizabeth line services could take over the stopping services through the Chilterns. The main hurdle to such an extension is the electrification required in order to enable Elizabeth line services to traverse the currently diesel line, though needless to say, rail electrification is something that should be progressed wholesale in any case. Whilst this route would also provide new through services, as well as releasing valuable terminating capacity for long-distance services at Marylebone, it’s unlikely to be as transformational as a WCML connection due to lower passenger numbers on the route.
Airport Approaches
London Heathrow has had its fair share of infrastructure proposals over the years: a third and possible fourth runway, AirRail proposals to link it to Gatwick, and even conversion of the entire site into a new city following a decampment of airlines to the Thames Estuary. It seems the only proposal to have born fruit was the opening of the Elizabeth line, allowing international arrivals to be delivered directly into the city centre.
At current, trains from Heathrow run only one way - towards London. Southern and Western rail access have long been mooted, with the main stumbling block usually being agreement on who would foot the bill. The westwards connection, in particular, was looking highly likely to be delivered this decade - right up until the Covid-19 pandemic delayed submission of the necessary Development Consent Order.
The Crossrail programme has meant that the majority of trains that now serve Heathrow each hour are Elizabeth line ones, having absorbed some services from Great Western, as well as providing an overall uplift. Given the limited capacity available at the aiport for rail services, and to make the most of existing infrastructure, it would be wise to extend Elizabeth line services across any new rail lines that might be delivered. Such a service might look like this:
Eastward Expansion
If any extension is to happen, it will most likely be in the east. East London and Thames-side councils have been vocal lobbyists for taking the Elizabeth line out to Kent, and ongoing consultations continue to refine options of how to link to it. Extending services onwards from Abbey Wood, through Dartford, and on to Ebbsfleet and Gravesend would give Kentish communities faster and more frequent access to Canary Wharf and the Square Mile, as well as integrating with High Speed 1 and Eurostar services for the continent at Ebbsfleet.
Of all the proposals, this is the one that requires the most new rail, and as such, it won’t be cheap. The latest estimates put the cost of four-tracking, signalling changes, and station upgrades at around £3bn.
Slotting in Stations
Laying down steel isn’t the only way to extend the Elizbaeth line’s reach. Within its current boundaries, there are two long inter-station gaps that are well suited for new stops, but not quite well-suited enough to have made the cut for the approved business case.
From Custom House and Woolwich, the line dives under the Royal Docks and the Thames respectively, before running along the old North Woolwich trackbed adjacent to London City Airport. Though little remains of it now, Silvertown station stood on this site until 1994. A new station here would give direct access to City Airport from two rail terminals as well as Canary Wharf and the West End (currently only Stratford and the square mile have a direct service), as well as opening up Silvertown and its rapidly growing population to wider connections.
On the other side of London, just west of Paddington, lies Kensal Green. Kensington and Chelsea Council identified a site on the Elizabeth line route for a future station here to provide access to the area in North Kensington, and support new housing developments. Though not funded for construction, the route has been built in such a way (‘plain-lined’) that no signalling or infrastructure changes are needed to the running line in order for platforms to be built here.
A Service Pattern for the Future
The Elizabeth line is designed to provide 24 trains per hour throughout its core. If all of the proposed extensions were to be built, then the future service pattern might look something like this:
All services run through the core and out into the suburbs on both sides, with no early terminations, maximising the capacity provided by the new infrastructure, and providing new direct journey opportunities.
The High Speed 2 connection at Old Oak Common gives residents of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, one-change connections to Birmingham and the North, improving journey times and providing further demand for intercity rail travel.
Public transport connections to Heathrow Airport are improved, increasing international connectivity, and reducing traffic within the vicinity.
A connection to Ebbsfleet near Gravesend links commuters from the coast and the continent to the City and the West End.
The Chiltern and West Coast mainlines would both gain slots for additional long-distance services as a result of releasing terminating capacity at Marylebone and Euston.
Whilst this might seem a large expansion, it should be relatively good value-for-money. The most expensive piece of infrastructure to enable all of this is the already-operational core, and we should be squeezing every bit of capacity out of it that we can.
As for the extensions, the Heathrow and Ebbsfleet proposals have been in the Government pipeline for years, albeit unfunded, and the north-western extension to Tring was being proposed by NR until it suffered one of the DfT’s annual project scope bonfires.
One can hope that one day you’ll be able to ride from Watford to Whitechapel, Denham to Dartford, and Stone to Staines.
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Some of the topics I might write about over the coming weeks and months:
Rail electrification and why it matters
The future of high speed rail in the UK - I have a previous piece on HS2 that you can read here
Heathrow expansion
How we repeat mistakes in British railway design
The importance of infrastructure to achieving growth