Still waiting for train improvements
Ellis Woodman- Executive Editor
The new concourse for King’s Cross needs to be followed up by further investment in railway infrastructure
With this week’s opening of the new western concourse, King’s Cross station has at last begun to reclaim the sense of civic pride that years of underinvestment and short-termism stripped away from Lewis Cubitt’s 1852 design.
John McAslan has been working at King’s Cross since 1997, but for many years his proposals struggled to attract funding. It ultimately required the appointment of London as host to the Olympic Games to shame the government into providing the necessary backing.
It is a welcome outcome but points to a real lack of appreciation of both the social and economic importance of such major infrastructural projects.
The redevelopment of nearby Euston is next on the cards for Network Rail, but at present it looks like no corresponding investment in the Euston underground service is envisaged.
The result will be that passengers arriving by way of the high-speed rail link from Birmingham will be confronted with a half-hour wait for a tube. With luck, the success of projects like King’s Cross will awake the train-going public to the fact that such a desultory service is no longer acceptable.
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Readers' comments (7)
The redevelopment of Euston will destroy the lives of the 300 families whose homes will be demolished and for whom no alternative arrangements have been made, and will eradicate one of the Euston area's most charming local streets: Drummond Street, which is lined all the way along with some of London's most authentic Asian restaurants and is known locally as "Camden's Brick Lane". In terms of city life and urban quality the reconstruction of Euston station will be a dramatic net loss. And of course as Ellis Woodman says, the effect of the HS2 trains disgorging all those extra passengers will be to snarl up the already overloaded Underground system, for which no plans have been made. HS2, which mile for mile will be the most expensive project ever built anywhere in the while, will not even take passengers to the centre of Birmingham but to a new peripheral station from which they will then need to take a taxi, this cancelling out the few minutes they may have shaved off their train journey. As for the London end, the much better alternative to Euston is Old Oak Common, where Farrells is already working on a project. As the London terminus of HS2, Old Oak Common would connect directly to several Tube line - at uncongested points - and to Crossrail. It is still not too late for sanity, and joined-up thinking, to prevail.
while = world
sceptical, while your point about birmingham is very good, I challenge your view on london. This whole highspeed thing is meant to rival airtravel. By suggesting that a terminus should be almost as far from the city centre (by time) as a cheaper airport removes the trains only competitive advantage. Also i would love to see your proof that the entirety of drummond street is to be destroyed. For starters the euston end isn't nice town houses, it comprises a derelict underground station entrance and a crappy budget hotel.
HS2 does not rival air travel. There are no flights from London to Birmingham, and for the very long-term future that is the only leg of HS2 that is going ahead. If you want proof about Drummond Street you can find all the relevant design documents, including drawings by Arup, on the Ministry website. You will see from these that Drummond Street is to become the taxi waiting rank for the new Euston (as at St. Pancras this will be a row of up to 100 black cabs, with marshalls, waiting to pick up passengers). As for the 500 (my correction: I thought it was 300 in my earlier post) families who will be made homeless, their homes may not the delighful petit-bourgeois houses you appear to like, but we're talking here a real lives and a real community about to be wrecked.
You need to stop thinking about these issues as though the aesthetics of architecture could in some sense be separated from the social meaning of architecture. You may not find the architecture of Drummond Street aesthetically pleasing and it certainly isn't 18th- century Georgian London; but it's urban fabric inhabited by a settled diverse community. This is about the death and life of cities (to borrow Jane Jacobs' phrase) - not bricks and mortar.
"The result will be that passengers arriving by way of the high-speed rail link from Birmingham will be confronted with a half-hour wait for a tube"
Er no. The tube service aint great but unless there is a complete meltdown, there is never a 30 minute wait for a tube. Dont spoil your case by exaggerating
There are two proposed stations for Brum - one at the airport and a very centrally located one in Eastside.
HS2 marks a possible reversal of the "knock down the north, build all over the south" stratigic planning policy of post-industrial Britain.