TfL have decided that the time is finally right to consider an extension of the Bakerloo line into southeast London. Such plans were first mooted 100 years ago, so they haven't rushed. But there is now broad agreement that the rail black hole in northern Southwark needs plugging, and that extending the under-used brown line from Elephant and Castle is the best way to do it. You lucky lucky people.
Only one thing is certain, which is that the extension will at some point reach New Cross Gate and Lewisham. But there are then three things to decide, marked in blue, brown and pink on the map above, and the first of these is the most important. Which way will the Bakerloo line tunnel head immediately after leaving Elephant and Castle, will it be east towards the Old Kent Road (option 1a) or south towards Camberwell and Peckham (option 1b)? Both are deserving cases.
Camberwell has been in dire need of a railway station ever since the last one closed in 1916, and is one of the last significant urban centres in Zone 2 not to have a rail connection. A Bakerloo line station here would transform the area, removing the need for the local population to have to catch the bus first before they can get anywhere. But then the same could be said for the alternative route. The Old Kent Road has been in dire need of a railway station ever since the last one closed in 1917, and is one of the last significant urban centres in Zone 2 not to have a rail connection. Two Bakerloo line stations here would transform the area, removing the need for the local population to have to catch the bus first before they can get anywhere.
What's intriguing is what's not on the table. A route via Burgess Park had long been a potential option, that's roughly halfway between options 1a and 1b. This missed the main roads but scored a direct hit on the least accessible spot in inner London - the heart of the Aylesbury Estate. From here the route could have continued to Peckham or to the Old Kent Road, meeting other long term needs, but no, this central option is dead in the water. Also defunct is the option of a station in Walworth. This ought to be an obvious halt on the run to Camberwell, but no, it's been skipped in favour of a two kilometre run without stopping, no expense spent.
So who wins? There is only one logical outcome to Southwark's tunnelling tussle, which is that the Camberwell option will lose. It's ridiculously indirect, for a start, wiggling around all over the place to tick off a few key stations along the way, and increasing journey time for anyone trying to get into town from further out. It only creates one new transport node rather than two, and it doubles up on an existing direct link between Peckham Rye and Lewisham, which could only be a waste of money. Whereas two new stations along the Old Kent Road would be in an almost straight line from E&C to Lewisham, and create a more direct hit on the heart of the existing railway-less zone. There's also more potential for residential development along the way, plus the Old Kent Road in Monopoly is brown, QED.
Lewisham might be the end of the line, or it might not, that's the second important option. Lewisham is the extension's key target, so why go further? It also marks the point where the line would come out of tunnel and run overground, so stopping here would save plenty of money. This would be an unambitious choice, for sure, but it remains the most likely austerity option. But if a further extension goes ahead then a new connection would be made and the existing railway line to Beckenham and Hayes would be entirely absorbed into the Underground. No longer would the residents of Catford be able to catch a direct train to London Bridge, but they could instead get to Oxford Circus, which might be deemed an improvement.
The third and final option concerns an extension to Bromley. A new tunnel would be built from somewhere beyond Beckenham Junction, stopping somewhere, terminating somewhere - the plans aren't any more than woolly thoughts at present. In reality the connection wouldn't be as brilliant as it sounds, indeed the journey time to Oxford Circus would be much the same as it is today. But imagine the joy if the Underground ever came to Bromley, not to mention the political capital to be made.
Excited by all this? Don't be.
For a start, a Bakerloo line extension won't be completed before 2030, probably later. We're only at the route consultation stage, there are no concrete plans, nothing that could be enacted under the ground in the immediate future. And 2030 is miles away, as far into the future as the opening of the Jubilee line extension is in the past. Time was when a new underground line could be thrown together in a few years, maybe even a decade or so, but today's technological advances only ever seem to slow things down. Nobody in Clock House, Catford or Camberwell will be catching the Bakerloo any time soon.
More importantly, there's absolutely no money. The extension isn't funded, indeed has no likelihood of being funded, at least not from the public purse. TfL don't run a speculative construction company, so can't just dig tubes in the ground to follow crayoned lines on maps. Indeed the most telling paragraph in the entire consultation document is this one...
