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Post by mre81 on Dec 4, 2012 19:02:20 GMT
'mredd' - as I said in a previous post, it would not be a new Brixton branch. The Overground line passes over the Southern line platforms to Orpington at Brixton, same thing at Loughborough Junction - the Overground line passes over the Thameslink platforms. Using the disused East Brixton station, that's already on the Overground line. The South East has much fewer links and connections when compared to North London and whilst Brixton has a good bus network, both it & Loughborough Junction are becoming very important places as people move out from Central London to Brixton & Loughborough Junction as they have cheaper house prices and rental prices than the City and are a short distance from the City. I meant a new branch on the Overground, not new track. The ELL will be basically at capacity with the new Clapham Junction branch, so very little capacity to run it down there. Reducing trains on there isn't really an option either - in the peaks they're absolutely crammed full. Of course, a lot of areas are as important as Brixton but don't have half as good transport links. I'm fully aware of the gentrification of the South East, I live here East London has fairly few transport links in comparison to places the South East, and in fact I find the East London transport is crammed twice as full as that of most of South East London. Central London's obviously a different case, hence why the Victoria line ends up crammed up - but the 25 seems to be permanently full at all times of day, and it has a PVR of 59. I do hope that Crossrail will eventually alleviate that, but I can't see why TFL would keep prioritising the South East - we have fairly good transport down here. The importance of providing stations at Brixton and Lougborough Junction would not necessarily be to provide additional transport options for people living there, who as you rightly point out are already well served. The importance would be providing interchanges: that way people who live further out on these lines could easily transfer to other lines. For instance: Peckham Rye-Vauxhall, which at the moment, would involve complicated interchanges and backtracking. Whereas if Overground an station were built at Brixton would be a simple one stop change. South London is extremely poorly provisioned with cross-line interchanges, a legacy of all the overground lines being built by competing companies. The London Bridge-East Croydon line crosses the Kent Coast Main Line, the Nunhead-Lewisham Line and the Catford Loop Line without any interchanges- madness! If I want to get from say, Norwood Junction to Bromley South, it's nigh on impossible by train, unless I go all the way into Victoria and back out again. which would take about an hour, and geographically take me about 10 miles out of my way. As I said, madness! Anyway I'll get off my soapbox now
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 19:26:56 GMT
I meant a new branch on the Overground, not new track. The ELL will be basically at capacity with the new Clapham Junction branch, so very little capacity to run it down there. Reducing trains on there isn't really an option either - in the peaks they're absolutely crammed full. Of course, a lot of areas are as important as Brixton but don't have half as good transport links. I'm fully aware of the gentrification of the South East, I live here East London has fairly few transport links in comparison to places the South East, and in fact I find the East London transport is crammed twice as full as that of most of South East London. Central London's obviously a different case, hence why the Victoria line ends up crammed up - but the 25 seems to be permanently full at all times of day, and it has a PVR of 59. I do hope that Crossrail will eventually alleviate that, but I can't see why TFL would keep prioritising the South East - we have fairly good transport down here. The importance of providing stations at Brixton and Lougborough Junction would not necessarily be to provide additional transport options for people living there, who as you rightly point out are already well served. The importance would be providing interchanges: that way people who live further out on these lines could easily transfer to other lines. For instance: Peckham Rye-Vauxhall, which at the moment, would involve complicated interchanges and backtracking. Whereas if Overground an station were built at Brixton would be a simple one stop change. South London is extremely poorly provisioned with cross-line interchanges, a legacy of all the overground lines being built by competing companies. The London Bridge-East Croydon line crosses the Kent Coast Main Line, the Nunhead-Lewisham Line and the Catford Loop Line without any interchanges- madness! If I want to get from say, Norwood Junction to Bromley South, it's nigh on impossible by train, unless I go all the way into Victoria and back out again. which would take about an hour, and geographically take me about 10 miles out of my way. As I said, madness! Anyway I'll get off my soapbox now I hate to point this out, but Peckham Rye to Vauxhall would be a train to Clapham Junction and then the new Overground branch - not much different to changing at Brixton (albeit a bit slower). I agree getting from A to B by rail in South London can be awful, though it's partly because there's so many branches of Southern and Southeastern rail that only a limited service can actually be run to each of them. I personally think it's silly to run Southeastern services out of Victoria, really as many as possible should run from London Bridge, and then as many Southern as possible from London Victoria. The crossover is part of the problem for such awful interchanges, and also the fact there's no direct London Victoria - London Bridge link, which seems frankly odd to me. In an ideal world, only slow trains via Forest Hill would run up to London Bridge, and everything else would run to Victoria - there's no real need to run fast trains up the Brighton Main Line. The fast Kent trains could then run to London Bridge somehow, and only the slow Orpington - Victorias would have from Victoria. However, the track isn't built to make that possible, and the only way a Bromley train could get up to London Bridge is via the slow Hayes branch which isn't suitable for fast trains. A shame, really.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 19:48:46 GMT
