London: CrossRail Finally Being Built?

Old Feb 10th, 2013, 09:39 AM
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London: CrossRail Finally Being Built?

During PM's question hour recently David Cameron produly boasted that his government is building CrossRail - a fast rail link slicing from west to east across central London - a scheme that has been on the drawing boards for a few decades now it seems.

And if so it is about time that London joined the ranks of just about every other major European city with such a rapid train (or metro) link - like Paris and their RER trains - German cities with the S-Bahns, Barcelona and Madrid with train lines linking far-removed stations - Brussels and now Amsterdam with the soon to open if not opened super metro slicing from north to south thru town.

Is CrossRail to really become a reality?
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 09:40 AM
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Money being spent http://www.crossrail.co.uk/
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 09:43 AM
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Cross rail has been being built since about 2008...it open in 2018...
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 09:44 AM
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Well yes a Google check does indeed doth confirm Crossrail is for real! Wonder if Oyster Cards will be accepted and if it will be a part of the London Tube scheme or a separate fare like the Heathrow Express and a super expensive fare to boot?

Crossrail - Crossrail
www.crossrail.co.uk/Crossrail is the new high frequency, convenient and accessible railway for London and the South East. When the service opens Crossrail trains will travel from ...

Crossrail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrossrailCrossrail is a railway, 118 km (73 mi) in length, under construction in South East England. It will link Berkshire and Buckinghamshire via Greater London to ...
History - Design - Plans - Management and franchise
Images for CrossRail London

Crossrail Stations - Crossrail
www.crossrail.co.uk/route/Crossrail is among the most significant infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the UK. From improving journey times across London, to easing congestion and ...
Maps - Crossrail
www.crossrail.co.uk › Route
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 09:46 AM
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>>Is CrossRail to really become a reality?
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 09:47 AM
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It is a London metro train servicing London so I would be shocked if oysters weren't accepted, that would make no sense...we have a station being built on my complex...oysters are accepted on overland trains farther afield than cross rail...
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 01:43 PM
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I guess that by the time it is built we will have electronic money rather than Oysters.
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 02:12 PM
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WE should be so fortunate in the US to have this sort of forward thinking.
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 03:20 PM
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Well I know Oyster Cards or their 2018 improved equivalent will be accepted but what I meant was at normal Tube fares - meaning a flat fare anywhere the Tube goes and thus from one end of the CRail to the other - if that is the case seems like a huge money loser to me - Paris' RER charges the same as the metro within the Peripherique, looping around what is called central Paris but outside of that the fare increases as the distance traveled - I would expect Crossrail would want to do the same - so that was my question, of which an answer too is probably mere speculation at this time.
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Old Feb 10th, 2013, 08:59 PM
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I had rather assumed it would have a separate fare arrangement as a commercial investment, like the Heathrow Express. But if Wikipedia is to be believed, only the Heathrow branch will continue to carry a special fare. Otherwise it's supposed to be integrated within the TfL Oyster scheme within the London travel zones, but I haven't seen any official announcements yet, nor is it clear how fares for people using it to commute from outside London will relate to what they pay on national rail services at the moment. No doubt much will depend on how big the final bill is, and what's been raised from business levies and the like.
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Old Feb 12th, 2013, 10:26 PM
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And maybe Crossrail 2 -

http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com.au...ossrail-2.html
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Old Feb 12th, 2013, 11:10 PM
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The complications of having a premium-priced line that connects so much of the TfL area to the rest of the area I'd have thought would rule out the idea of special fares on Crossrail: at present only above ground trains to Stratford International and Heathrow don't accept Oysters etc.

At present, there's been no serious suggestion to charge different prices for Crossrail services outside the TfL area from those currently charged for, say, Maidenhead-Paddington.

