Crossrail 2 - Wink option

This is the final post in a series about Crossrail 2. The last post identified four small change to the proposed scheme. This post has my full alternative proposal to address the flaws previously identified.

Overview - The Crossrail 2 "Wink" option

This proposal is a direct alternative to the TfL Crossrail 2 regional option. It comes in two parts, SwiftLink and PalaceLink, together known as the "Wink" option for Crossrail 2. (The "wink" name comes from the two lines together having roughly the shape of an eye in central London).

The TfL Regional option is costed at £12bn. Through careful routing and planning, the combined SwiftLink and PalaceLink is costed at just £12.9bn.

In other words for just £900m more, London can have two new lines, not one.

To emphasise one key point - the concept is to build both new lines, not just to build one. The costings assume shared project management and construction.

Map of the proposal. Click to view in Google Maps.

SwiftLink - Wimbledon to Canary Wharf

The SwiftLink proposal is focussed on South West London. It provides a direct service from Clapham Junction and beyond to the City and Canary Wharf where the majority of South West Londoners work. This direct link greatly enhances the benefits of Crossrail 2 to South West London.

The SwiftLink route is a simple variation on the TfL proposal:

• Wimbledon (and destinations beyond)
• Earlsfield (serving Tooting Broadway is possible but is expensive)
• Clapham Junction
• Battersea Power station (serving Chelsea is possible but is expensive)
• Victoria
• Tottenham Court Road (double ended to Shaftesbury Avenue)
• Euston and St.Pancras (double ended between the stations)
• Angel (double ended to City Road)
• Old Street and Shoreditch High Street (double ended between the stations)
• Whitechapel (interchange with Crossrail 1)
• Canary Wharf (Crossrail 1 tracks)
• Custom House (Crossrail 1 tracks)
• Woolwich (Crossrail 1 tracks)
• Abbey Wood (Crossrail 1 tracks)

As indicated above, the SwiftLink scheme can adapt to the choices made South West of Victoria - Chelsea vs Battersea Power station, and Tooting vs Earlsfield. It retains the primary route through the West End from Victoria to Angel, simplifying comparisons. The Green Park proposal is compatible and beneficial to both schemes at extra cost, so not discussed in detail here. Thus, the main difference is East of Angel.

By turning East at Angel, the route provides a direct connection to the Northern City (where there is significant growth due to Tech City). It provides a connection to Crossrail 1, which would ideally be cross-platform. It then takes over the route to Canary Wharf entirely - Crossrail 1 services from Abbey Wood would run to Wimbledon instead of Paddington.

For those along the Crossrail 1 Canary Wharf and Abbey Wood branch SwiftLink has the following impact:

• Over double the number of trains, from 12tph on Crossrail 1 to 30tph
• Two minutes longer journey time to Tottenham Court Road, but two minutes less waiting time, thus overall neutral
• Different selection of direct services, with all other destinations involving a simple change at Whitechapel
• Greater reliability, as no interworking with the Stratford branch
• Less overcrowding, as Crossrail 1 is predicted to be very busy on the Canary Wharf branch

For those along the Crossrail 1 Stratford branch SwiftLink has the following impact:

• Double the number of trains, from 12tph on Crossrail 1 to 24tph
• No changes to the Crossrail 1 destinations
• Additional destination options via a simple change at Whitechapel
• Less overcrowding, as Crossrail 1 is predicted to be very busy on the Stratford branch
• No need for any "residual" services into Liverpool Street main line station
• The potential to use the extra services to add a branch to Barking via Woodgrange Park (other options available)

For those along the South West Main Line slow lines SwiftLink has the following impact:

• Increased frequency, from 18tph to 30tph (as per the TfL scheme)
• Direct service to most major job markets, Victoria, the West End, the City and Canary Wharf
• Simple change to reach Stratford
• Cross-platform change to reach Waterloo at Wimbledon, greatly reducing the potential for negative political campaigns

SwiftLink has some large potential journey time savings:

Estimated journey times
Journey*	Now (off-peak, TfL website)	With SwiftLink	Saving
Wimbldon to Victoria	22	13	9
Wimbldon to Tottenham Court Road	33	15	18
Wimbldon to Euston	31	17	14
Wimbldon to Old St/Shoreditch	39	21	18
Wimbldon to Canary Wharf	39	27	12
Wimbldon to Stratford	45	28	17
Wimbldon to Hoxton	46	25	21
Wimbldon to Woolwich	51	33	18

* Note that Wimbledon is used as the base location, but journey time savings apply over the entire suburban route network via Wimbledon.