Southeastern operates train services to/from Brixton- not Southern Another idea could be to reopen the unused platforms at Brixton, the ones on the rarely used branch to Denmark Hill (most trains use the branch that goes over CPW and Vodafone) What rarely used branch to Denmark Hill? The green line is the line used around 85% of the time, currently. The yellow line is the rarely used line to Denmark Hill, used only if work if being carried out on the green line or by some express trains, I think. The disused platforms on that line are in a bit of a state, but reopening them would be a lot cheaper than creating new platforms on the green line. The only PITA I can think of is that it means a lot more trains using the junction at Brixton.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 20:04:08 GMT
Yes, that area gets all the Kent fast trains as well as the Victoria via Nunhead ones. Of course, if the Kent fast trains all ran into London Bridge, the problem wouldn't exist, c'est la vie.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 20:41:39 GMT
Yes, that area gets all the Kent fast trains as well as the Victoria via Nunhead ones. Of course, if the Kent fast trains all ran into London Bridge, the problem wouldn't exist, c'est la vie. London Victoria to Dartford (via Nunhead) trains use the overhead lines. It's the Orpington line that would cause problems, but yes, c'est la vie!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 20:45:51 GMT
Yes, that area gets all the Kent fast trains as well as the Victoria via Nunhead ones. Of course, if the Kent fast trains all ran into London Bridge, the problem wouldn't exist, c'est la vie. London Victoria to Dartford (via Nunhead) trains use the overhead lines. It's the Orpington line that would cause problems, but yes, c'est la vie! It's not the slow Dartford ones that are so much of a problem, there aren't that many of them - saying that, that'll be the line along which the Overground will be eventually running, so there couldn't be too many running along that stretch. The fast and slow Bromley trains would be something to contend with though won't be quite so easy to divert them via Catford if the Denmark Hill section will be given 4 extra trains an hour through the Overground.
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Post by mre81 on Dec 4, 2012 22:25:18 GMT
The importance of providing stations at Brixton and Lougborough Junction would not necessarily be to provide additional transport options for people living there, who as you rightly point out are already well served. The importance would be providing interchanges: that way people who live further out on these lines could easily transfer to other lines. For instance: Peckham Rye-Vauxhall, which at the moment, would involve complicated interchanges and backtracking. Whereas if Overground an station were built at Brixton would be a simple one stop change. South London is extremely poorly provisioned with cross-line interchanges, a legacy of all the overground lines being built by competing companies. The London Bridge-East Croydon line crosses the Kent Coast Main Line, the Nunhead-Lewisham Line and the Catford Loop Line without any interchanges- madness! If I want to get from say, Norwood Junction to Bromley South, it's nigh on impossible by train, unless I go all the way into Victoria and back out again. which would take about an hour, and geographically take me about 10 miles out of my way. As I said, madness! Anyway I'll get off my soapbox now I hate to point this out, but Peckham Rye to Vauxhall would be a train to Clapham Junction and then the new Overground branch - not much different to changing at Brixton (albeit a bit slower). I agree getting from A to B by rail in South London can be awful, though it's partly because there's so many branches of Southern and Southeastern rail that only a limited service can actually be run to each of them. I personally think it's silly to run Southeastern services out of Victoria, really as many as possible should run from London Bridge, and then as many Southern as possible from London Victoria. The crossover is part of the problem for such awful interchanges, and also the fact there's no direct London Victoria - London Bridge link, which seems frankly odd to me. In an ideal world, only slow trains via Forest Hill would run up to London Bridge, and everything else would run to Victoria - there's no real need to run fast trains up the Brighton Main Line. The fast Kent trains could then run to London Bridge somehow, and only the slow Orpington - Victorias would have from Victoria. However, the track isn't built to make that possible, and the only way a Bromley train could get up to London Bridge is via the slow Hayes branch which isn't suitable for fast trains. A shame, really. Okay, I'll give you the Peckham Rye-Vauxhall example is probably not the best, but there are loads of other journies that woudl benefit, and take pressure off existing lines. However, I'm not sure your idea of taking all the Southern fast trains from London Bridge is that great. Think of all those commuters working in the City who live in Horsham, Haywards Heath, Uckfield, Brighton etc who would be severly miffed at that! Southern passengers are quite lucky that all London trains go through East Croydon, but it's already chaos there in the morning peak! The trouble with Southeastern is there's no common interchange like East Croydon. A result of being built by two companies - South Eastern and London, Chatham & Dover Railways - Southern was one company to start with, the London, Brighton & South Coast. None of the Southeastern lines are unified. I quite sure you could drop a Victorian on that network, and he'd see the service patterns are largely similar to thos of 125 years ago!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2012 22:48:29 GMT
Yes, I agree it's partly because there's no common interchange. It's partly because Bromley South trains and the Lewisham area trains practically run as two different networks. There's very little interchange between the two at all, and so getting to a destination on one from a train serving the rail hub on the other is very hard.
