• Can a Crossrail City Airport station be built? (HydeParkNow)
• TfL extends Walking Tube Map to Zone 3 (MappingLondon)
• Clean air is a national responsibility (TransportXtra)
• Grand Paris Express tunneling progress video (FranceTVInfo)
• Leonardo da Vinci’s modern vision for cities (CityMetric)
• Public etiquette and city living (Spacing)
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The City Airport crayonista piece includes this sentence:
“There is however the space in the next year or two to make some major changes to the track and infrastructure in the Silvertown area just to be sort of ready for a station to be built later. ”
Surely that’s complete rubbish. Test trains will be (certainly should be) running constantly now through that section, so there it’s no opportunity to suddenly insert an additional station (even if someone has a magic money tree).
@ISLANDDWELLER
This is similar to a statement in another professional website (the Builder I think) that seemed to think that the extension of Crossrail to Gravesend is happening directly from the Silvertown area, rather than from the end of the line at Abbey Wood.
Quite where this misapprehension came from I couldn’t fathom, given the clarity of the matter on the Wikipedia page.
“Under the current expansion plans, a £1.5bn extension to the Crossrail line would start from just past the airport at Woolwich and go to Ebbsfleet in Kent.”
— https://www.newcivilengineer.com/10042626.article
City Airport piece – I think when the author says “I’m no engineer so my opinion on this shouldn’t really count, its just an analysis based on what I know”, he sums up the crayonista tendency. He takes a reasonable stab at showing why a station here is difficult, verging on impossible, due to the space constraints of the site, but then spoils it all by saying there is time to do it now. Nevertheless, he fails to point out that Custom House Crossrail station is less than a mile away, so why you would build another station so close. A shuttle bus from Custom House to the airport would be far more cost effective.
Two years? Crossrail can’t reopen a footbridge down there in that time. (September is the latest date.) I would have found it very useful this week.
London City campaigned against ‘Silvertown and London City Airport Station’ to get DLR.
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/s/silvertown/silvertown(12.1988alan_young)old13.jpg
Crossrail “provision”
https://web.archive.org/web/20150705231549/http://74f85f59f39b887b696f-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c557.r23.cf3.rackcdn.com/assets/library/document/s/original/silvertown_station.pdf
Shuttle bus? Or maybe those nice little automatic tracked cars would be better and less polluting? (Like at Heathrow)
Leaving aside practicalities and cost, while City Airport might like a Crossrail station, it’s highly debatable whether it needs one.
City Airport is by its nature a small niche airport, not a mass market airport to rival Stansted or Heathrow. It’s well served by the DLR, which connects it directly with Canary Wharf and Bank, where a lot of its passengers will be travelling from, and indeed Woolwich Arsenal for anyone south of the river.
@mikey c
One of the weirder things about City Airport is that whilst you may end up paying more to travel there from European destinations, making it more of a business carrier in that respect, if you’re flying from Asia on a European carrier and changing planes in Amsterdam/Frankfurt/Paris, flying out of City can often cost exactly the same, and sometimes even less, than flying out of Heathrow.
As such, while what you’re saying is correct, why it isn’t used by more leisure travellers – especially people living in East London with family in South/East Asia (who aren’t exactly few in number) – I have no idea…
In 2018 City Airport handled under 5 million passengers (Heathrow over 80 million, Gatwick over 46 million). So even if City doubled its usage (which it probably cannot), it would not make much of a dent in the leisure market.
@THE ORANGE ONE
Passengers arriving into LCY (and any UK airport) pay no fees (unless they are transiting and thus also departing). All departing passengers from LCY are charged £46. LHR charges £9 for domestic departures, £19 for short-haul and £29 for long-haul. Transiting in AMS/CDG/FRA etc does not affect the fees, other than they charge the short-haul fees rather than long-haul if those differ. Air passenger duty, which is a governmental tax, also differs based on destination and class of travel.
Airlines that serve several London airports use the same base fares for all London airports, unless the flight is special in some way such as the BA all-business LCY-(SNN)-JFK flight. Any differences in flight prices not attributable to the fees and taxes are due to cheaper fare buckets being sold out earlier for some airports than others.
@Malcolm
I’m not disputing your point – it’s clear that City Airport can and will never have passenger levels comparable with the other London airports. My main issue is the point that the majority of travellers to will be travelling to/from Bank or Canary Wharf – this may have been true once, but City Airport is making a substantial (and somewhat successful) push for the leisure market.
@John
I wasn’t aware of that, though that does make quite a bit of sense. I’m mainly speaking from personal experience booking flights – on a number of occasions it has genuinely been cheaper to fly out of City (especially with a KLM/Cityjet combination) even ignoring travel costs to the airport – maybe people book the cheaper Heathrow flights faster?