The estimated cost of SwiftLink is £7.2bn. The following cost breakdown follows the same methodology used to evaluate the cost breakdown for TfL's £12bn scheme.

Item	Cost estimate	Rationale
Tunnelling	£1,500m	12.7km at £100m per km plus one junction
Stations	£2,600m	See below
Upgrade Network Rail	£1,000m	Work needed in Clapham Junction area and beyond
Depot	£1,000m	-
Track, Electrical, Comms	£700m	-
Fees, consultancy	£400m	-

The stations were costed up as follows:

Clapham Junction	£50m
Battersea Power	£150m
Victoria	£300m
Tottenham Court Road	£400m
Euston/St.Pancras	£600m
Angel	£300m
Old St & Shoreditch	£500m
Whitechapel	£300m

These costs assume a tunnel portal at Battersea Power station. A portal at Earlsfield to serve either Chelsea or Battersea is about £600m more expensive at £7.8bn.

Overall, the SwiftLink scheme is simple. It takes passengers from South West London directly to their jobs in the City and Canary Wharf, something which TfL's proposed scheme fails to do. By re-using the Canary Wharf branch of Crossrail 1, better service can be provided to both Stratford and Canary Wharf, supporting regeneration in the East.

PalaceLink - Alexandra Palace to Victoria

The PalaceLink proposal is focussed on North London and is based on TfL's Metro scheme in the North. It provides a direct link from Alexandra Palace, Turnpike Lane and Seven Sisters to a wide selection of zone 1 stations. The terminus at Victoria also allows passengers from South and South West London to use the line to access more of zone 1 direct without changing.

The PalaceLink part of the proposal is based on Metro technology, with up to 40tph. This is a better technology fit for the North, where distances are shorter, and high frequency matters. It is important to note that Metro technology is not better or worse than Crossrail technology, just different. For example, a Metro train can accelerate and decelerate faster than a Crossrail train, resulting in a faster journey time, or more stops.

The PalaceLink route proposed here is designed to be simple and effective:

• Victoria (for SwiftLink, Victoria, District and main line)
• Charing Cross (for Northern, Bakerloo and main line)
• Covent Garden South/Strand (named to relieve Covent Garden)
• Chancery Lane (for Central line)
• Barbican/Farringdon (for Crossrail 1)
• Old Street (for SwiftLink)
• Dalston (for Overground)
• Seven Sisters (for Victoria line and mainline)
• Turnpike Lane (for Piccadilly line)
• Alexandra Palace (for main line)

There are many possible routes in the North, which all have relatively similar costs. Ultimately, the PalaceLink proposal uses this route to make comparisons with TfL's Metro option simple. Hackney is not served, as per the TfL Metro option, but could be at extra cost.

Benefits include:

• Capacity relief on the Piccadilly line
• Capacity relief on the Victoria line
• Direct access to Dalston from the West End
• Additional services for the growing Tech City area
• Extra distribution from Victoria and Charing Cross main line termini
• The potential to extend South or West from Victoria at a later stage (such as to Tooting Broadway, about £2.1bn via Chelsea)
• The potential to add a branch to the Lea Valley at a later stage (about £0.9bn)

PalaceLink is designed to create journey time savings:

Estimated journey times
Journey	Now (off-peak, TfL website)	With PalaceLink	Saving
Seven Sisters to Victoria	17	16	1
Seven Sisters to Charing Cross	19	14	5
Seven Sisters to Covent Garden	18	13	5
Seven Sisters to Barbican	20	9	11
Seven Sisters to Old Street	13	7	6
Turnpike Lane to Victoria	20	19	1
Turnpike Lane to Charing Cross	25	17	8
Turnpike Lane to Covent Garden	19	16	3
Turnpike Lane to Barbican	24	12	12
Turnpike Lane to Old Street	19	10	6
Hackney to Covent Garden	27	14	13

The estimated cost of PalaceLink is £5.7bn. The following cost breakdown follows the same methodology used to evaluate the cost breakdown for TfL's £9.4bn Metro scheme.

