This will be my last update for a few weeks as I set off for a trip around the Far East so take it all in!
Japanese Shinkansen Trains
These are shots of the new Japanese Shinkansen that will operate out of London St Pancras from 12 December next year. At present they are on trial runs in the London area.
29 of the Hitachi trains which operate at 140mph are due to be delivered over the coming weeks. The new routes will ensure numerous Kent settlements will see journey times to London slashed and areas not conceivably connected to London made available.
During the Olympics they will also operate as 'Javelin' services ensuring that people can get from the Olympic Park to Central London in 7 minutes.
The addition of these routes means that frequencies can be increased on present routes to provide more metro-like frequencies.
Crossrail shrinks design pool with framework deals
Filed 09/12/08
http://transportbriefing.co.uk/story.php?id=5378
Twelve engineering consultants have secured a place on Crossrail's Design Framework, enabling them to compete for packages of design work on tunnels, shafts, stations, and railway systems.
The successful 12 are:
- Aedas
- Arup
- Atkins
- BDP
- Capita Symonds
- Halcrow
- Hyder Consulting
- Jacobs Engineering
- Mott MacDonald
- Parsons Brinckerhoff
- Scott Wilson Railways
- WSP
Three teams - Faber Munsell/Gifford, Mouchel and Scott Brownrigg - who were on the previously announced shortlist (Transport Briefing 25/08/08) have not been selected and so will not be eligible for work allocated within the design framework.
While a place on the framework is not a guarantee of work, each of the 12 companies is expected to be awarded contracts during the framework term, which will run until completion of the Crossrail scheme in 2017. Most are expected to team up with architectural practices for each package of work.
Commenting on the Design Framework Agreements, Dr Graham Plant, programme director at Crossrail, said: “The funding for Crossrail is secure, the necessary agreements have been signed and all partners are committed to delivery. This means that Crossrail can now move full-speed ahead towards the start of the main construction in 2010. It is clear that Crossrail has excited the construction industry and we look forward to working with the selected Design Framework Agreement companies as we drive forward the design work for this world-class railway."
Meanwhile, stage two tenders for Crossrail's programme partner contract are due to be returned this month and an announcement about the appointment is expected in early 2009. The shortlisted tenderers for stage two are Bechtel, Legacy 3 - a joint venture between Parsons Brinckerhoff, Balfour Beatty Management and Davis Langdon, and Transcend - a joint venture between AECOM, CH2M Hill and Nichols Group.
Northern Line Extension to Battersea
The latest plan for the Battersea Power Station site is for an extension for the Northern Line to help serve the site and provide better connections to the rest of London.
The Northern Line in reality is two (historically three) lines that merge to the north (at Camden Town) and south (Kennington) of Central London with a single southern branch and numerous northern branches.
There has been talk of physically seperating both into seperate lines for a good few years which would help increase frequencies and lessen delays on a line that used to be referred to as the Misery Line for its frequent problems.
This extension would take the southern terminus of the West End branch (going via Charing Cross) at Kennington where there is a loop to allow for trains to back through C London. a new route would be added on to the loop to two new stations at Wandsworth Road (on the below map the station isn't labelled, but the box is clearly visible) and Battersea.
The first in line
http://www.nce.co.uk/structures/feat...t_in_line.html
Multi-layered: The Crossrail station will comprise six levels, crowned by a park
The Isle of Dogs station will be one of the first to be built on the Crossrail network. As with other work along the line, it will bring huge challenges.
More than 90,000 people work at Canary Wharf, rivalling the Square Mile for the financial heart of London. The tallest building in the UK, One Canada Square (235m), and the cluster of brassy skyscrapers are the closest thing we have to the iconic city skyline of New York. It's fitting, then, that the place which brought the banking world into the 21st century – at least in property terms – will be connected to the development that will bring London's infrastructure into the 21st century.
"When Crossrail was revived in 2001, the Jubilee line had been open for 18 months and the development had expanded," says Canary Wharf Group transport adviser Jim Berry, who is also responsible for working with the Crossrail design team on this element. "It was natural that Crossrail should come to Canary Wharf. "It's positive not only for this area but also the East End [of London]. It improves the level of accessibility and travel times will be reduced dramatically, and it will also support future growth and support growth for housing to the east," adds Berry.
Canary Wharf Contractors (CWC) will be building a large part of the new station for Canary Wharf Group, of which it is a subsidiary. CWC will provide the shell and core (for the station) and interfacing with the rail infrastructure as it comes through. The shell of the basement needs to be in place by the time the Crossrail tunnel boring machines (TBMs) hit Canary Wharf in about four years. This will happen as they progress from the starting point at the Limmo peninsula (in the area of Canning Town) and work westwards towards Farringdon. "The size of the project is something we're quite happy to undertake, but the challenge is building it in time," admits CWC operations executive Michael Bryant.
Although the station is just one part of the overall Crossrail scheme, it is a huge project in its own right. It will take the form of a 260m-long box – as long as the tallest building at Canary Wharf. "The station [design] is like a long thin building on its side, underwater," says Bryant. "Canary Wharf is good at building tall buildings. It's big, but the magnitude doesn't hold any mysteries for us."
The box is between 27m and 30m wide and is six storeys high.
Four of these storeys will be underwater or underground as the station is being built in the north dock of West India Quay in Canary Wharf. The bottom floor of the station will be the platform level, around 22m below water level and 13m below the dock bed. Above this will be a concourse level, two levels of retail, followed by two further retail levels above water and a man-made landscaped park level. The top of the box is finished off by a wooden lattice structure with ETFE cladding to allow light into the area.
