please empty your brain below

It is interesting observing the areas around Vauxhall changing. The new 49 floor St Georges tower by the river is nearly completed, and I believe that the tall office building nearby, which is part of the market, is due to be demolished to make way for even more and taller apartment blocks. When the tall office building was constructed in the 1970's I was staying in the area and knew some of the people involved with its construction. So looks like it may soon be a case of "I watched it go up, and I watched it come down"
I did not know -until now- that Sainbury's were going to build over their car park. The area will certainly have an awful lot of new people living in it when all the developments are complete, so I think a new station in the area will be essential, as Vauxhall station is already fairly busy.
I also think a station could be placed on National Rail tracks near Battersea power station.
Is it too much to hope that, in the event the extension does go ahead, it continues to Clapham Junction? It seems like a golden opportunity to finally link Britain's busiest station into the Tube network. Or am I missing something?
keep up the good work DG. I read your blog everyday.
THC

The theory is that the Nrthern Line extension wouldn't be able to cope with everyone who would want to change toi it at Clapham Junction, so they won't do it, preferring people to stay on NR until Waterloo or Victoria (which, we must assume, they think are not overcrowded). There may be a few savvy people who decide the walk from Battersea Park to the new Battersea tube station is better than changing to SWT at CJ and then facing the scrum at Waterloo, but of course outer suburban services do not call at BPk. QTR is probably too far, especially given that trains calling there also serve Waterloo.

Connection to Clapham Junction might have to await Crossrail 2 - i.e not in my lifetime.
Something 'orrible has happened to the "four iconic chimneys" link.

dg writes: Fixed now, thanks. And it's a shame I messed up, because I rather like that photo.

I'm deeply unenthusiastic about this extension, and not only because my commute happens to involve a direct journey from a station on the Morden branch to a station on the Charing Cross branch. It could be done so much better. But, like everything else these days, its planners have eyes only for the money.
Badly flawed extension designed only to suit the developers.

Stopping short of Clapham Junction will stand out for the following 50 years as a consequence of short sighted planning until our children/grandchildren will be forced to do something about it.
Of course many trains passing through Clapham Junction also stop at Vauxhall, where there is fairly easy access to the Victoria line.
However it would be nice to have a tube connection at Clapham Junction.
it does seem backwards to have two new tube stations and not link them up other stations - it could easily connect at Vauxhall for example.

i can appreciate them not extending it to Clapham Junction though because indeed NR trains arriving in the morning, will then lead to a mass exodus of everyone jumping onto the northern line there and it probably wouldn't cope.

*unless* you had some incredibly convoluted system that did not allow passnegers arriving at CJ in the morning to change to the tube. only 'new' passengers (off of the street) were allowed entry, and vice-versa. which of course is complicated and stupid and would never happen.

so the other alternative is to dig the tunnel ready to allow the Northern Line to go to CJ in the future, but only once the line has been upgraded to allow for 32tph at the peak, rather than the one-every-4-minutes that it has at the moment which is already not frequent enough.
The (cited) problem with extending the tube to CJ is that trains starting from there would fill up with punters from further out, and there would be no room for passenegers from Nine Elms, the construction of which station the developer is footing the bill...
Knowing the TOCs' attitudes to any change to the conditions under which they won their licences to print money, I imagine they would not take kindly to the revenue abstraction that would be caused by a "rival" route between CJ and Waterloo, - even though it would reduce crowding for their long-suffering "customers".
The Sainsburys redevelopement is interesting. They've obviously clicked that they are sitting on some valuable land and want to get the best value out of it they can. A slight pity that they think the tube extension is from Vauxhall to Battersea.

I think it is daft not to include improvements to the NR lines / stations in the vicinity. The catchment area from those services is potentially huge and would avoid travel via Zone 1. I've looked at the plans on the BPS website and there is no mention of rail improvements - another planning error.

I agree with the other remarks about why Clapham Junction won't be served by the N Line. If Crossrail 2 is ever built then it would sense to run it via the BPS site provided the developer funded the tunnels and station for it. That will need some serious forward planning. I also agree with DG's final conclusion about the interdependencies between the BPS redevelopment / tube extension.
This is such a waste of one of the three 'stubs' of tube lines for South London. (The Charing X branch of the Northern line, the Victoria line and the Bakerloo all end in a relatively small area around Kennington/Brixton/Elephant, well short of lots of commuters desperate to get into central London from just a bit further out.)

TFL and LU just don't give South Londoners nearly as much for their council tax levy as they do for North, West or East Londoners. Tube extensions south and southeast would help address this (rather than curve tightly back towards the Thames to serve a particular block of luxury flats...)

This is much more of a lost opportunity than any link to Clapham Jn - a station which already has super-frequent links to Waterloo which
Look on any map of railways in south London, and Camberwell stands out as a total rail desert. This is where a tube extension truly needs to go, and maybe one day the Bakerloo line will. But on this occasion luxury development trumps social need, and so the poor folk of Camberwell and the Aylesbury Estate continue to lose out.
The Bank branch of the Northern Line north of Kennington is already very packed during rush hour anyway - and I'm guessing packing in a whole load more rich bankers from the new developments in Nine Elms will surely make that commute even more horrific than it is now
Sending the northern line to Battersea Power station is a waste of resources - only 2 extra stops, and going in the wrong direction. - the site is already right next door to Battersea Park station, as DG says.
Ah - and naming the terminal station 'Battersea' will help make one of my pet peeves even worse - people will start calling that area Battersea even more, while the heart of Battersea around Clapham Junction station becomes ever more frequently described as Clapham.
Developer-led transport projects tend to get a bad rap that is not always justified. After all the residents of Shepherds Bush not only got an oversized shopping centre on their doorstep but two new railway stations with greatly improved connections.

Having said that, the plans for Nine Elms do seem to be the worst kind of development; aiming to make as much money as possible from luxury housing and shopping with no thought given to the wider social, demographic or transporting needs of the area or of London in general.

Most of the reasons for this have already been discussed but another one is that at a time when the general trend is to try and reduce the number of people travelling into central London this project does the exact opposite.
I forgot to add that the only good thing about this whole debacle is that we've already been waiting 25 years for the Power Station to be re-developed so there must be a very high chance this extension isn't going to happen any time soon.
Doesn't the CJ problem have a simple solution? Half of the trains in the peak can terminate and reverse at Battersea, to pick up people from there empty, and the other half start from CJ and can fill up.

Isn't this what happens at Seven Sisters / Walthamstow Ctl?
The developer is paying (admittedly, allegedly) for the link from Kennington to Battersea in it's entirety.

Clapham Junction extension - if it happens - would be taxpayer funded. Much better to make passive provision and then maybe continue with plans once construction is fully underway to Battersea and all funds from the developer are in place. Then it is a relatively simple/cheap job to continue on to CJ (or plan extension elsewhere - Chelsea, Earl's Ct, KO and up to OOC is one not entirely outlandish idea i have heard).

Doing CJ from the start means mixing budgets/pots of money etc and potentially having the taxpayer pick up a larger tab than at present.

Admittedly it might not be the best option. But if the options are basically no extensions at all (because no taxpayer funding, or it is much lower prio than other potential large schemes such as CR2, Bakerloo extension, HS2 connectivity etc etc), then having a new free extension is possibly better than no extension/plans at all for 50+ more years.

Vauxhall interchange, i agree no, based on footfall and H&S issues. Oval, based on the route, seems odd to ignore. And not tying up with Battersea Park and revamping that station as second transport route to this whole new development also seems a bit odd, though i would expect at least one of QRB or BP to possibly close if the tube link opens.










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