I'm sure commuters wouldn't be that peeed at being diverted to Victoria. Victoria has the District, Victoria and Circle lines - hardly totally awful links. It would make sense to run all of Southern's trains into one terminus, and all of Southeastern's trains into one terminus - Waterloo with SWT seems to do ok. Passengers from Haywards Heath and Brighton have FCC anyway - I rarely see Southern running Brighton trains through Forest Hill because their Brighton services mainly run out of Victoria. The only other trains aside that are slow trains via Forest Hill, and hourly services which it wouldn't be the end of the world if they were diverted. As for Horsham, there's already trains to Victoria from there. 16 Southern trains per hour run to London Bridge, and 11 Southeastern trains per hour run to London Victoria, so in theory it would be possible for them to swap. Of course, it wouldn't really be a problem if there was a decent link between Victoria and London Bridge, if the two TOCs are to share the stations. As it happens, there's not even a bus route that does it, and it's one change on the Tube to achieve.
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Post by vjaska on Dec 5, 2012 1:36:47 GMT
At Brixton, you have three main services that serve the station using two bridges which I'll refer to by the shops they travel over - the 'Marks & Spencer' bridge which is the low one & the 'Carphone Warehouse/Vodaphone' bridge which is the high one. You have the Southeastern service (thanks to 'binpod' for pointing that out I missed out the 'eastern' bit ) from Victoria to Orpington that uses the low bridge and heads alongside Atlantic Road, the Catford Loop service from Victoria to Catford that uses the low bridge and passes by the disused platform & the Overground that uses the high bridge which passes right over the station. The disused platform is also served by fast express trains as mentioned by someone else earlier and was also used for the Eurostar when it was at Waterloo. The Overground couldn't use the disused platform as that side of tracks is for Southeastern services & the Catford Loop heading to Victoria, which both do not serve Clapham Hight Street, Wandsworth Road or Battersea Park. East Brixton is always a possibility as it's on the Overground line and there is space to build a new station where the old one stood.
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Post by mre81 on Dec 5, 2012 22:19:13 GMT
Yes, I agree it's partly because there's no common interchange. It's partly because Bromley South trains and the Lewisham area trains practically run as two different networks. There's very little interchange between the two at all, and so getting to a destination on one from a train serving the rail hub on the other is very hard. I'm sure commuters wouldn't be that peeed at being diverted to Victoria. Victoria has the District, Victoria and Circle lines - hardly totally awful links. It would make sense to run all of Southern's trains into one terminus, and all of Southeastern's trains into one terminus - Waterloo with SWT seems to do ok. Passengers from Haywards Heath and Brighton have FCC anyway - I rarely see Southern running Brighton trains through Forest Hill because their Brighton services mainly run out of Victoria. The only other trains aside that are slow trains via Forest Hill, and hourly services which it wouldn't be the end of the world if they were diverted. As for Horsham, there's already trains to Victoria from there. 16 Southern trains per hour run to London Bridge, and 11 Southeastern trains per hour run to London Victoria, so in theory it would be possible for them to swap. Of course, it wouldn't really be a problem if there was a decent link between Victoria and London Bridge, if the two TOCs are to share the stations. As it happens, there's not even a bus route that does it, and it's one change on the Tube to achieve. I suggest you head to London Bridge in the rush hour and take a straw poll of commuters. See how many of them would be happy to go to Victoria instead and take the tube As one of them, I can tell you that I for one would be seriously displeased! Don't forget most of them have the option of going to Victoria, but go to London Bridge instead. As for the fast lines from East Croydon to London Bridge not being well used. Well, in addition to the 4 Thameslink trains per hour, you also have 2 each per hour to Horsham, Tonbridge, Reigate, Tattenham Corner, plus one per hour to Uckfield. As someone who uses these services pretty regularly I can categorically tell you they are well used! Plus you have four central London termini, rather than two. Victoria, Charing X, Cannon Street and London Bridge (five if you include Blackfriars). The decent solution would be to give all Southeastern services from Victoria to Southern. Southeastern seem to operate pretty much as two units anyway, sticking to historical patterns (S.E from Charing X/Cannon St, and LCDR from Victoria), so it probably wouldn't be too tricky. Hell, while we're at it, Southeastern are sh*te, we might as well give all their services to Southern. I bet Southeasterns passengers would be pleased with their cheaper, cleaner, more reliable services ;D