If a Bakerloo line extension is built, it won't be to improve social capital. Just as Crossrail is only stopping in Woolwich because Berkeley Homes paid, and just as the Northern line is only going to Battersea because the Power Station's owners threw cash, so the Bakerloo extension will join up the places where developers can find the most money. The new line may benefit some existing residents of southeast London, but its unspoken intention is the attraction of incomers, bringing the greatest windfalls to those who sell property and build shops.
Don't get me wrong, a Bakerloo line extension would be far better built than unbuilt, and this corner of London needs a leg-up more than most. But don't get your hopes up that anything'll happen soon, indeed best not get any hopes up at all.
Of all the Underground's abandoned stations, one looks more deserving of its fate than most.
Blake Hall was less a station and more a halt in the middle of nowhere. It was located at the far end of the Central line, about halfway between North Weald and Ongar, on a remote country lane in the rural south of Essex. Trains paused regularly to open their doors to birdsong, if not to passengers, then clattered off across the fields to fractionally busier platforms elsewhere. It's said that Sir John Betjeman's dream job would have been to be the stationmaster here, holed up in a redbrick house that could have been 200 miles from the City but was instead swiftly connected by train. By 1981 Blake Hall famously boasted only six passengers a day, a fact which makes perfect sense if you've ever visited the spot. And when economic truth finally caught up with this humble backwater, the trains still clattered by, but the birdsong went unheard.
After closure those half dozen passengers found other ways to travel, probably involving cars, and the station building was sold off as a private residence. Trains still ran by, peak hours only, and the platform was subsequently removed in case drivers ever felt tempted to pause and let a sneaky traveller disembark. Things must have got quieter still in 1994 when the entire branch line closed, and then very slightly busier again ten years later when the Essex Ongar Railway began tentative services. The line's owner loved Blake Hall's railwayside isolation so much that he bought the place, and now lives behind grand gates at the foot of a long drive in a somewhat extended house. Last year he even rebuilt the station's platform, not so that scheduled steamtrains could stop, but I suspect the odd special pauses here out of hours when nobody else is looking.
By rights Blake Hall station should never have been built. When the railway came to Ongar in the 1860s the local landowner had insisted that a station be built to serve his stately pile, a 36 bedroom mansion that's not actually anywhere near the railway. Blake Hall (for that was its name) lies over a mile away in the village of Bobbingworth, exactly the same distance from its own station as it was from Ongar, just to add to the pointlessness of construction. It would have made better sense to name the tiny halt after a closer village, or rather hamlet, of which there were several. Greensted Green would likely have been the winning candidate, but I'd love to have seen Upper Bobbingworth Green on the tube map, or better still Toot Hill.
All of which correctly suggests that reaching the site of Blake Hall station these days is a bit of a challenge. If you've got a car, fine. Take the winding lane off the A414 and drive down to the humpy bridge across the railway, then look for somewhere to park. If it's the weekend you might get away with pulling up in the forecourt of the only other building hereabouts, that's Stationbridge House. This metal shed looks like it'd be more at home in Debden, and serves a company that supplies disposable cleaning, catering and hygiene products - that's paper towels and plastic cutlery to you mate. I suspect they have enough employees to have more than doubled passengers numbers at the station across the road, if only it had stayed open, or run at sensible times.
Or you can catch the train and then walk. Normally the nearest station's in far-off Epping, but that's not a problem because this is the starting point of the Essex Way, an 82-mile waymarked trail to Harwich. Toot Hill comes about five miles in, from which you can walk another mile up the lanes to Blake Hall bridge. But on EOR days you can walk in direct from North Weald or Ongar, each in this case about an hour distant. I'd recommend Ongar, partly because you follow the Essex Way for longer, but also because roughly halfway you pass the oldest wooden church in the world. St Andrew's Greensted includes 51 timber planks that predate the Norman Conquest, although there's evidence of 6th and 7th century wooden structures beneath the chancel. Step inside and it's gorgeous, all atmospheric beamwork and stained glass, plus a table of jams and preserves for sale at the back.
Or you can catch the bus. Toot Hill merits a tiny number of buses a day, but on Sundays the Epping Ongar Railway run three heritage services on route 381, departing North Weald as part of your general admission. They use an old Green Line coach, beautifully restored, which hurtles round a circuit of narrow lanes no double decker could cope with. On Sunday the bus was packed out, but that was because the End of Tube event coincided with a mass gathering of old vehicles which many came specifically to admire. The main draw was an extra-rare line-up of the first four Routemaster prototypes, which excited the MWLB beyond compare, while the more Essex element of the audience were more thrilled to see a silver New Bus For London from Bow Garage.
