please empty your brain below
In image four the Sun Printing Works Art Deco clock tower from the 1930s is an incongruous neighbour of the invader tower block.

Gordon | 11.03.22 - 7:22 a.m. | #

Given TfL's funding woes, what price (literally) the Watford Met line staying open?

D9000 | 11.03.22 - 8:21 a.m. | #

Two encounters with youths in as many days!

Ed | 11.03.22 - 8:27 a.m. | #

If the money had been found (or the costs hadn't escalated so much), the extension would have opened around the time COVID started and it would been a commercial flop, putting even more load of TFLs finances.It would have probably recovered eventually, but the timing would have been unfortunate.

Jimbo | 11.03.22 - 8:46 a.m. | #

Transport in the area could be improved (abd ridership increased) at modest cost by better enabling mixed mode journeys: coordinated bus/train timetables, through ticketing at affordable fares (some variant of plusbus, but also purchaseable if the bus is the first leg of the journey).

MilesT | 11.03.22 - 9:03 a.m. | #

I would have thought that the most obvious alternative was to ask/offer the route to Chiltern railways.
First for a fast limited stop commuter service. Marylebone - Harrow on The Hill - Croxley - Watford High Street - Watford Junction. That would pay for itself quite quickly.
Then other stations added as funds allow, including possibly an Aylesbury to Watford service. A bit like when CR built the link in Banbury that allowed them to serve Bicester Village and Oxford.

Doug Robinson | 11.03.22 - 9:36 a.m. | #

Watford is shortly going to have even less transport in the next few weeks. The 318 is going imminently and the 320 and 520 go next month. A new 20 and an extended 10 (to replace part of the 8) and 321 will partly compensate but some direct links will go and some areas lose their service altogether. Easier to get the car out if you have one and join gridlocked traffic in the town centre. So much for a greener cleaner environment.

Dave B | 11.03.22 - 9:51 a.m. | #

n.b. Along the Metropolitan line extension, the 321 is replacing the 320 and 520 at the same frequency.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.03.22 - 9:58 a.m. | #

I hope it's eventually turned into an official nature reserve - as opposed to the unofficial one it has become by default, and/or made into a public footpath.

Cornish Cockney | 11.03.22 - 10:45 a.m. | #

Doug - There is already a fast service linking Watford, Harrow, Wembley and central London (albeit a couple of stops further along the Circle Line), so I doubt there would be much extra revenue (as distinct from poaching LNWR/Overground's passengers)

Timbo | 11.03.22 - 10:49 a.m. | #

I've never seen the commercial justification for this project, to me it's a nice to have rather than an obvious gap in the transport network. If this has been a Beeching cut, then perhaps it would have been understandable, but rather it was a line which originally died in the mid 90s due to lack of use, so well after the "rail bad, road good" era.

Maybe, at a much lower cost, it can be turned into a cycle route like the line to Rickmansworth.

Mikey C | 11.03.22 - 11:01 a.m. | #

Yes, if it's never going to be a railway track it would be better off being a cycle track.

Adrian | 11.03.22 - 11:04 a.m. | #

Armchair experts might like to read the 134 page report in which transport consultants analyse 15 different options for the disused line (linked from ‘non-tube alternatives' in the 2nd paragraph).

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.03.22 - 11:14 a.m. | #

Some of today's post is practically poetry - a lovely lyrical labyrinth, one might be tempted to say! And as for that final sentence - local minutiae are transformed to the crushingly universal.

cau1khead | 11.03.22 - 11:58 a.m. | #

Welcome to our skyline! Apparently the developers wanted 18 storeys, but Watford Council said "Higher - you can have 24". And there's another tower in planning for 18 between this one and Morrisons. I took my daughter to West Watford station for Harwoods playground in 1989 - probably one of the last users...

Nick K | 11.03.22 - 3:59 p.m. | #

Having stood underneath that tower, I can assure you (and local media) that it's not 24-storey, it looks mid-30s.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.03.22 - 4:25 p.m. | #

Having grown up just 2 minutes down the road from Watford Metropolitan Station I'm glad it and it's service have been reprieved. A better scheme would have been to have extended the present Met line into the centre of Watford as originally planned in the 1930's. They even started building a station for it in the town centre. Now that would have been a useful tube line!

dg writes: Option 2 in the report... "very unlikely to represent value for money".

Tones | 11.03.22 - 5:10 p.m. | #

With respect, please read this.

As the floor shells went up (I had a grandstand view of each), they painted a big number against each: it's confusing to count the scaffolding levels which were erected after the shell as they're not one per storey.

Nick K | 11.03.22 - 5:21 p.m. | #

Ah, yes, OK, sorry.

(updates post)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.03.22 - 5:32 p.m. | #

I remember looking at the Croxley rail link for GCSE geography. At the time they said it would be open in less than 10 years and had been in planning for a long time.

I did GCSE Geography in 1991.

Simon | 11.03.22 - 6:15 p.m. | #

My dreams too DG, mine too. This Cassiobridge boy will never see his station. 😭

THC | 11.03.22 - 6:58 p.m. | #

We can refer to it as the "Watford Gap"

John Styles | 11.03.22 - 8:38 p.m. | #

I have memories of using the Croxley Green branch - in 1984/1985 I was working on the Croxley Business Park development, and commuting by public transport from Stockwell, and alternated between using the Met and the Croxley Green Branch, it was pretty run down then, let alone the state it was in by closure.

Mark Miller | 11.03.22 - 9:59 p.m. | #

Had a skim of that report. Steer are about the best in the UK for doing that kind of report so i’d trust what they say. Also, interesting it was produced solely for TfL. Clearly...

dg interrupts: Jointly for TfL, Watford Borough Council and Herts County Council.

David | 11.03.22 - 11:55 p.m. | #

They can say what they like in the report, but unless SOMEONE is prepared to pay for it, the rail options are irrelevant, even if they generate more positive outcomes than a cycle path.

The local council can't afford it, TfL won't pay (and can't afford it anyway) and the national government would rather use the money up north (levelling up etc)

Mikey C | 12.03.22 - 8:17 a.m. | #

I think the only sensible use of this corridor is a service from Luton Airport - St Albans Midland - Park Street - Watford Junction (new flyover) - Croxley - Rickmansworth - Denham - Iver - Heathrow T5. I'll have a look down the back of the sofa for the money.

yerrong | 12.03.22 - 1:07 p.m. | #

I had a hand in the closure procedure when I worked for the SRA. Although the prospect of the Croxley Link made it a "temporary" closure, we did not want it to drag on.

Joseph Kerrigan | 14.03.22 - 1:48 p.m. | #

And so the wait for the next plan to change the Watford branch of the met. line starts. I seem to recall it was never meant to be a terminus there, hence the station built high enough to tunnel under, but the council refused permission to tunnel under the grammar school. The proposed town centre station is now Weatherspoons.

Maybe silly solutions should be taken as entertainment. I think we could trim off some lanes on Rickmansworth Road through the town centre and run a tram service from the current Met. station to Watford Junction.

Peter G | 18.03.22 - 9:45 p.m. | #

Update on Ascot Towers... It's not quite finished, although I gather there are residents within... BUT, Henry Construction are in Administration, so no-one working there, still a small amount of scaffolding and the walkways not completed... At least the second tower will be a long time coming.
And the Rail Link is still being discussed at the Croxley Local Area Forum...

Nick K | 16.06.23 - 3:42 p.m. | #











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