TfL Board Papers: June 2008

TfL held its first board meeting since the Mayoral election last week, and the papers are online. Highlights:

Oyster PAYG on National Rail

• The rollout of Oyster PAYG London wide will require work "at 240 National Rail stations [which] includes the installation of around 1,100 Oyster validators, over 600 ticket gate upgrades, ticket machine upgrades [...]"
• A fares proposal for Oyster PAYG has been submitted by the train companies, and is expected to be signed this month (July).
• "Southern has now agreed to allow installation of Oyster equipment to commence immediately."
• The Mayor's planned summit with train companies will look at "harmonisation of passenger standards (fares and information) plus interchange security and policing", as well as the headline Oyster PAYG issue.

London Underground

• "Prior to its introduction on the District line, the new Sub-Surface train will be introduced on the Metropolitan line (from 2010) and on the Circle and Hammersmith and City lines (both 2012)," as previously announced. This seems to contradict Modern Railways' claim of a change of plan.
• The Northern Line is now the most reliable on the network, with 98.5% of services running as planned, thanks to the new timetable.
• The opening of the Northern Ticket Hall at King's Cross St Pancras has been moved forward to December 2009 at the request of the Department for Transport, in time for the start of Kent High Speed rail services.
• The first new Victoria Line train will be tested in service in January 2009.
• Testing of the new Jubilee Line signalling system isn't going well, with only a 50% success rate.

London Overground

• Ticketless-travel on the Gospel Oak to Barking Line is down from 15% to 1.7% since London Overground took over.
• The first new London Overground train will be tested in Derby this month, though it's unclear when the first one will be tested in London.
• A few seats will be removed from the existing trains this month (as discussed for the GOBlin) to increase standing capacity and reduce boarding times.
• The new London Overground platforms at Stratford will open in December 2008. These allow the existing ones to be reused for the DLR extension to Stratford International.
• The first section of new slab track for the East London Line extension was laid on 12 April.

Crossrail

• A final Crossrail funding agreement is being prepared for signing in September.
• They're trying to get the Crossrail Bill passed before Parliament breaks up on 22 July, but it's looking "increasingly tight"
• The congestion relief plans for Tottenham Court Road tube station require powers granted by the Crossrail Bill.

DLR and Tramlink

• Track work for the DLR Woolwich Arsenal extension is complete
• Testing of the new DLR trains is being held up by getting electrical interference approval from London Underground at Stratford.
• An immediate cleaning and refurbishment of the Croydon tram system is planned now TfL own it, to be carried out by existing operating contractor First.

Crystal Palace Tramlink follow up

While I was writing my post on the Tramlink extensions to Crystal Palace, I emailed a few questions to the project team. They just got to back to me, saying:

• Complete taking over the rail route from Crystal Palace to Beckanham Junction is still a possibility, although not currently part of the preferred scheme.
• The route across the other rail tracks is still under consideration.
• They reckon they can get from Penge Road to Anerley Road using only existing railway land, rather than talking away adjacent back gardens as I suggested*, though I doubt they can manage this between Anerley Road and Crystal Palace station.

* Yes, they bothered to read my blog. A lot better than when I phoned TfL's press office to ask for an explanation about Bank-Monument, and was yelled at almost immediately, and told I should just post whatever nonsense they'd put in their press release, how dare a blogger question TfL.

Tramlink Crystal Palace extension

Last week's announcement of TfL taking over Croydon Tramlink included the suggestion it might acceslerate progress on the Crystal Palace extension, so I've been reading up on exactly what's planned.

Here's a diagram of the existing tracks in the area (not to scale). The green dotted line shows the general route of the extension.

The description and TfL's diagram are a bit vague about where exactly the tramlines will run:

the tram would run on the embankment, either converting part of the existing train tracks or running alongside them.

The beginning of the route through Penge Road follows same lightly used branch line as the route to Beckenham Junction, and is a likely candidate for where one of the tracks could be converted. The route then crosses a junction with the Brighton Main Line (more on that later), and from here the railway is much busier and needs to remain double track, so trams will have to run alongside it to Anerley Road, mainly through people's back gardens.

It was once proposed to take over the entire railway branch to Beckenham Junction (shown in blue on my diagram), with direct tram service from Crystal Palace to Beckanham Junction. This is absent from any current plans.

At Anerley Road the line rises to street level from which there are several options for reaching Crystal Palace station. Finally, it runs along the bottom of the park to terminate at Crystal Palace Parade, for interchange with buses.

The part of the plan that's haziest is the crossing of the Brighton Main Line, and the two junction spurs alongside it. Trams need to be fully segregated, so sharing track or having any tracks cross on the level isn't an option, making it all but impossible to use the existing bridge. And the spurs are already on embankment, so unless they have something clever planned, the bridge needed to go over the whole lot will need to be enormous.


I've included two other major projects on the diagram: The purple tracks are used by Thameslink services to Brighton and eventually other places. The orange tracks will be used by the East London Line extension to Crystal Palace (where there will be new platforms) and West Croydon.

As for other Tramlink extensions, the best TfL can say is they "haven't been forgotten about". Reassuring.

TfL nationalise Croydon Tramlink

TfL have announced they're buying Tramtrack Croydon Ltd, the private consortium that built, owned, ran and in part paid for the Tramlink network. TfL are planning various service improvements, which are outlined in the press release.

This page has a nice overview of who Tramtrack Croydon are. The consortium's owners contributed £75m towards the project, and TfL are buying them out for £98m. Blithely ignoring any money that's gone in or out in the intervening years, I make that 5.8% APR. Not bad.

Tramlink Crystal Palace route survey results

TfL have published the results of their consultation to choose a route for the Tramlink Extension to Crystal Palace. 67% preferred Option 2 (illustrated right), which runs directly past Crystal Palace station, with minimal on-street running. Although the press release says it will "run off-street along the existing railway line", this is slightly misleading. The railway is in a cutting and trams will run alongside it on the embankment, which will require ripping up a lot of trees but hopefully only minor demolition (see the left side of the tracks in this Google Map).

The actual route will be decided by the end of the year, with opening due in 2013 if everything is approved.