A good friend of me and myself are standing on the platform at Hither Green rail station in south east London when an eight car (2×4) networker pulls in to the station. It’s half past eight and in the middle of the morning commute peak when the train doors open. But no one can board the train as it’s already jam packet from top to bottom with conditions even worse then those seen of pigs in the bio-industry.
Not long after a second train enters the station, same conditions and although being full already it has to call at Lewisham as well before entering the endless queue towards London Bridge. It’s no surprise people are complaining and god knows how many times a week they have to face these horrifying conditions. And this is a station served by something like four trains to the capital per hour, perhaps more during the peak period. But what’s the point of a train calling at a station when no one seems to be able to board it anyway?
And after a good twenty minutes we gave up on the train to London and boarded the first one to Sidcup. A decision which saved us a lot of inconvenience when we boarded a train to London a few station calls down the line. We had a seat and when we drove back to the capital and entered Hither Green again people were still not able to board the train in fare payer worthy conditions. After twenty five minutes we were reluctant to find ourselves boarding a crowded, but not extremely overcrowded Capital Connect service to St Pancras.
Today I boarded a train at my local station Almere Centre in the middle of the morning peak towards Amsterdam. The platform is full and I guess some 200 or more are intending to travel on the next service towards our capital city or the airport where this train will terminate. An eight car train enters the station and although this train has called at two large stations before to pick up the workforce Almost everyone can fiend themselves a seat. The revenue protection team is even able to do their round through the train. Four of them do the upper level while the other two do the lower level of this double-decker.
At Amsterdam Central almost six hundred people alight from the train. They were able to read their free newspaper, drink coffee or enjoy the landscape passing by.
You might say that comparing these two situations is like comparing an elephant with a mosquito. But actually the conditions are pretty much the same, it just covers a larger area. Its horrible to drive to work by car in or around Amsterdam. And although Amsterdam itself is not as big as London, the commuters come from places as far as fifty kilometres away. Especially Almere and Lelystad are big commuter hotspots with more then 250.000 people from these two cities to Amsterdam alone. And because driving isn’t an option for many, most use the train. You can accuse the Dutch state owned railway of many things but not for a lack of vision. Almere is to build another 50.000 houses in the next decade and as a response to this the rail corridor to Amsterdam and Schiphol airport is being upgraded to handle twice as many trains before it is actually needed.
In the UK, and especially around London overcrowding is battled by even more fare increases or yet another platform extension. Increasing fares is only good for the company’s cash-flow, but not in the interest of it’s passengers. Platform extensions are only a short term solution but not adequate to cope with the demand expected in the next twenty to thirty years. And although that seems to be far into the future, we have reached that point long since. Ask the commuters at Hither Green what they think about their South Eastern when they are faced with severely overcrowded trains and have to squeeze themselves in on their daily commute to London.
The solution for London can be found in and around Amsterdam. If you don’t have the space for longer trains, or when you faced the limits of your network capacity a while ago, there is still space to expand and gain a good forty five percent increase in available capacity by going up. Add a second deck to your train and magic things will happen. Large doors will allow passengers to board and alight fast, two decks will allow more people to find a seat or to travel by train. The TOC might even use less trains to London, resulting in some capacity relief, the queues to London Bridge are something of the past and as a result travel times to the capital are reduced by an average of 7 minutes per train.
And yes, it will take a long time for this to happen, and it will be as expansive as building Crossrail. But the good thing is that you can order trains from the shelve and get them relatively cheap. You can transport many more people, you can speed up services into London, you can board a train at half past eight in the hight of the morning peak and you can find a seat. And what’s more important, you do have the capacity in place to move London for the next fifty years.
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