Item	Cost estimate	Rationale
Tunnelling	£1,500m	15.4km at £100m per km
Stations	£2,200m	See below
Depot	£800m	-
Track, Electrical, Comms	£800m	-
Fees, consultancy	£400m	-

The stations were costed up as follows:

Victoria	£100m
Charing Cross	£200m
Covent Garden South	£250m
Chancery Lane	£250m
Barbican	£300m
Old Street	£100m
Dalston	£250m
Seven Sisters	£250m
Turnpike Lane	£250m
Alexandra Palace	£250m

Note that some items have lower cost estimates because of shared costs with SwiftLink. Notably this includes Victoria and Old Street station, and a minor reduction in tunnelling costs. In addition, cost at Charing Cross is reduced by reusing the access passageways to the old Jubilee line platforms (although still requiring work to enlarge the platforms themselves).

Overall, the PalaceLink scheme is a simple Metro in the tradition of London's existing tube lines. It deals effectively with the capacity issue of the North while offering a much wider range of destination choices in zone 1. The major job markets of Victoria, the West End, Mid Town and the northern City are all served, with an easy change at Old Street for Canary Wharf. It also provides additional, much needed, distribution from Charing Cross and Victoria termini, linking in well with SwiftLink to provide even more choice to South West London.

Summary

Its not often that a transport proposal comes along which offers a supermarket style "two for one" offer. Yet that is almost what the Crossrail 2 "Wink" option provides, at a cost of £12.9bn, vs TfL's £12bn.

Swiftlink serves South West London far better than TfL's plans, by taking passengers to the destinations they desire in the City and Canary Wharf, and linking with PalaceLink to serve Covent Garden and Mid Town. PalaceLink serves North London better as well, using the more appropriate Metro technology to provide a high frequency service to greatly relieve the Piccadilly and Victoria lines, without simply duplicating the existing route via Kings Cross.

If you back the proposal, or have any other opinions, why not leave a comment!

Crossrail 2 - Small changes

This is the third post in a series about Crossrail 2. The last post examined some of the flaws with the proposed scheme. This one focuses on small changes to the proposed scheme that would improve it. The final post will outline the larger changes that I really want to see.

Additional West End station - Green Park / Jermyn Street

One of the key issues I identified with the proposed scheme is the over-reliance on Tottenham Court Road (TCR). It is used to both serve the entire West End, and provide a change to Crossrail 1 for the City and Canary Wharf.

The safeguarded route wasn't quite as restricted to TCR, as it has provision for a station at Piccadilly Circus (to the SE of the current station between Haymarket and Oxendon Street). This option is retained in the proposed Metro scheme, but missed out in the Regional scheme that almost everyone is arguing for.

I believe that the Regional scheme's over-reliance on TCR would be mitigated to some degree were an additional station provided in the West End. However, I don't believe that additional station should be at Piccadilly Circus where the safeguarding is. That location is too close to TCR and not far enough West.

My proposed location is under the Green Park end of Jermyn Street. Due to the length of the Regional scheme trains, a double ended station is possible, however the distance between Green Park and Piccadilly Circus is just too great to link the two stations. Given that, I would argue that it should link to Green Park, rather than Piccadilly Circus, with the second exit near Air Street for Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus.

This location is primarily about distributing passengers more evenly in the West End and beyond. In effect, it would act as Crossrail 2's equivalent to Bond Street. It would serve office locations in Mayfair, St James and the north end of Whitehall, as well as the major shopping and leisure areas.

The link to Green Park is also very useful because it provides connections to tube lines. The Piccadilly line would provide access to South Kensington, Hammersmith and beyond While the Jubilee line provides access to Bond Street, Baker Street, Waterloo and London Bridge. This reduces the backlash in South West London, as Waterloo, Southwark and London Bridge would be relatively easily reached from Green Park, and in comparable journey times to today's service. Thus, this link would also reduce the pressure of passengers changing from Crossrail 2 to the Northern line at Tooting Broadway.

The Jubilee line also provides resilience if Crossrail 1 fails, providing a second link to Canary Wharf. In addition, Green Park station is already modernized and step free, reducing costs.