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2012 22:47:48 GMT
At Brixton, you have three main services that serve the station using two bridges which I'll refer to by the shops they travel over - the 'Marks & Spencer' bridge which is the low one & the 'Carphone Warehouse/Vodaphone' bridge which is the high one. You have the Southeastern service (thanks to 'binpod' for pointing that out I missed out the 'eastern' bit ) from Victoria to Orpington that uses the low bridge and heads alongside Atlantic Road, the Catford Loop service from Victoria to Catford that uses the low bridge and passes by the disused platform & the Overground that uses the high bridge which passes right over the station. The disused platform is also served by fast express trains as mentioned by someone else earlier and was also used for the Eurostar when it was at Waterloo. The Overground couldn't use the disused platform as that side of tracks is for Southeastern services & the Catford Loop heading to Victoria, which both do not serve Clapham Hight Street, Wandsworth Road or Battersea Park. East Brixton is always a possibility as it's on the Overground line and there is space to build a new station where the old one stood. I'm pretty sure any services that stop or pass Denmark Hill use the M&S bridge, apart from the express services which IIRC are very infrequent anyways. Eurostar trains used the Orpington line, I used to live to live next to that line, the noise the Eurostars makes was horrendous.
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Post by vjaska on Dec 6, 2012 2:29:35 GMT
At Brixton, you have three main services that serve the station using two bridges which I'll refer to by the shops they travel over - the 'Marks & Spencer' bridge which is the low one & the 'Carphone Warehouse/Vodaphone' bridge which is the high one. You have the Southeastern service (thanks to 'binpod' for pointing that out I missed out the 'eastern' bit ) from Victoria to Orpington that uses the low bridge and heads alongside Atlantic Road, the Catford Loop service from Victoria to Catford that uses the low bridge and passes by the disused platform & the Overground that uses the high bridge which passes right over the station. The disused platform is also served by fast express trains as mentioned by someone else earlier and was also used for the Eurostar when it was at Waterloo. The Overground couldn't use the disused platform as that side of tracks is for Southeastern services & the Catford Loop heading to Victoria, which both do not serve Clapham Hight Street, Wandsworth Road or Battersea Park. East Brixton is always a possibility as it's on the Overground line and there is space to build a new station where the old one stood. I'm pretty sure any services that stop or pass Denmark Hill use the M&S bridge, apart from the express services which IIRC are very infrequent anyways. Eurostar trains used the Orpington line, I used to live to live next to that line, the noise the Eurostars makes was horrendous. The Catford Loop uses the Marks & Spencer bridge whilst the Southern/soon to be Overground service uses the other bridge, with freight trains using both bridges and express trains using the Marks & Spencer bridge. It's been that way for years. Your right about the Eurostar, remember seeing them pass through Herne Hill. I love loud stuff and I remember loving the racket they made as they trundled over the Marks & Spencer bridge in Brixton ;D.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2012 8:07:31 GMT
I'm pretty sure any services that stop or pass Denmark Hill use the M&S bridge, apart from the express services which IIRC are very infrequent anyways. Eurostar trains used the Orpington line, I used to live to live next to that line, the noise the Eurostars makes was horrendous. The Catford Loop uses the Marks & Spencer bridge whilst the Southern/soon to be Overground service uses the other bridge, with freight trains using both bridges and express trains using the Marks & Spencer bridge. It's been that way for years. Your right about the Eurostar, remember seeing them pass through Herne Hill. I love loud stuff and I remember loving the racket they made as they trundled over the Marks & Spencer bridge in Brixton ;D. Since when did the Catford Loop service depart from Victoria?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2012 10:27:13 GMT