I caught the 381, and persuaded the driver I wanted to alight at Blake Hall. I wasn't the first - a number of other folk had made the same journey by other means, and were standing poised beside the low brick wall along the side of the bridge. There's only one decent reason to visit Blake Hall station these days, other than if you live here, and that's to watch a train go by. More to the point this weekend that meant watching a tube train go by, an occurrence not seen these past twenty years, hence the presence of several gentlemen with cameras and other filming devices. Breakdowns and delays meant we waited rather longer than timetabled, long enough to see a young man emerge from the station building and sit down on the platform with a snack and a bottle of Sarson's in hand. Too much information, I know, but that's what you get for sharing a vantage point with the owner of a telephoto lens.
Eventually a tube train appeared round the bend, proper red end first, and edged closer to the Blake Hall platform. The bloke with the vinegar had gone back inside, as if living here made the passing of rare trains somewhat less special, thereby recreating the more familiar passenger-free scenario. Cameras flashed and lenses whirred to capture the moment, then the group dashed to the other side of the lane to watch the entourage continuing its journey towards Ongar. From this angle the deception behind the illusion was revealed, with four chunky yellow diesels shoving along the three carriages from behind. And as they sped off through the cutting and into the trees I smiled. I'd come all this way to the middle of nowhere to catch an impossible train at an abandoned station, and grabbed the money shot. We may not see the like again.
20 years ago tomorrow, the last tube train ran between Epping and Ongar. The last that is until this weekend, when the very same train returned to the very same line and transported many more people than it ever used to do back in 1994. So that was a grand day out.
The railway opened with high hopes, and longer ago than you might think. Ongar was first served in 1865 when the Great Eastern Railway extended their Stratford-Loughton branch deeper into the rural heart of south Essex. Their station at Epping did well, but the line was always single track through the fields beyond and passenger numbers never really took off. London Transport took over in 1949, running only a shuttle service between Epping and Ongar, initially with steam, then later with electrification. The Green Belt prevented major housing development and kept patronage low, and with no more than 650 passengers daily the line became ripe for termination. LT tried in 1980 but succeeded only in cutting the service to peak hours only, and closed an intermediate station the following year. The end came on 30th September 1994, when of course miraculous numbers of passengers turned out, and for the next ten years the line fell silent. Volunteers then began the long job of restoring the line to steam, culminating in a grand reopening in 2012, though still not quite the full line. At present westbound trains terminate in woods atCoopersale, but there are plans to extend to almost-Epping to facilitate interchange with the Central line. End of potted history.
It's not in any way simple to restore tube trains to an ex-tube line. For a start the carriages have to be preserved, as these three have been by the Cravens Heritage Trains trust. The end two date to 1960, while the middle carriage is much older 1938 stock, and has comfier seating to boot. But the biggest problem is that the line's no longer electrified so the trains don't actually work, hence a bit of mechanical sleight of hand was called for. Two Schoma Diesel locomotives were brought in to shunt the three carriages down the line, and then when they proved slightly unreliable their number was doubled up to four. Viewed from outside, from one end of the train, the combination looked most peculiar. But viewed from the front it appeared that the trains were motoring under their own power, just as they would have done 20 years ago. And for those of us sat inside the illusion was complete, so it really did feel like we were speeding through the countryside on a proper tube train.
One other catch, obvious if you think about it, is that the sliding doors didn't work. A member of Epping Ongar Railway staff had to come along and flick an external lever to close the doors mechanically, and even then they often needed an extra tug from one of the volunteers within. Ditto at the end of the ride we had to wait to be let out, and even then only via one set of doors per carriage. Generally that was fine, as we didn't mind being trapped in a carriage decked out with adverts circa 1994 (for Travelcard extension tickets and Oranjeboom lager, amongst others). But by the end of the day the carriages were masquerading as mobile greenhouses, in part thanks to the unseasonably warm weather but also due to the increasing numbers of passengers within. Those who turned up for the first train of the day faced mostly empty seats, but by mid-afternoon it was standing room only - unheard of on the Ongar line!