Because of the dock, a cofferdam will be built to create a dry area to work in and to allow the working dock to continue operations. This involves using 1.2m-diameter steel tube piles that have channels along their side which can interlock to form a watertight wall. However, these steel piles can only go as far as the top of the Crossrail tunnel. If the TBMs had to bore through steel, the expensive equipment could be damaged. An auger is sent down inside piles into the bedrock below and contiguous piles cast to form the lower station walls. "The steel piles go 6m into the dock bottom," says Bryant. "It was a balance between keeping it high enough for the tunnel boring machine and socketing it in enough into impermeable layer [to make it watertight] and to give enough stability."
Not only does CWC have around 9m of water pressure from the docks to worry about, but the basement construction will also cut through a layer of clay below the dock bottom, where groundwater is trapped. Work has already started on lowering the water table and will continue for three years. A concrete wall will be built inside the tubular cofferdam to create the permanent box. The integrated structure will then be able to take the pressure from the dock water and the groundwater when the dewatering is stopped. Final planning permission is expected by the end of the year and work on site is due to begin in January.
Crossrail is finally here. "I think Crossrail is one of the great projects, like the Paris RER, which has taken a long time to get here, but it's important that it gets built," says Berry. "Great things will happen once it's done."
Better access for all
Improving access into Canary Wharf isn't the only benefit the Isle of Dogs Crossrail station will bring. It will also improve access around the area as a whole.
The docks add charm, but they also isolate Canary Wharf and make it harder to move around. The new station nestled in the bustling Canary Wharf development to the south and the residential area to the north will also make it easier to get around. "We will be using the station to create a bridge between us and the community," says Canary Wharf Group transport adviser Jim Berry. "The docks, to some extent, separate us from the surrounding area.
The station includes three bridges on each side of the development."
Thameslink Project
Blackfriars
Part terminus, part through-station. Blackfriars is currently a station on the north bank of the Thames, but with the Thameslink project to provide a high-frequency 12-carriage service through Central London, the station will need to be re-built. The plan is to swap the terminating and through platforms over to allow for the station to be built across the span of the Thames creating two entrances on either side of the river. The views from the platform will be very interesting.
London Bridge
Another major choke-point for the Thameslink programme is at London Bridge station and the approaches to the station that will require a complete re-build. At the same time, the London Bridge Tower will rise from the concourse to the station.
Additional Crossrail Images
Ealing Broadway
Ilford
Whitechapel
London Liverpool Street
Tottenham Court Road
Rail timetable change: Virgin adds 30% more services
Filed 09/12/08
http://transportbriefing.co.uk/story.php?id=5373
The new Virgin Trains VHF timetable from 14 December represents "the most frequent long-distance inter-city service in Europe" according to Brendan Fox, editor of Thomas Cook’s European Timetable.
Train services on the Virgin routes will increase overall by 30% following the £9bn upgrade of the West Coast Main Line that links London Euston with Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow - as well as important tourist destinations such as north Wales and the Lake District.
The routes from Manchester and Birmingham to London Euston see train frequencies increased to every 20 minutes, comparable with many local commuter routes, and average journey times in the case of Manchester cut to 2h 05. The number of direct trains from London to Glasgow increases from nine to 13 per day while from 26 January Chester will be linked to the capital by a train each hour. Liverpool receives extra peak period trains to and from Euston.
Tony Collins, Virgin Rail Group chief executive, said: "The new West Coast timetable represents a huge opportunity for the industry following the £9bn upgrade by Network Rail. More seats and dramatically reduced journey times are huge wins for passengers but quite rightly we will all be judged on how well this railway will perform.
"The successful running of Europe’s busiest main line railway is going to be a huge challenge for the train operators and Network Rail and, during the first few months as the timetable beds in, passengers’ expectations may not always be fulfilled. I believe, however, that within six months we shall have a railway of which the nation can truly be proud."
Passengers travelling at weekends and previously used to slow schedules will see some of the biggest changes as the weekday improvements will be carried over into Saturdays and Sunday afternoons. Those travelling after weekend breaks will, for example, enjoy 20 minute interval services between London and Birmingham through to mid-evening on Sundays.
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The result in the increase in capacity is due to the completion of the £9bn ($18bn) West Coast Main Line project that links the major conurbations of Britain. It is the busiest trunk railway in Europe, and the busiest outside Japan with thousands of trains using it on a daily basis.
The scale of the job (text from transportbriefing):
- Changes to all 13 major junctions on the route, including a bottleneck at Rugby, enabling trains to travel at up to 125mph
- Laying more than 36 kilometres of new track through the Trent Valley, meaning that four tracks now run nearly all the way from London to Crewe
- 174 new or altered bridges
- 53 new or extended platforms at places like Milton Keynes and Manchester Airport
- Replacing over 800 points
- Line speed improvements across the whole line, including between Preston, Carlisle and Motherwell and between London Euston and Wembley
- Putting up over 11,000 structures
- Over three million yards of rail, ballast and sleepers have been laid
iBus
Over 6,000 of London's buses (three quarters of the fleet) have now been fitted with the Automatic Vehicle Location system that provides passengers with information on where exactly their bus is even before leaving home, as well as giving bus controllers greater accuracy on increasing performance and reliability.
East London Line Update
Works continue to progress on the East London Line Extension. These pictures (from londonreconnections.blogspot.com)
The first eight pictures show works at Dalston Junction and the approaches to the station. There will be eight platforms here, two which terminate and another two which continue through tunnels on to the North London Line to connect up with Highbury & Islington
Moving southwards to Shoreditch works continue where the ELLE rises from a tunnel on to a viaduct.
The following two pics are firstly of Rotherhithe Station and the tunnel between Shadwell and Wapping
