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Old Posted Nov 9, 2009, 1:46 AM
Lucky Luke Lucky Luke is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nick_taylor View Post
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.
I hadn't realised Westfield had paid for the station. Are you 100% sure about that? I read the cost was £65m. On one station!!!! Anyhow, I still think the beauty of underground railways is their lack of surface space-taking - unless you deliberately go and build a big empty glass box and sprawling forecourt just for the hell of it! And I will have to disagree with you on prices. London has the most expensive transport fares in the world bar none and I despair of ever seeing it change. Anyhow, all talk of lack of funds and subsidies has now become totally and perpetually moot since the government found £1.5 trillion (that is one and a half thousand billion pounds. I'll say it again one and a half thousand billion pounds) to 'bail out' the banks (i.e. give away to...) out of nowhere, or out of our pockets if you like. That is equivalent to about 90 Crossrails or 450 Jubilee Line Extensions. They'll tell you it was necessary, but no I don't think it was. They already had all the money in the world anyway (!)
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