They came in great numbers, the trainkeen. You could tell most by their enthusiasm, and by their sharp-lensed cameras for the recording of the day. People stood nicely to give everyone their turn to photograph a train, and engine, whatever, or at least they did for most of the time. Ladies were very definitely in the minority, and girls under 18 almost non-existent... unlike their extremely trainkeen brothers. Many had made the effort to come despite not being in the prime of health, and hats off to the young gentleman in a wheelchair for enduring what was very much not a step-free service.
A really nice touch was that the usual station names had been replacedbyroundels. The cover-up was only for this weekend, and occasionally you could see the paper flapping off, but the overall effect was highly realistic as if these were the enamel signs that had always been present. Up at Ongar another special sign had been added, indeed unveiled by the Managing Director of London Underground, showing the 0.0km point from which all distances on the network are still measured. And Met 1, the Underground's new pet steam locomotive turned up to run a few of the journeys down the line. She looked magnificent in her polished Metropolitan maroon, but alas she performed less convincingly and broke down (with injector issues) before the first of the day's designated round trips was complete. That buggered the planned timetable somewhat, with a diesel brought in to run the steam service, and later replacing the proper tube service too.
But End of Tube was a splendid event all told, possibly unrepeatable, and much enjoyed by the crowds who turned up. I could write more but I've chosen to illustrate the day via 50 photographs you can click through and view. I'll have more to tell tomorrow about what was going on elsewhere, but for now let me applaud the teamwork and organisation that bought electric trains to a non-electric line. And the best bit of the day was the repeated realisation, speeding through the woods, trees or fields, that I was actually on a tube train shuttling between Epping and Ongar. Never thought I'd see the day again.
Time was when most Londoners lived in houses, now most of us live in flats. And the building that kickstarted that change, it can be argued, was a concrete block in Belsize Park.
The IsokonBuilding on Lawn Road was completed in 1934, the brainchild of Jack and Molly Pritchard. They were designers by trade, mostly of furniture, but wanted to create somewhere completely different to live. What they came up with was a sleek block of flats built from reinforced concrete, unheard of at the time. There were 32 flats in total across four floors, each accessed via an external walkway - another pioneering first. The kitchens were on the small side, but that was fine because there was a communal kitchen on site with a dumb waiter to bring up the meals. Up top was a penthouse, which the Pritchards took for themselves, and downstairs an amazingly eclectic mix of artists, designers and socialites moved in. One of these was Walter Gropius, German architect of the Bauhaus, fleeing from increasingly intolerant conditions in Nazi Germany. And at least four foreign secret agents became tenants, easily disguised amongst the bohemian foreigners on the slopes below Hampstead.
It wasn't long before the communal kitchens became a restaurant - wittily named the Isobar - cementing the Isokon's status as a cultural meeting place. In 1940 the block's most famous resident moved in, none other than Agatha Christie, whose output during the ensuing six years included Sparkling Cyanide and the spy whodunnit N or M? But postwar the building's sparkle faded, entering council ownership in 1972 and falling gently into a state of disrepair. English Heritage Grade I listed the Isokon around the turn of the century, at which time a housing trust took over and restored the building. Rejoice, it's not all been snapped up by oligarchs, it's now shared ownership housing, and rather more affordable than you might expect.
Andit'sbeautiful. The Isokon stands out from the neighbouring housing like a sleek off-white ocean liner, improbably moored up in the shadow of the Royal Free. Every line is clean and measured, if semi-obscured behind a canopy of trees. And no, you can't sneak up the stairwell to walk along the well-scrubbed balcony, this is a private residence after all. But as of this summer you can go inside the garage, which has been kitted out as The Isokon Gallery. Open Saturdays and Sundays, 11am-4pm, should you be in the area or tempted over. [video][5 photos]
It's not a big space, but there is room inside for a free exhibition on the history of the building nextdoor. Rest assured it's detailed too - the National Trust's had a hand in its curation - combining information with artefacts from the top. Chief amongst these is a set of plywood furniture from the Pritchards' design company, Isokon, perhaps most famous for their angular Long Chair. Also present is a Penguin Donkey Bookcase, a striking low shelf unit with space for 90 Penguin paperbacks and centrally-stashed magazines. It should have been a roaring success but World War Two interrupted after only 100 had been produced, and the plywood supply chain was cut. Budding 21st century Modernists can now buy their own from a revamped Isokon company based in Hackney, but at £670 a shot you'd have to be particularly keen.