It’s a myth to think City Airport isn’t catering to leisure travellers. Look at the destination board for today’s flights. Mykonos. Nice. Venice. Florence. Ibiza. Majorca. Granada. I could go on.
City isn’t catering to mass market leisure travellers – it has found a niche catering for those leisure travellers who value convenience, and aren’t chasing lowest ticket price. (Look at what a ticket to Mykonos will cost and weep – but these flights sell well). Most of these passengers are what the industry calls O&D (origin destination – ie not transferring from other flights) so the lack of easy transfer to Heathrow isn’t as much of an issue as many assume.
Whatever the question is, shuttle buses are almost certainly the wrong answer.
The interchange time penalty is usually horrendous, and for airport routes, loading and unloading times are horrible due to bags.
My least favourite example is the train train from MIA to FLL which I believe requires two shuttle buses, making it take an hour and ten minutes to complete a 27 mile journey. Assuming the buses turn up, which they won’t.
There is a simple cheap option: have a DLR shuttle from Custom House to London City airport. It needs to call at Royal Victoria and then reverse direction at the junction east of Canning Town, then West Silvertown and Pontoon Dock.
There is an existing shuttle on the line already that just does Canning Town to Beckton and back. (50% of the service in the day)
Much cheaper than building a new Crossrail station, could have it working when the Liz Line opens.
In the past couple of years I have flown from LCY to Bergerac, Glasgow, Nice and New York. I think all the costs were competitive with LHR and LGW, and in some cases were cheaper. A small premium would in any case have been worth it for the savings in hassle and transit time.
@ALEX MCKENNA. Why does a shuttle bus have to be polluting? There are plenty of electric buses in London now (well into 3 figures) and from 2020 all new single deckers will be zero emission at the tailpipe.
There are some outdated elements perpetuated above.
City started as a business airport when dockland development was primarily work based. The docklands are now highly residential where incomes are above average and home leisure is less than stereotypical south east home-owners with gardens, countryside access, and community groups. Short breaks or long weekends are more available. Quoting from their annual report:
” Leisure passengers, which include tourists using the airport as the most convenient gateway to visit the capital, now make up around half of all passengers. The most popular outbound leisure destinations in 2018 were Florence, Ibiza, Malaga and Mallorca with city breaks to Berlin and Lisbon also in the top 20.”
City has expansion underway building a taxi-way in the King George V dock taking passenger numbers to 6.5m pa, placing it into the UK’s Top 10 airports. London Southend is the UK’s fastest growing and will enter the Top 20 in 2019.
The walk from SiIvertown Station through adjacent side streets is much smarter now than in the depressed 1980s and shorter than from the DLR to aircraft, photo given in the article.
Anyone notice the ‘Royal Docks’ no longer carry their monarch names, will the same fate befall his granddaughter’s transport infrastructure?
Brian Butterworth @ 24 May 2019 at 19:12
“There is a simple cheap option: have a DLR shuttle from Custom House to London City airport. It needs to call at Royal Victoria and then reverse direction at the junction east of Canning Town, then West Silvertown and Pontoon Dock.”
Or change DLR trains between platforms 2 & 2 (City Airport to Custom House), or 2 & 1 Custom House to City Airport?
I fear that your first thought is called “cluttering up the network and making the timetable more complicated”.
The cheapest thing to do to improve access to City Airport would be to improve the signs at Canning Town station. It is very difficult to work out which platform goes where for the DLR.
@ALAN GRIFFITHS
Fair point, but given that these sections of the DLR have only a 12tph (5 minute interval) it would be possible to slot something in between.
A train starting at Custom House platform 4 would need to start at the right interval so it could fit in with a slot in the Woolwich Arsenal service.
Of course a looping service would need to arrive on the “wrong” platform (2) at City Airport which would actually need some extra points as the current crossover goes the wrong way. And there isn’t a crossover to the west of Custom House DLR,
Perhaps a single-track DLR bridge next to the Connaut Bridge, directly linking the east of Prince Regent DLR to City Airport DLR would be something the airport could actually afford, given the passenger numbers? That would save the 200m walk from the old Silvertown Station location.
(It worth remembering that it’s only six DLR stops from Canary Wharf Crossrail station to City Airport if you use the northern XR walkway to Poplar DLR. )
@chris Mitch
That’s because the station is badly designed (or more accurately, gradually grew without an overall plan). The two pairs of DLR platforms are a long way apart and eastbound trains to either Woolwich or Beckton can go from either of them. No amount of signage can solve that. A complete rebuild, to a layout like that at Poplar, would be needed
@ALEKS
“The walk from SiIvertown Station …. and shorter than from the DLR to aircraft, photo given in the article.”
