TfL wish list

[Basil Jet]

RAIL has a sizeable article about TfL's aspirations. Most of it is
fairly predictable, but a few items stuck out.

*Improvements on the Greenford to West Ruislip corridor

Huh? If they are talking about Chiltern's aspirations to run to Old Oak
Common, wouldn't they say "South Ruislip to Acton Wells" or something
similar? Aren't the existing Central Line trains underused? Is TfL
planning to take over the West Ealing Greenford shuttle and extend it to
West Ruisip? Wouldn't it make more sense to extend it to Uxbridge
(although it would probably have to cross the Central Line a second time)?

*24tph on the East London Line

Where would they go? Would 12tph turn at New Cross? Are there paths
available on the other branches? Will they add Wimbledon and Sutton
branches via Streatham? Actually, transferring the entire Wimbledon Loop
service to the ELL might give a better match between train length and
demand, compared to the 8 carriage Thameslink service: so long as
Streatham kept a frequent Thameslink service for passengers from the
loop to Farringdon to interchange there.

* Crossrail 3

No details given. Maybe everyone is so familiar with this that it can be
just mentioned with no further explanation, but I'm not.

[r***@cix.compulink.co.uk]

Post by Basil Jet
RAIL has a sizeable article about TfL's aspirations. Most of it is
fairly predictable, but a few items stuck out.
*24tph on the East London Line
Where would they go? Would 12tph turn at New Cross? Are there paths
available on the other branches? Will they add Wimbledon and Sutton
branches via Streatham? Actually, transferring the entire Wimbledon
Loop service to the ELL might give a better match between train
length and demand, compared to the 8 carriage Thameslink service: so
long as Streatham kept a frequent Thameslink service for passengers
from the loop to Farringdon to interchange there.

But the Wimbledon Loop service only stayed on Thameslink because of huge
pressure from Sutton not to lose the services north of Blackfriars. No, I
don;t understand why either.

Post by Basil Jet
* Crossrail 3
No details given. Maybe everyone is so familiar with this that it can
be just mentioned with no further explanation, but I'm not.

Nor me.

[Paul Corfield]

Post by Basil Jet
RAIL has a sizeable article about TfL's aspirations. Most of it is
fairly predictable, but a few items stuck out.
*Improvements on the Greenford to West Ruislip corridor
*24tph on the East London Line
* Crossrail 3

I am guessing but I expect the West Ruislip - Greenford reference is about raising track and junction capacity on this section. If throw in aspirations about through trains to West Ealing or Heathrow plus extra trains down the NNL to Old Oak Common on top of Chiltern's existing services you have a bottleneck in that area. North of W Ruislip is beyond TfL's remit so they'll leave that to the DfT to resolve.

I understand TfL want 6 tph to Crystal Palace and 6 tph to Clapham Junction via Peckham. That takes total tph to 20 on the ELL core. I think 24 tph is simply an infrastructure capacity aspiration. If you invest in signalling and control then you'd go to 24 tph using ATO. I think that is what TfL are referring to and it's been their view for quite a while. They have no public aspiration to take over any bits of Thameslink and, as said by Colin, the local campaigns in S London killed off any common sense about Thameslink's service pattern a long time ago.

Crossrail 3 is a SE to NW cross London tunnelled line. It's been mentioned as the next big intervention to try to "fix" rail capacity issues in SE London. Some Assembly politicians are naturally very keen on this and the TfL Commissioner has mentioned it. Beyond that there is no detail. TfL have to get CR2 to the starting blocks and I fear that is going to be immensely difficult.