Further displays reveal how the building came to be as well as some of its famous residents. Peruse a menu from the Isobar, from an era when Stewed Rabbit and Camp Coffee were deemed socially palatable. A period radio belts out period songs to stir the soul while you glance at period adverts. The penthouse's original copper-coated door is in one corner alongside a recreation of an apartment's kitchen - tiny by modern standards, indeed the walls had to be shifted by 10cm during modernisation to ensure a fridge would fit. A map shows where to find similar Modernist treasures scattered around the Hampstead area. And there's also a small shop stocked with appropriately progressive books, badges and gifts, in case you're already wondering what to get the designeroholic in your life for Christmas.
The Isokon Gallery's only open at weekends and only until October, so don't come without checking it's open first. And it's only a fifteen minuter, but don't let that put you off because there's plenty of other stuff to see nearby. Immediately behind the Isokon is Belsize Wood, a small but perfectly formed nature reserve whose trees have blessed the residents' lounge window views for 80 years. Hampstead Heath's just up the road, as are Burgh House, Keats House and Fenton House, each of which is worth a look. Me, I paid a quid for the Gallery's Hampstead Trail, a map which led me round half a dozen 1930s Modernist houses in the immediate locality. Ernő Goldfinger's home at 2 Willow Road I know well, but the others less so, hence I enjoyed my reinforced concrete tour of the backstreets of Frognal. You'll no doubt know if you would too.
A new hotel opened in Holborn this week, and the Evening Standard wrote about it.
You could click through and read their article here. Or you could try my special quiz.
In each of the pairs that follow, one paragraph is taken from the newspaper story and the other paragraph was written by me. I wonder if you can perhaps spot which is which.
Click the sentence you think was written by the genuine journalist and published in an actual newspaper. And then check at the end of the quiz to see how many you got right.
1a)Central perks: why Holborn is the new Hoxton Coffee is grinding, beards are trimmed and MacBooks are online — Holborn is getting a new eastern flavour, says Susannah Butter 1b)A new hotel has opened Visitors and local people may use it, says DG
2a) If you go down to Midtown this afternoon you may be pleasantly disorientated. The streets are lined with shops and places to eat and drink; all gleaming and new, yet strangely familiar. The feeling that you've seen them before is correct — for Hoxton has come to Holborn. Central London's cafés are populated with yo-pros, busy on their MacBook Airs in between meeting for cold-pressed juice or figs with ricotta and seasalt and soon the streets will be full of people drinking coffee from white Shoreditch Grind cups, except here it is called Holborn Grind. 2b) In parts, Holborn is quite nice. But the hipster twats are moving in.
3a) All this action is centred around The Hoxton Holborn hotel, which opened this week in a former model toy shop on High Holborn. It’s the latest London branch of The Hoxton Hotel, which reinvigorated Shoreditch when it opened in 2006, with flash-room sales, DJ sets and food tastings. For its big move it has brought along all its friends from the East. Collaborators include everyone from Cheeky Parlour beauty pitstop to the Soho House Group’s Chicken Shop, a downstairs dirty food den, full of hardworking Midtowners in need of fortification in the form of toothsome fried meat and chips. 3b) Hoxton Holborn is not a purpose-built hotel, but has been squeezed into some refurbished BT office space and a former shop for sad men who like model trains. The reception area is quite loud, and the fried chicken is bloody expensive.
4a) This is not the only Eastern migration to an area that is more accessible and yet to be colonised by those with beards and fixie bikes. Timberyard, which was born in Old Street, has expanded its coffee shop to Upper St Martin’s Lane, while Dishoom whose Boundary Street branch is always packed out, has just announced a new location in King’s Cross. But this isn’t a case of copying Hoxton. Holborn has its own particular swagger, including Hubbard & Bell restaurant, an exciting new venture from the Soho House Group at the Hoxton Holborn that describes itself as “a Brooklyn style grill”. That means steak and eggs for breakfast, truffle chips and a belting banana split. The bar will serve mead made from the honey of local bees. 4b) There are at least two food and drink outlets in the area, or three if you're labouring under the misapprehension that King's Cross is near Holborn. Some insects excrete nearby.
