“UK’s High Speed Two (HS2) has published details of contract opportunities for architects, designers and developers interested in the development of four new stations on the London to Birmingham high-speed railway line. The winning bidders will work with HS2 to devise and refine its plans for stations at Birmingham Curzon Street, Birmingham Interchange and Old Oak Common, as well as the scheduled expansion of London Euston. “HS2’s new stations are intended to provide ...

In the latest part of our HS2 series, we look primarily at the options for London HS termini and/or through running. Some policy and funding issues are raised. Discussion about passenger volumes, and station and route construction issues will be covered in Parts 5 and 6. City centre access reaffirmed as the new regional priority The choice of a single HS2 terminus or multiple railheads is not straightforward, wherever you look. The assessment in Part 3 shows that HS regional city centre stations ...

Our series on HS2 aims to look at how it affects London. Finding a suitable terminus will be a big part of that, something that is dependent on a number of factors. A critical one is exactly what sort of railway HS2 will actually be. This is something that depends on how closely it conforms (or doesn’t) to conventional assumptions about long distance travel. So in this article we consider a crucial question – just how much of a commuter railway is HS2 likely to be? The weakness in ...

In this part of our series on HS2, we look at options for serving Heathrow Airport, how this might be affected by franchising, the London terminus and decisions made concerning a potential HS1-HS2 link. Access to Heathrow Airport and implications for HS2 service options Midlands and Northern stakeholders expressed a desire to be able to reach Heathrow via HS2 in order to open up fast access to this major international hub. The Heathrow Hub campaign has argued, so far without success, for the ...

Although not a London specific scheme, High Speed 2 will have an enormous impact on London. In part 1 we take a brief look at the scheme as whole to provide some background information. We briefly describe which topics will eventually be covered. We also cover the first of these – the reasons for the choice of route. A brief HS2 resumé High Speed 2, as regular readers must know, is the Government-sponsored scheme for a new London-Midlands-North express railway. It is intended to add ...

We like to think it is not often we get caught out at London Reconnections. Often there’s a hint, either spotter or official, if not an openly advanced warning, about significant announcements. Other times we have smelt them out anyway – reading through interminable committee minutes combined with the occasional sixth sense sometimes has its rewards. We must admit, however, that Thursday’s announcement by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin about looking into Crossrail going to ...

It may not have attracted the attention of most London Reconnections readers but recently a new rail franchise that serves London was announced – one with a start date of 1st April 2015. This is the new Caledonian Sleeper which is being split from the main Scotrail passenger franchise and will be delivered as a dedicated stand-alone franchise for the first time. The new franchise is specified by Transport Scotland, an arms length agency of the Scottish Government who are responsible for ...

Think of Old Oak Common (OOC) as the Canary Wharf of west London. That's the Vision: bold and challenging. But will a 'super hub' emerge? While the grand plan for OOC may depend on decisions further up the metaphorical line, to a certain extent OOC leapfrogs the institutional black hole of rail strategy and drives deeper changes in strategic planning for London as a whole.

In Part 1, we introduced the many components that need to be integrated into the grand plan at Old Oak Common (OOC), for a new interchange with HS2, Crossrail, the Great Western Mainline (GWML) and Overground services. Here in Part 2 we take a step back to look at the implications and explore some nagging questions, which we’ll conclude in Part 3 along with a tentative stab at how the decision-making might unfold in the near future. OOC has grown into a very large project indeed. The ...

As “Phyllis” and “Ada” make their stately progress east from the portals at Park Royal, plans are evolving for the Crossrail route west, and an absorbing story it is to tell. The Mayor has now published Old Oak: A Vision for the Future, setting out the grand plan for what could become the Canary Wharf of west London. Old Oak Common (OOC) is an emerging transport hub for HS2, Crossrail and the Overground, and the gateway to the huge Park Royal Opportunity Area. This is ...

This is the final part of our look at how freight may become the Achilles’ heel for rail planners in London. The first article provided some context, looking at the various strategies, the national flows and the issue of loading gauge. Then we explored the main intermodal (container) traffic flows through London in more detail. Here we explore some of the options and draw some uneasy conclusions – that whilst the RUS process has helped identify some of the problems, the investment ...

In our previous post on the shape of the London rail network, we looked back at two key decision points which established our infrastructure legacy: the ring of termini that gave rise to the pattern of services which concentrates demand onto the city core, and the narrow 12′ standard for cross-city tube lines. It’s been hard to break free from this legacy, and to find ways to reshape the London rail network and expand the city core. While the core has largely remained the same as it ...

Our chum, Greg Burns, writing in the Fulham Chronicle, draws our attention to a youtube video of Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s vision for Old Oak Common. Old Oak Common (the Starship version) He writes: The run-down area will see 12,000 new homes and 40,000 jobs in Hammersmith and Fulham if the Department for Transport (DfT) approve its high-speed rail (HS2) plans in December. It would result in a new transport hub and major interchange station linking Great Western and West Coast ...

Euston Concept Design Architects Aedas have been appointed to oversee a revamp of the existing concourse at Euston staton. In their own words: Aedas has developed a coherent language for the station wayfinding, retail signage and advertising, ensuring they are integrated into the station architecture. Improvements to the passenger experience will be provided by better connection between internal and external concourses, simplifying routes to the platforms and improving passenger information. ...

Our thanks and copyright acknowledgements to Enfinity Americas for the use of this image The story so far: “‘Tis the season of myths and mellow votefulness. Boris rules a slumped blancmange Castle, close to a large river and filled with proportionally elected inhabitants, bound by the eternal rituals, quadrilles and gavottes of plotting and politics. Knowing that the unavoidable time of trial will come in the next year, Boris strikes out west to summon support. He pauses and wishes ...