Boring matters

Things that we know in principle how to do (put a man on the Moon, decode the human genome, make smaller microchips) are usually achieved ahead of schedule, while declared objectives for things that we don’t really understand (fixing the economy, creating the semantic web) take much longer than projected, or get shelved indefinitely. What is possible theoretically is often do-able now, and we’re impatient creatures. Transport is one such candidate. In principle we know how to build railways, high speed ones and underground ones, and while in recent months we have read of UK rail proposals estimated for completion in a couple of decades or so hence, we need these facilities – or sensible versions of them - now. So I hope the tendency to unexpected earlier achievement, as described above, will pertain.

Building new lines will be the easy part; agreeing on them will be less easy. What we don’t appear to have is joined-up thinking, a national integrated transport infrastructure plan that can consider all the options - the country-wide, regional and local ones, the schemes for roads, rail and air travel - and put them all together, rationally and synergistically. I’m sure it isn’t easy, even without financial, political and environmental constraints, and I’ve no doubt that some very able minds are addressing the issue. Meanwhile, what we have currently are lots of proposals that don’t add up, that don’t sit comfortably together, that compete with, conflict with, and laugh at each other.

A few weeks ago I wrote about some of the absurdities of the initial HS2 proposals and their apparent aversion to connectivity with the rest of the rail network, and to city centres and airports. At the moment HS2 is certainly creating a great deal of comment and complaint across considerable swathes of our green and pleasant, and I hope in due course a better alternative will gain in prominence and favour. HS2 has national implications, but now, I want to highlight a particular issue that threatens to hinder rail developments within the capital. Here, we’re talking split personalities and the deeply boring.

When the various railway companies wanted to bring their lines into London in the nineteenth century, in most cases they were banned from entering the central area, or found it too expensive or disruptive to do so, giving us a peripheral ring of termini as their legacy. This meant that anyone wanting to reach destinations within the centre, unless within walking distance, had to change to another mode of transport, often the Underground, to complete their journey. Similar situations afflicted many other cities, and have been partially resolved in some places by funneling suburban rail services through the centre, as with the S-Bahn systems in Munich and Berlin, and the RER in Paris. Crossrail, due to open in 2018, will do the same for London, as will the eventually upgraded Thameslink, within the scope of their respective geographies.

So far so good, but there is a potential problem. Debate still rages about how far out of town Crossrail should go; should its western terminus, for instance, be at Maidenhead or Reading? Whatever the answer, there are benefits for the exurban commuter while the in-town section – say that between Paddington and Whitechapel – is threatened with additional congestion. Crossrail - its tunnels bored to main line diameters and the RER its immediate inspiration - is thus attempting to be both a main line railway and an urban metro.

Evidently, the Crossrail philosophy is starting to have an effect on thinking about future projects. Thanks to projected estimates of passenger flow, fears about the capacity of Waterloo and other factors, Crossrail 2, formerly the Chelsea-Hackney line first proposed well over half a century ago, is transforming into something originally not intended. The clichéd new name is itself a giveaway. The original idea was that it would serve areas of inner London (King’s Road, Chelsea, and the Dalston-Hackney area) as well as providing another useful link across the centre and beefing up services along the District Line tracks between Fulham and Wimbledon. Now, it’s seen increasingly as doing all of those things but also of relieving suburban services out of Waterloo and Liverpool Street. Can it meet both objectives? Do they necessarily conflict, or do they complement each other? Who knows, but the implication is that tunnels large enough for main line trains will be necessary. It’s no longer being thought of as a tube line. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, and it’s extremely important that the added complexities, beyond the original scope, all the myriad permutations involving locations such as Clapham Junction and Tooting Broadway and Euston are considered fully. Whatever the final decision, one hopes that it won’t follow a protracted period of dithering. We need something like this right now.

With a completely new line there should be nothing to stand in the way of doing the right thing, of balancing the options and coming to the best decision, whether a compromise or a move that firmly excludes alternatives. With an existing line, it isn’t so easy. For a long while there has been  a suggestion that the Bakerloo should be extended southwards from its existing terminus at the Elephant & Castle. Rumour has it that an appropriate stretch of tunnel already exists beneath the Walworth Road. Obvious additional stations, according to conventional Underground thinking, are Walworth, Camberwell Green and perhaps Peckham Rye. But now Bromley, Hayes and other traditional “Southern Region” destinations, places much further out,  are mooted ambitions for trains that will have to negotiate the small bore tube tunnels of the existing Bakerloo Line. Camberwell and the rest may suffer in consequence, and may miss out altogether, perceived as insufficiently lucrative, regardless of their social needs and habitual traffic congestion. Likewise the DLR to various proposed destinations – Euston, Oxford Circus, Victoria – in central London. What exactly is this amphibious Dockland creature trying to morph into?

While it’s good that these sort of suggestions are being made, sometimes we appear to be trying to do several things at once, the right hand unaware of what the left hand is doing. As with HS2 and national airports policy, someone needs to sit down and think it all through properly. Let’s get on with it, deeply boring though it ….zzzzzzzzz