5a) “This part of town is turning into somewhere you’d actually cross the city to eat or drink in,” says Catherine Hanly, editor of the Hot Dinners website, an authority on London’s restaurant scene. “The Hoxton’s arrival in Midtown is a big deal for Holborn. Coming less than a year after the ultra luxe Rosewood opened on the same road, the two hotels are transforming the area. There’s a perception that Hoxton has an edge, so bringing East London brands west is an easy way for more mainstream parts of London to get a little of that cool by association.” 5b) Nobody has ever heard of Holborn before, so thank goodness Catherine Hanly noticed a couple of hotels opening and alerted us.
6a) As soon as you enter the vast lobby of The Hoxton Holborn there are options. The low sofas in muted colours are perfect for casual meetings or catching up with emails. Should you want refreshment, the Hubbard & Bell coffee shop has a special machine with parts imported from America, Origin coffee and House Press juice. For the healthy there are breakfast power smoothies — try the oat, blueberry and almond milk — but there is also a counter piled high with croissants and doughnuts. 6b) Anyone can walk in off the street and hog the leather sofas, at least until the doorman chucks them out. But when the coffee machine breaks down it takes a long time for the replacement parts to arrive.
7a) The other coffee option, because one is not enough, is the Holborn Grind. It’s opening soon on the ground floor, with floor to ceiling glass windows on either side. It was chosen by the Hoxton to supply coffee after coming out top in a blind tasting, with nine out of 10 connoisseurs voting their brew the best. This branch will have its own special single blend coffee, and of course serve up the Grind’s famous espresso martinis. Co-founder David Abrahamovitch says, “It’s going to be amazing. Holborn can often be left out as an inbetween place but now it’s becoming a focal point and a great meeting spot.” 7b) "Please come to my coffee shop," says David. "We have great windows."
8a) People who work in the area, at tech giants including Yahoo!, Google and MediaCom, are delighted that they have new places to play. “We chose to open in Holborn as it’s an under-the-radar creative hub,” says Toby Garden, general manager of The Hoxton Holborn. 8b) Nobody has ever heard of Holborn before, so thank goodness Toby Garden opened a hotel on the doorstep of the biggest search engine company in the world.
9a) The hotel hopes to become a place for these people to gather. Nick Jones, founder of the Soho House Group, says: “Holborn, much like Shoreditch before it, has really evolved. You only have to look at the companies opening and moving offices in the area to see this. So, when we were offered the opportunity to partner with the Hoxton, we jumped at the chance. We look forward to getting to know our new neighbours.” 9b) No Shoreditch start-up could possibly afford the rents in Holborn, so multinational companies are moving in instead. Expect WC1 to be crawling with beards within weeks.
10a) Executives who need to fit some grooming into their day can head to The Cheeky Parlour, which has expanded from its Redchurch Street home off Shoreditch High Street to beautify the people of central London. It has pink neon on the walls, six nail stations and three pedicure chairs that make it easy to escape from the strains of professional life. There are parties planned, so what are you waiting for? Quick, make a reservation now while you can still get in to Midtown. 10b) Everyone calls Holborn 'Midtown' these days, don't they? Everyone except the new hotel, which calls it Holborn. It's a new hotel, get over it.
It is indeed as some of us long suspected, that Cycle Superhighway 2 isn't super at all, nothing more than a blue stripe of paint down the road providing no protection at all. You'd at least expect a cycle lane to be separate, but for much of its length CS2 is merely half of an existing lane of motor traffic, as if someone signed the plans off and said "oh that'll do". When a bus meets a cyclist on CS2, one often gets stuck behind the other. When CS2 comes across a bus stop it gives up, directing cyclists out into the main body of traffic by means of disjoint painted rectangles. And CS2 of course rounds the infamous Bow Roundabout, which at least TfL have tried to fix, but the rest of the Superhighway not so.
Until now, that is. A consultation to improve CS2 was launched this week, following many months of planning behind the scenes to try to get the details right. The lengthy delay is because Bow/Mile End/Whitechapel Road is a tough nut to crack, being a single carriageway trunk road with no obvious parallel backstreets. It'd be lovely to shunt cyclists onto quieter east/west roads but there aren't any, with canals and railways and cemeteries amongst the obstacles creating impenetrable barriers along the way. For precisely the same reason it wouldn't be acceptable to hand over an entire lane both ways to cyclists, because the displaced road traffic has nowhere else to go and central Tower Hamlets would be at risk of seizing up.