That statement is absolute nonsense.
It is patently obvious from the photo that the walk from Silvertown Station is a lot longer than from the LCY DLR station to the airport.
The walk from the escalators (at the City Airport DLR station) to the check in area is less than 200 metres. I struggle to think of any airport station that beats that.
@ISLANDDWELLER
“I struggle to think of any airport station that beats that.”
Gatwick South Terminal has almost all of the check-in desks are less than 100m from the railway station exit gateline.
timbeau @ 25 May 2019 at 21:41
“@chris Mitch That’s because the station is badly designed”
At Canning Town station, Poplar-facing DLR platforms 3&4 are above Jubilee line platforms 5&6. Broadly, Newham Council’s (Civil) Engineers convinced the House of Lords Committee stage that was possible and not expensive. That was a hard fought Newham Council win over the London Docklands Development Corporation, who wanted the DLR Beckton branch to cross the River Lea next to their new road bridge. LDDC just would not have it that passengers would want to change trains, in all directions.
Rebuilding of platforms 1 & 2, for the Woolwich Arsenal branch of the DLR to replace the North London line, came years later. Suggestions that platforms 3 & 4 might be altered, so that they were above 1 & 2 as well as above 5 & 6, made very little headway.
The illuminated DLR signs in the concourse are very clear; but easier to use if you’ve a shrewd idea of how long it takes you to reach each platform.
@Aleks/Chris C
““The walk from SiIvertown Station …. and shorter than from the DLR to aircraft, photo given in the article.”
That statement is absolute nonsense.”
Read it carefully – the distance from Silvertown station to the entrance to the airport is indeed shorter than the walk from DLR to the aircraft, but of course one is not a substitute for the other, as having walked from Silvertown station to the entrance to the airport you then still have to walk to the aircraft –
@Alan,
The signs in the concourse of Canning Town station may be clear, but the signs from the Jubilee line platforms certainly are not. Huge numbers of infrequent passengers for exhibitions at Excel, and flights from City Airport will change to the DLR from the Jubilee line, and it is far from obvious which of the DLR platforms they should head for when alighting from a Jubilee train.
CAN you actually walk from (the site of) Silvertown station to the ground-floor entrance of LCR airport?
“Open Street Map” shows that there is a footpath from Drew Rd to Hartmann Road, & another one to the latter from Parker Street … otherwise any walk is blocked by either the Primary School, or the DLR viaduct itself. Approx 400 metres, I think.
@GregT – Yes very much so. Look at Street View, and it’s a more convenient drop-off for the airport hence all the stopping restrictions. The entrance was built to serve the local community.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5030861,0.0485027,3a,75y,55.57h,95.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJqTN_QQ9S-31g7V1anvrPw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
[Speculation snipped. LBM]
@Timbeau – 400m walk from Xrail train to plane is very competitive, the busier airports have pier walks inside the terminals longer. Only Southend beats it comfortably. There is a compulsory security break for a rest, and those with baggage or other needs could still opt for Custom House.
Aleks, thanks for that – I was relying on “Bing Aeriel view” – which is out of date & as stated Opne Street Map ….
Thus, all that’s needed once x-rail opens, is some suitable signage?
To be exact, OpenStreetMap also shows the connection via the DLR station: see https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/239883892
In fact you can also get it to give you directions using it: https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_foot&route=51.50233%2C0.04521%3B51.50365%2C0.04973 estimates 445m or 5 minute walk (from the Silvertown station that will not, at least at first, exist)
ChrisMitch @ 26 May 2019 at 20:39
“The signs in the concourse of Canning Town station may be clear, but the signs from the Jubilee line platforms certainly are not.”
I will have a look when I’m there tomorrow, then contact the GLA member, Unmesh Desai.
It’s certainly not been clear to me any time I’ve been traveling to city airport via the jubilee/DLR route.
@ALAN GRIFFITHS
I had a meeting with the person who commissioned the screens when he was at the DLR and he thought they were very useful, which is true when you can see them.
However, they are often badly placed.
At Stratford, for example, if you come off platform 3A onto the walkway, you can’t see the DLR departures even though the nearest platforms (4A, 4B, 16 and 17) are all DLR ones. The only DLR screen is pointing the wrong way at the bottom of the stairs close to the Jubilee Line.
IMHO there needs to be DLR screens on that walkway (for passengers leaving the Central Line), and in all three of the underground corridors.
At Stratford International, you can’t see the screen until you are well past the card readers. As the trains are every 10 minutes, you might have just missed one and might as well walk though Westfield than wait for the next one, so it would be nice to have a screen on the outside of the station.