Map shows the TfL proposed route in orange and the deviation necessary to provide the many benefits of a station at Green Park / Jermyn Street.

Battersea Power station, not Chelsea

The harsh reality is that the needs of Battersea and the Vauxhall-Nine-Elms-Battersea area far outweigh the needs of Chelsea, particularly for a Regional type scheme.

There was a submission to the GLA Transport Committee which put this pithily:

The residents of Chelsea neither want or have use for a Crossrail station at Kings Road. The vast majority will use a taxi or car. The residents of Battersea and Wandsworth are, however, starved of adequate public transport. Furthermore there are announced proposals for 20,000 new homes to be delivered within the next 10 years between Nine Elms and Wandsworth town centre plus numerous Embassies and ambassadorial staff moving into the same area. There are also multi-million square foot mixed use developments taking place at Battersea Power Station and Wandsworth Town Centre. Why then is Crossrail 2 proposed to go to Kings Road Chelsea where there is low demand when there is such massive demand growing to service a population undergoing rapid expansion along the South bank of the River?

There should really be little doubt that an objective look at the case of the two locations would select Battersea Power station. The Northern line extension is useful for local transport, and heading East, but rather indirect for heading to the West End. Furthermore, there will be far more jobs created south of the river, as compared to the mainly residential areas of Chelsea. Those jobs are going to have commuters, and many will come from the South West area, making a stop there far more valuable than Chelsea.

Northern branches

The split of the northern branches after Angel is plainly nonsense. It means that Hackney only gets 10tph (trains per hour), something which is ridiculously poor and a large under-use of the expensive tunnel.

The simple solution (based on minimal change to the proposed scheme), would be to change the routing slightly. After Angel, take the line to Haggerston for the East London line instead of Dalston. Then via Hackney and Upper Clapton. Only then branch in two for Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale. This provides the full 30tph to Haggerston (near Dalston), Hackney and Upper Clapton, without changing the split to the ultimate two branches in the North.

Map shows the TfL proposed route in orange and my simpler alternative in red.

Earlsfield

In the spirit of minimal change to the proposed scheme, there is a way to tackle the problems of service to Earlsfield - the Northern line. The concept would be to extend the Northern line from Battersea Power station to Wimbledon.

This would involve a new tunnel from the power station, via either Battersea Park Road or Lavender Hill and Clapham Junction, surfacing in time to take over the two slow lines through Earlsfield to Wimbledon. This is not a cheap change, as it requires a new tunnel, but it would provide Earlsfield with a frequent service, even if not quite as fast as today.

Since the faster route to central London from Wimbledon would be Crossrail 2, it should be the case that such a Northern line extension would not be overloaded. This would particularly be the case if Crossrail 2 goes via Battersea power station as argued above.

It may be possible to continue the Northern line to St Helier on the Sutton route. This would allow the Northern line trains to reach the Morden depot. The remainder of the route to Sutton could then be converted to a tram.

Summary

This post has outlined four small scale changes to the proposed scheme that would have a big impact on its ability to deliver.

The key item is the additional central station at Green Park / Jermyn Street. It has multiple advantages, including spreading the load in the West End, provides resilience and additional job market access via the Jubilee line, and avoiding the need for most changes from Crossrail 2 to the Northern line at Tooting Broadway.

If you have any other small changes to Crossrail 2 you'd like to suggest, add a comment!

Update: Next in the series: Crossrail 2 wink option

Crossrail 2 - flaws

This is the second post in a series on Crossrail 2. This one focuses on flaws in the current plans. The next focuses on small changes to fix some of the flaws. The last focuses on much better alternative.

Introduction

TfL have proposed two variants of Crossrail 2, the cheaper £9.4bn Metro scheme based on DLR type technology, and the more expensive £12bn Regional scheme based on Crossrail 1 technology.

Both schemes have the same core. Wimbledon - Tooting Broadway - Clapham Junction - Chelsea - Victoria - Tottenham Court Road (TCR) - Euston/St.Pancras - Angel - Dalston - Seven Sisters - Turnpike Lane - Alexandra Park. The Regional scheme has a branch from Angel via Hackney, plus the SWML (South West Main Line) slow services. Documents show that there was considerable effort drawn up to propose this alignment with numerous options tested. So what could go wrong?