Oyster technology easily allows all fares within Crossrail to be paid by Oyster: all that's needed is to install Oyster readers at the outlying stations (they all - or virtually all - have electronically controlled platform access already.) In fact there is (or was) a project to extend Oyster nationally, though that seems to have slipped out of the news lately,

The whole point of London's fare system is that we DON'T have flat fares on tubes or trains. PQ's "normal Tube fares - meaning a flat fare anywhere the Tube goes and thus from one end of the CRail to the other" implies he's been on the Dulux again.
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Old Feb 13th, 2013, 10:46 AM
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what about that super tramway that was to cross London north to south - Croydon to Highgate or whatever - going over Waterloo Bridge over The Thames? why has London so little light rail, much cheaper to build and less destructive?
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Old Feb 14th, 2013, 01:09 AM
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>>what about that super tramway that was to cross London north to south - Croydon to Highgate or whatever - going over Waterloo Bridge over The Thames?>why has London so little light rail, much cheaper to build and less destructive?and cars and lorries, not to mention bikes and pedestrians. Manchester and Sheffield brought trams back by basing them on existing suburban railways and having only a relatively small amount of engineering to connect them up at street level in the centre. Something of the sort has been done down in Croydon and to its east and west, but there are only relatively few parts of central London where you could reinstate trams without a substantial amount of re-engineering at considerable expense and major upset to the devotees of the Great God Car, and most of those journeys are done quite adequately by bus anyway. Edinburgh's recent experience hasn't been encouraging.
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Old Feb 14th, 2013, 04:40 AM
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" light rail, much cheaper to build and less destructive?"

I doubt few people in Edinburgh would agree about "less destructive", and the only people in Liverpool who'd agree about "much cheaper" are those who assumed the national taxpayer would pick up the tab for their extravagant project that never got off the ground. New tramroutes turn out to be spectacularly expensive and environmentally disruptive, and provide disturbingly little capacity for their cost

Croydon to Highgate is pretty much the route Thameslink already covers, and its £6 bn upgrade more or less provides a north-south equivalent of Crossrail, coming fully onstream about the same time.

One real question that has to be asked about new urban transport is how necessary Big Projects really are. Car use has fallen over the past few years (in London, more to do with improvements in public transport and consumer choice than the recession), and there is a serious possibility the web etc makes physical transport less important.

Within England, there's a strong case that upgrading existing links, or restoring what Beeching killed, matter more than whizzy new lines. Travel time from Oxford will be reduced (and from my bit of the Oxford exurbs dramatically reduced) by a mile of track from an existing Park & Ride to the much faster track into Marylebone. Pressure on roads around our exurb will be eased by electrification and resignalling on the Southampton-Oxford line, with the two together creating the first stage in a planned Southampton-Oxford-Cambridge high density line transforming transport within England's "knowledge economy" belt. All costing hundreds of millions and taking a couple of years, rather than the tens of billions and decades RERs need.
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Old Feb 14th, 2013, 06:17 AM
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And don't get him started on HS2.....
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Old Feb 14th, 2013, 11:58 AM
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What about thatHigh Speed Rail Line that I believe Cameron even endorsed to actually built - the one snaking like an S between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh?

Still a pipe dream - why is Britain about the only European country of size without its own high-speed rail network - having just a tiny bit of the Chunnel train line.
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Old Feb 14th, 2013, 08:41 PM
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[Sigh]

I said DON'T get him started...........
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Old Feb 14th, 2013, 08:52 PM
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" why is Britain about the only European country of size without its own high-speed rail network"

Because the financial case for them in Britain is crap and the environmental case worse.

As for the damage they do to the economies of the outlying regions duped into lobbying for them...
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Old Feb 15th, 2013, 08:33 AM
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Why is the UK about the only major country in Europe without a true high-speed rail network?

Its construction would be one thing to revive the moribund economical state Cameron's spending cuts have put the country in and around every new station there would be a fury of building activity - a seemingly no-brainer for this basket-case country and the HS line should also be State run, lock, stock and food trolley (bring small change please!).
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