So what we're due to get is along the lines of the superhighway extension to Stratford which opened last year. This means proper segregated lanes rather than open blue stripes, plus early start lights plus bus stop bypasses. But the original CS2 is along a narrower road than its extension, which means a lot of the improvements will come at the expense of roadway and pavement. We do have some stonkingly wide pavements along the Bow/Mile End/Whitechapel Road, making width reduction relatively simple, but they also narrow considerably in places which is going to cause issues.
For example I still can't quite work out what TfL's proposals for CS2 mean for the pavement area immediately outside my front door. Seven very detailed maps have been produced, really excellently detailed compared to what public planning processes usually provide. But I'm still having trouble picturing precisely how perilously close to my front step the segregated cycle lane is coming, and whether the amount of pedestrian space will be adequate or not. What I can work out is that TfL propose to close the bus stop immediately before the Bow Flyover because there isn't room to stick a bus stop bypass behind it, so passengers will suddenly have further to walk. And I can also tell I'm going to have walk further myself on my commute to work because various pedestrian crossings are being realigned in ways that make them less direct. I know you're wonderful, cyclists, but all these changes so close to home are making you hard to love.
Here's the line from the consultation that's making non-cyclists nervous.
As yet TfL haven't got round to quantifying what they think the extent of this disruption might be. They've promised to release some timing predictions later on during the consultation period, but they only erected a string of survey cameras along Bow Road on Wednesday night, so maybe they're still collecting the data. If the flagship East/West and North/South Cycle Superhighways are anything to go by, the impact may spread wider than the immediate vicinity. According to a consultation addendum released yesterday, that project will see westbound traffic on the A13 deliberately held up at lights to control the flow of traffic at Tower Hill. A driver heading from Limehouse to Hyde Park Corner in the morning rush hour can expect their journey time to increase from almost 35 minutes to over 50... a complete change of tack from Boris's original policy of "smoothing the traffic flow".
One significant change on CS2 will be the banning of a handful of right turns to make the cycling infrastructure safer. Two of these near Mile End station sound ridiculous, because there's no obvious way for traffic to find an alternative route. Banning the right turns from Mile End Road into Burdett Road and from Burdett Road into Bow Road will instead nudge drivers round what are currently quiet residential streets, and all because nobody can design a junction properly to suit everyone. Elsewhere, however, cyclists will get a wider range of options than currently, for example with a newly permitted right turn from Fairfield Road into Bow Road.
I have particular concerns about how long the upgrade of CS2 is going to take and how much disruption will be caused. We're promised a start date in early 2015, at which point a substantial amount of digging, realignment and restructuring will begin. That's going to mean lane closures and coned-off pavement on a far greater scale than the original construction of CS2, more like the mess that beset Stratford High Street throughout much of last year. Slower journeys (and increased exhaust emissions) aren't solely the preserve of the upgraded Superhighway, they'll be with us all the way through construction.
There are so many proposed changes along the road from Aldgate to Bow that local residents and road users really need to engage. The best way, you'd think, would be to attend one of the public consultation events that TfL have organised. But there are only four of these, and you've already missed one because it took place less than 24 hours after the consultation was announced. The remaining three all take place at the Idea Store in Whitechapel, with one this Saturday (11-3), one late on Tuesday 7 October (3-7) and the last during the daytime on Friday 10 October (10-4). Compared to the number of consultation events the EW/NS Superhighways are getting, this is utterly pitiful. But you need to get in there with your comments by 2nd November, because TfL will only reconsider their plans if people go to the effort of pointing out positive ways in which they might be improved.
So yes, obviously a segregated cycle lane along Bow/Mile End/Whitechapel Road is a bloody good idea. It's what TfL should have built originally rather than merely painting the road blue and pretending this was good enough. But don't imagine it'll all be rosy, and don't think that only car drivers will be penalised. My pavement's going to be compromised, my walking routes are going to be extended, my waiting times at pedestrian crossings will be increased and my bus journeys are going to take longer. I wish the East End's cyclists well, obviously, but don't expect me to be pleased.
