The Plan

First of all, why?

London’s newest line, the Elizabeth line, has now become a vital part of commuting within and around London, however a large number of Londoners still remain unconnected by this vital line.

This is the perfect opportunity to enhance the undergrounds presence in south west London, all while solving some key issues that are a problem in SW transport.

Here are the aforementioned issues we are attempting to resolve:

Waterloo (SWR terminus) is at capacity.

This bottleneck limits the train frequency on branch lines to even as low as 1 tph.

Lack of direct trains to job hubs.

Unlike some other London Termini, Waterloo usually requires commuters to take another underground line to reach their final destination. (See figure later for reference)

District line has a relatively slow service to the city.

3rd slowest underground line according to TFL study. (not including circle as it stays central)

District line is the busiest sub-surface line, leading too crowding at peak hours

This route extension will allow the connection of many of the biggest south west London areas (Wimbledon, Kingston, Putney) at a much faster and efficient rate to central and east London. Having this direct connection too the Elizabeth line is extremely useful as the line serves 3 London terminal stations, the UK’s biggest shopping district, 2 Airports, and most importantly, job hubs such as the city and canary wharf.

The Plan - Overview

The proposed solution is to redirect certain services off the mainline Elizabeth line from Paddington, onto the district line tracks to Wimbledon, where it will join the SWR mainline before going off towards Kingston and Teddington.

The line will only have 6 stations, but have connections too 7 other TFL and national rail lines, aiding the commute of many in SW London and Surrey, even if they do not live along the line.

The whole branch line will only be a 17 minute journey from Teddington too Paddington, compared to the current 1 hour journey, and these gains in speed are nothing compared too the ones you see when comparing speed from residential areas such as wimbledon to job hubs such as canary wharf (see data below)

This solution was carefully considered with two main factors in mind:

Speed of completion
Cost of completion

There are many other ways to reduce the pressure on the district and resolve the issues mentioned, however TFL is notorious for expensive and time consuming solutions (Cross rail). This solution is efficient and relatively quick to implement.

The use of existing tracks, lack of new tunnels and limiting the number of new stations and platforms that need to be created, allow for this project to be implemented and operational to combat the current demand, being a huge advantage over other solutions for the same issues, e.g (crossrail 2). This is further explained in more detail here.

See here for more detail on the physical upgrades involved in the project.

How will it solve the mentioned issues?

Waterloo at capacity:

Waterloo being at capacity prevents more services to SWR branches such as the kingston loop. This is due to the fact that the mainline cannot handle all the branch lines at capacity. For example, a mainline with 3 branches that have 2 tph (trains per hour) each, will need to have enough capacity for 2*3 = 6 tph. Due to this issue, trains in branch lines such as the Kingston loop are often infrequent (1-2 tph). ESE bypasses the mainline and Waterloo, so can easily provide another 3-4 tph in these areas.

Lack of a direct train to job hubs (city, canary wharf):

ESE will solve this issue as the trains completely bypass Waterloo and most of the SWR mainline which is currently at capacity. Waterloo as a central London terminus is not ideal as the majority of jobs are not within walking/bus distance from Waterloo, so another underground train will usually need to be taken in a commuters journey. The distribution of jobs can be seen in the figure (right) and it is visible that the jobs vaguely are in line with the current Elizabeth line main branch.

Having this direct train as an option will not only significantly speed up journey times, but will improve satisfaction of using public transport (less chances of delays) and also take of pressure of other commuter lines such as the Northern line (goes through Waterloo) which is currently at capacity during peak hours.

District line is too slow:

The district line was originally developed to serve the suburban areas of London, and interconnecting them. This results in a line with frequent stops and therefore a longer journey time. ESE will be able to run on the tracks however skipping some stations to provide a much faster express service from residential hubs for commuters. As seen on the right, the district is the second slowest underground line (excluding circle line as it does not leave central London). ESE can speed up journey times from SW London to job hubs by 49% on average on the line, and 32% in nearby areas that require a change of trains to get to ESE. Find out more about the journey time decreases here.

Italics represent journeys that require a change.

Low passanger throughput capacity from SW too central London:

ESE will improve this significantly due too the frequency, speed, and capacity of Elizabeth line trains. The speed and frequency have already been mentioned, however the capacity of Elizabeth line class 345s is the most of any underground line at 1,500 people per train. The trains are also up to 200m long, which does require extra long platforms however this can be used to our advantage by having one train being able to service 2 stops that are close together simultaneously. This can currently be seen between Farringdon and Barbican, as you can exit the Elizabeth line stop from either station. This helps increase speed of service while serving the same number of stations. This will be done on ESE at Earls court/West Brompton to serve both stations at one stop, allowing for an easy interchange with the overground, southern trains, piccadilly and district to all destinations. Read more about the logistics of this here.

Crowding issues:

ESE will resolve this by resolving the issues above, all of which currently come together to create the disaster of transport we witness in the SW on a day to day basis.

Data to back these claims:

Data Analysis

Why this is better than crossrail 2?

Crossrail 2 has some very critical flaws that would prevent it from serving its purpose if completed. The project also will take extremely long and is way more expensive. This debate requires a lot of explanation, so click below to find out more.

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If you are not yet convinced, please explore the website further to see how we have arrived at the claims mentioned on this page.

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