Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucky Luke
I get very wound up when I look at the way London wastes money that is sorely needed to improve its infrastructure. Partiucularly the new Shepherd's Bush Central Line station. I don't know exactly how much this cost but it was just a rebuild - not even a new station - to relieve some congestion. The station footprint did not have to be so gargantuan. Why the overblown enormous empty glass box? A simple hole in the ground would have sufficed, to free up valuable central London real estate at the surface. So a waste of money and of space. The station does not even have underground interchange with the Overground station next door. London wastes money on unnecessary things, whilst leaving vast swathes of London without service, poor service, and overinflated (!) fares. Rather like the JLE - similarly a huge waste on monumental architecture, rather than providing services elsewhere. Why - in a city that never stops pleading poverty? Rant over...
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Interesting input; Shepherd's Bush (Central Line) was given a complete re-build to coincide with the opening of the Westfield London shopping centre. For those not in the know, Westfield London is the largest urban area indoor shopping centre in Europe which opened in 2008.
To cope with the expected increase in footfall Westfield paid to re-build the station, so hardly a waste of Londoners money.
Of course it would have been even better to have the two Shepherd's Bush stations (Central Line + West London Line) united as one, but the cost to re-bore the escalators down to the Central line platforms or another underground tunnel would have been astronomical. The stations are also directly opposite, so any time-savings would have been in seconds.
The following Google Street View (possibly from 2007) shows the Central line station to the left and the West London line station to the right (there is a bus station in-between):
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&hq...45.14,,0,5.47).
The new Central line station is a massive improvement over the previous station, and Westfield paid for it, I don't really see any reason to complain here.
There are some 600 heavy rail stations, 1,200km of route track, and thousands of km of track within London, second only to Tokyo, so coverage isn't really the problem. Obviously the London rail networkit isn't perfect otherwise this thread wouldn't be required, and works such as Thameslink, Crosrail, DLR Extensions and East London Line Extension are testament to improvements being made.
The errors of the 70's and 80's where investment was lacking are now being corrected. Stations are being modernised at a rapid rate, new rolling stock is starting to roll out, signalling systems are being overhauled, and extensions and new lines are being built. London is experiencing the largest modernisation project on the planet.
Also, the majority of the cost for the Jubilee Line Extension wasn't borne by the massive stations, but the tunnelling.
Come 2017, the London rail network will be drastically different to the current setup, with delays culled, capacity expanded by 30% across the network, frequencies improved, and journey times reduced. A breakdown by line of how the network is being transformed is available here:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/proj...mes/10127.aspx
There is of course much more work to be done and there should be no complacency. After the modernisation of the tube, and the completition of Crossrail, the ELLE & Thameslink, work needs to begin on additional Crossrail lines to ease the congestion at London's 13 rail termini. There could be potentially 8 Crossrail lines.
Fares wise, London can be expensive, but it is mostly reasonable. Such a vast network isn't easy to run especially when other countries offer greater subsidies.