IMHO at Canning Town the screens would be better if they were customised for each location. If they said things like “down the stairs” or “up the escalator” or “5 minute walk to” they might be better for passengers. Perhaps with some directional arrows.
On the whole, when you can see them they are correct and show useful information – the list of destinations sorted by time.
The benefit of a Crossrail link would seem to be a quick connection to/from Heathrow. To me, that just doesn’t make sense, as you pay premium prices with the LCY routes, whereas LHR has (just) enough capacity/connections to enable it to function as a hub from wherever in Europe you might start or end from. I can only think of one case where an acquaintance did the LCY-LHR change and they probably ate up costs savings from Germany to their final destination from the taxi cost alone.
LCY is making a push into the leisure market – for a weekend in Budapest several friends and I recently opted for the new LOT route rather than traveling out to LTN or STN. I will be traveling to Vilnius in July and again will be traveling via City – not only are the times better but the options were again STN (Ryanair) or LTN (Wizzair) – with the latter more expensive! So City seems to be finding its niche with the leisure market that hits the sweet spot for those willing to spend a small bit more and travel at humane times.
@Keplerniko – I half agree, in the sense that LCY is picking up the o/p market that is being abandoned, seemingly, by the major carriers. This became apparent recently when I was booking a flight to Zuerich (or indeed, almost anywhere in Switzerland, given the excellence of the rail system for my destination at Vitznau+), and found that all but one of the o/p BA or Swiss flights from LHR had vanished from the timetable, although LCY still offered a much better range, albeit with other carriers. And here is the other half of my comment in which I disagree: from most parts of the London area (but especially from those of us living in SWRland), LCY with luggage* is awkward by public transport to the point where it becomes a serious trade off between the cost and reliability of a limo to LHR and the cost and unreliability of a limo to LCY. The answer was fairly finely balanced, with unreliability in a road journey across central London being traded against the extended checkin times at LHR.
I doubt if there is an easy physical answer to this – a pity, given the (relative) attractiveness of a small airport.
*Lady Dawlish has a lot of hatboxes…
+ not to mention the opportunity of some serious steam traction
A bit off topic, but there is a more general question about whether London City SHOULD be expanding to attract more leisure travel, as being in the middle of residential areas it’s very intrusive and polluting, on both sides of the river.
You can make the economic argument that it’s a benefit that business people can hop in and out of the City and Docklands (though even that can be debated), but that doesn’t apply to city breaks and ski trips.
ChrisMitch @ 26 May 2019 at 20:39
“The signs in the concourse of Canning Town station may be clear, but the signs from the Jubilee line platforms certainly are not.”
I had a look when I was there yesterday. I have written to the GLA member, Unmesh Desai, this morning, including drawing his attention to this discussion.
I’ve suggested:
1) more fixed signs towards the southern end of Jubilee line platforms 5 & 6.
2) 4 DLR departure screens at the bottom of the southern escalators
(to DLR platforms 3 & 4), similar to those at the bottom of the northern escalators.
3) 1 DLR departure screen at the top of the southern stairs down to the concourse (to DLR platforms 1 & 2).
I expect that TfL staff don’t wish to make signage complicated. I’m inclined to agree.
@Graham H
“from those of us living in SWRland), LCY with luggage* is awkward by public transport ”
With the exception of Gatwick (which in the return direction is just a cross-platform interchange at Clapham Junction) and Southampton, any airport is awkward by public transport from SWRland. (Even the X26, direct to Heathrow from certain parts of SWR land, has a habit of terminating short at Hatton Cross, without anyone waiting for it at Heathrow Central being made aware of the fact). From Waterloo, LCY is no worse than Luton* or Stansted, as you can take the Drain to Bank, or the Jubilee to Canning Town, and connect there with the DLR to the airport.
*No-one with a plane to catch will put their trust in the infrequent and tediously circuitous Wimbledon to Luton service.
@timbeau – yes, there are no nice options (and now Eurostar has decamped, not even KXStP is a convenient alternative for the be-luggage). By way of amusement, I once returned to Milford from LHR by using the late and much lamented 436 to Guildford and the 71 thence. Actually not much slower than using the railair link to Woking and thence train, as the 436 didn’t spend its time visiting all the terminals.
@Graham H
First are starting an hourly Guildford-Heathrow railair coach on 1 July. The timetable for RA2 can be found on Traveline Southeast.
@Man of Kent – interesting. Reliability will be a key test – and it will be important for the service not to spend its time visiting all the terminals in turn, a process which seems to take about 40 minutes. The other important thing is for the route to have complete flexibility as to routeing between, in this case, LHR and Guildford – one of the few useful things about the Woking link is its ability to divert via Chertsey if the M25 is blocked.