Yes, I agree it's partly because there's no common interchange. It's partly because Bromley South trains and the Lewisham area trains practically run as two different networks. There's very little interchange between the two at all, and so getting to a destination on one from a train serving the rail hub on the other is very hard. I'm sure commuters wouldn't be that peeed at being diverted to Victoria. Victoria has the District, Victoria and Circle lines - hardly totally awful links. It would make sense to run all of Southern's trains into one terminus, and all of Southeastern's trains into one terminus - Waterloo with SWT seems to do ok. Passengers from Haywards Heath and Brighton have FCC anyway - I rarely see Southern running Brighton trains through Forest Hill because their Brighton services mainly run out of Victoria. The only other trains aside that are slow trains via Forest Hill, and hourly services which it wouldn't be the end of the world if they were diverted. As for Horsham, there's already trains to Victoria from there. 16 Southern trains per hour run to London Bridge, and 11 Southeastern trains per hour run to London Victoria, so in theory it would be possible for them to swap. Of course, it wouldn't really be a problem if there was a decent link between Victoria and London Bridge, if the two TOCs are to share the stations. As it happens, there's not even a bus route that does it, and it's one change on the Tube to achieve. I suggest you head to London Bridge in the rush hour and take a straw poll of commuters. See how many of them would be happy to go to Victoria instead and take the tube As one of them, I can tell you that I for one would be seriously displeased! Don't forget most of them have the option of going to Victoria, but go to London Bridge instead. As for the fast lines from East Croydon to London Bridge not being well used. Well, in addition to the 4 Thameslink trains per hour, you also have 2 each per hour to Horsham, Tonbridge, Reigate, Tattenham Corner, plus one per hour to Uckfield. As someone who uses these services pretty regularly I can categorically tell you they are well used! Plus you have four central London termini, rather than two. Victoria, Charing X, Cannon Street and London Bridge (five if you include Blackfriars). The decent solution would be to give all Southeastern services from Victoria to Southern. Southeastern seem to operate pretty much as two units anyway, sticking to historical patterns (S.E from Charing X/Cannon St, and LCDR from Victoria), so it probably wouldn't be too tricky. Hell, while we're at it, Southeastern are sh*te, we might as well give all their services to Southern. I bet Southeasterns passengers would be pleased with their cheaper, cleaner, more reliable services ;D I would certainly be pleased if all Southeastern's services went to Southern - but given the Victoria trains via Bromley South stretch right down to Dover/Ashford International I doubt Southeastern would want to share the area with Southern! I didn't mean they weren't used at all - I meant there weren't that many Southern services running into London Bridge relative to Victoria. The Horsham would stay anyway as it serves intermediate stops on at Norwood Junction and New Cross Gate. Tattenham Corner has no alternative service to Victoria, so there's no judging if that would be more popular. Tonbridge would still have a service to London Bridge in the form of Southeastern. I'm only really suggesting the Reigate/Tonbridge/Uckfield/Tattenham Corner are moved over. Horsham/Caterham via Forest Hill would stay as they serve intermediate stops anyway. There's peak Tattenham Corner services to Victoria anyway, and they're not unpopular. The only place that would really suffer would be Reigate, in that respect. The Uckfield service is pretty irregular and never seems to be that heavily loaded when it passes down the Brighton Main Line at Forest Hill. Of course, the total lack of a direct London Victoria - London Bridge link means it's not justifiable anyway - there's not even a bus service let alone a Tube line.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2012 10:28:15 GMT
The Catford Loop uses the Marks & Spencer bridge whilst the Southern/soon to be Overground service uses the other bridge, with freight trains using both bridges and express trains using the Marks & Spencer bridge. It's been that way for years. Your right about the Eurostar, remember seeing them pass through Herne Hill. I love loud stuff and I remember loving the racket they made as they trundled over the Marks & Spencer bridge in Brixton ;D. Since when did the Catford Loop service depart from Victoria? The Catford Loop service only departs from Victoria on Sundays. On Saturdays it terminates at Blackfriars and on Mon-Fri it runs through to Kentish Town. Catford Loop has never regularly terminated at Victoria to my knowledge, in all the time I've lived in the area it's turned up from Denmark Hill to Elephant and Blackfriars, thought the through Kentish Town link is relatively new. I'm pretty sure any services that stop or pass Denmark Hill use the M&S bridge, apart from the express services which IIRC are very infrequent anyways. Eurostar trains used the Orpington line, I used to live to live next to that line, the noise the Eurostars makes was horrendous. Apart from Catford Loop services which turn up to Elephant and Blackfriars
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