The railway opened with high hopes, and longer ago than you might think. Ongar was first served in 1865 when the Great Eastern Railway extended their Stratford-Loughton branch deeper into the rural heart of south Essex. Their station at Epping did well, but the line was always single track through the fields beyond and passenger numbers never really took off. London Transport took over in 1949, running only a shuttle service between Epping and Ongar, initially with steam, then later with electrification. The Green Belt prevented major housing development and kept patronage low, and with no more than 650 passengers daily the line became ripe for termination. LT tried in 1980 but succeeded only in cutting the service to peak hours only, and closed an intermediate station the following year. The end came on 30th September 1994, when of course miraculous numbers of passengers turned out, and for the next ten years the line fell silent. Volunteers then began the long job of restoring the line to steam, culminating in a grand reopening in 2012, though still not quite the full line. At present westbound trains terminate in woods at Coopersale, but there are plans to extend to almost-Epping to facilitate interchange with the Central line. End of potted history.
One other catch, obvious if you think about it, is that the sliding doors didn't work. A member of Epping Ongar Railway staff had to come along and flick an external lever to close the doors mechanically, and even then they often needed an extra tug from one of the volunteers within. Ditto at the end of the ride we had to wait to be let out, and even then only via one set of doors per carriage. Generally that was fine, as we didn't mind being trapped in a carriage decked out with adverts circa 1994 (for Travelcard extension tickets and Oranjeboom lager, amongst others). But by the end of the day the carriages were masquerading as mobile greenhouses, in part thanks to the unseasonably warm weather but also due to the increasing numbers of passengers within. Those who turned up for the first train of the day faced mostly empty seats, but by mid-afternoon it was standing room only - unheard of on the Ongar line!
A really nice touch was that the usual station names had been replaced by roundels. The cover-up was only for this weekend, and occasionally you could see the paper flapping off, but the overall effect was highly realistic as if these were the enamel signs that had always been present. Up at Ongar another special sign had been added, indeed unveiled by the Managing Director of London Underground, showing the 0.0km point from which all distances on the network are still measured. And Met 1, the Underground's new pet steam locomotive turned up to run a few of the journeys down the line. She looked magnificent in her polished Metropolitan maroon, but alas she performed less convincingly and broke down (with injector issues) before the first of the day's designated round trips was complete. That buggered the planned timetable somewhat, with a diesel brought in to run the steam service, and later replacing the proper tube service too.
The Isokon Building on Lawn Road was completed in 1934, the brainchild of Jack and Molly Pritchard. They were designers by trade, mostly of furniture, but wanted to create somewhere completely different to live. What they came up with was a sleek block of flats built from reinforced concrete, unheard of at the time. There were 32 flats in total across four floors, each accessed via an external walkway - another pioneering first. The kitchens were on the small side, but that was fine because there was a communal kitchen on site with a dumb waiter to bring up the meals. Up top was a penthouse, which the Pritchards took for themselves, and downstairs an amazingly eclectic mix of artists, designers and socialites moved in. One of these was Walter Gropius, German architect of the Bauhaus, fleeing from increasingly intolerant conditions in Nazi Germany. And at least four foreign secret agents became tenants, easily disguised amongst the bohemian foreigners on the slopes below Hampstead.
It's not a big space, but there is room inside for a free exhibition on the history of the building nextdoor. Rest assured it's detailed too - the National Trust's had a hand in its curation - combining information with artefacts from the top. Chief amongst these is a set of plywood furniture from the Pritchards' design company, Isokon, perhaps most famous for their angular Long Chair. Also present is a Penguin Donkey Bookcase, a striking low shelf unit with space for 90 Penguin paperbacks and centrally-stashed magazines. It should have been a roaring success but World War Two interrupted after only 100 had been produced, and the plywood supply chain was cut. Budding 21st century Modernists can now buy their own from a revamped Isokon company based in Hackney, but at £670 a shot you'd have to be particularly keen.
It is indeed as some of us long suspected, that Cycle Superhighway 2 isn't super at all, nothing more than a blue stripe of paint down the road providing no protection at all. You'd at least expect a cycle lane to be separate, but for much of its length CS2 is merely half of an existing lane of motor traffic, as if someone signed the plans off and said "oh that'll do". When a bus meets a cyclist on CS2, one often gets stuck behind the other. When CS2 comes across a bus stop it gives up, directing cyclists out into the main body of traffic by means of disjoint painted rectangles. And CS2 of course rounds the infamous Bow Roundabout, which at least TfL have tried to fix, but the rest of the Superhighway not so.
