Well, here’s a faintly crazy story I managed to miss. From New Civil Engineer:
A new underground rail line connecting High Speed 2 services at Euston Station in north London to Canary Wharf in east London is being considered by the government, New Civil Engineer understands.
The proposal to build the line was submitted by developer Canary Wharf Group as part of the government’s call for ideas for market led proposals (MLPs) – a mechanism to invite more private sector funding of rail projects in the UK.
In all, there are 10 projects being considered, whittled down from 30 submissions to the government.
The idea of a better link between Euston and Canary Wharf makes a certain amount of sense. Despite the fact the latter is now the capital’s second business district it’s surprisingly awkward to get there from the mainline stations of the Euston Road that are the gateway to London for a lot of the country. Obviously the city can live without it – but if you were planning on building a whole new tube route, this is one you might think about.
The idea of letting property developers decide where new tube lines should go sounds crazy at first. Major infrastructure schemes of this sort cost a fortune and create major disruption, including to people who won’t benefit directly. Why on earth would we allow already massively rich people any more influence on such decisions than they already have on the world by virtue of being, as I may have mentioned, massively rich?
Except, two things. Firstly: whisper it soft, but most of the tube network was privately built. The network was only taken into public ownership in the early 1930s, and the first entirely new line to be built by the state was the Victoria line, which opened in 1968. What’s more, many of those private companies which built the early tube were really property businesses, which saw new tube lines as a way of getting people to those lovely new homes they were developing.
Secondly, the private sector is already playing a role in determining which expensive new tunnels London builds. Crossrail has been partly funded by private money. So is the Northern line extension to Battersea. Crossrail 2 is extremely unlikely to happen without it.
So there is a precedent. But never mind that now, let’s get the crayons out and ask where would the new line go?
On Twitter, Canary Wharf councillor Andrew Wood said that documents he’s seen show the new route would have one intermediate station. The New Civil Engineer story suggests that the London Borough of Southwark is affected in some way. That to me points to a southern route. Perhaps the intermediate station would be at Blackfriars, providing an easy change from Thameslink services:
Image: Google.
That said, were it up to me, and bearing in mind I’ve thought about this for all of three minutes, I’d take a more direct route via Shoreditch High Street, to improve access to both the City and the tech industry based by Old Street roundabout. You can even throw in an extra stop on the Central line if you’re feeling flush.
Image: Google.
Drawing lines on maps is fun, is what I’m saying here.
Jonn Elledge is editor of CityMetric and the assistant editor of the New Statesman. He is on Twitter as @jonnelledge and on Facebook as JonnElledgeWrites.
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