Over reliance on Tottenham Court Road (TCR)

The peak traffic that any London railway line has to deal with is the morning commute. As such, it is vital to consider where the jobs are in London, and how people will get to them. While I've been unable to find detailed figures, I'll work on the basis that the primary job areas are (a) the West End, (b) the City, (c) Canary Wharf, (d) Midtown/Farringdon and (e) Victoria. There are of course numerous secondary job areas as well, but the 5 above tend to dominate.

Crossrail 1 has a very simple route through the centre of London. It serves 4 out of the 5 primary job markets listed above via Bond Street, TCR, Farringdon, Liverpool St and Canary Wharf, with only Victoria not served. Thus, this route allows commuters to get on the train and get off at a location where they can walk to perhaps the majority of central London jobs. This is highly efficient in distribution, avoiding crowding on the tube.

By contrast, the proposed Crossrail 2 simply does not achieve this. Instead it serves just 2 major job markets - Victoria and the West End (via Tottenham Court Road). This is a particularly big problem, because for historical reasons, many commuters on the SWML work in the City and Canary Wharf, rather than the West End or Victoria.

The official line from TfL seems to be that commuters from the SWML should change at TCR to Crossrail 1, for services to the City and Canary Wharf. Firstly, it should be noted that this is no better than today, simply substituting a change at Waterloo with a change at TCR. However, I would argue it is in fact much worse.

For the sake of argument, lets say that 60% of SWML passengers work in Midtown, the City and Canary Wharf, 15% work in Victoria and 15% in the West End. This means that 75% or more of the passengers from SW London will be getting off at TCR. That is a very large number of people, potentially 1100 people every 2 minutes just from the south. There have to be real questions over the ability to clear that many people from TCR station, particularly if Crossrail 1 has a fault. This is especially significant as Crossrail 1 is expected to be full by 2031, thus there actually won't be any space for Crossrail 2 commuters to change into.

This also impacts on dwell times. In order for there to be a train every 2 minutes, the train has to spend less than 2 minutes in the platform. In fact, with signalling constraints, door opening and closing, the train will need to empty out 75% of its passengers in perhaps as little as 60 seconds. This is a huge ask.

Northern line

The proposed Crossrail 2 interchanges with the Northern line at Angel and Tooting Broadway. The former is barely mentioned in documentation, but the latter is held up as the ideal solution to solving the capacity problem on the southern Northern line. If only that were so.

Looking from the north, a commuter at Tottenham Hale, Seven Sisters or Turnpike Lane may want to commute to the West End or Victoria for which the proposed scheme would be fine. However, they may also want to commute to the City. The most likely option here is to take the proposed Crossrail 2 to Angel, and change to the Northern line to Old Street, Moorgate, Bank or London Bridge. The problem is that, like all tube lines, the Northern line at Angel is pretty full. Thus it seems likely that the proposed scheme will worsen the problems on the Northern line in the north.

Looking from the south, the Tooting Broadway connection is an expensive dogleg that I have already discussed. The claim that it will relieve the Northern line bears closer examination.

Firstly, those travelling from Morden and South Wimbledon are highly likely to have a seat. If they change to the proposed scheme, then they will be joining a busy/full train and no longer have a seat, something probably not captured in TfL models. Secondly, the proposed route would make no difference to journeys to the City or Canary Wharf. Those commuters might as well stay on the Northern line, as it involves less changes. Experience suggests that there are more City/Wharf commuters than West End commuters from south of Colliers Wood.

Finally, the link to Tooting Broadway is bi-directional, allowing SWML commuters to join the Northern line. TfL clearly do not believe that many will do this, yet for anyone working in Elephant and Castle (university), Borough, London Bridge and even Bank, changing to the Northern line is likely to be their best option (given that they will no longer have a service to Waterloo).

In both cases, the Northern line interchanges don't stand up to scrutiny.

Changing commutes

As recently shown with the Wimbledon loop Thameslink trains, and previously with the failure of the Crossrail 1 Richmond branch, changing peoples existing commutes is fraught with risk. A political campaign can easily be created with significant pressure to bear. The proposed scheme is particularly vulnerable to this in the South West. (In the North, the scheme is mostly adding new options, rather than taking existing ones away)

In the South West, the sensible approach to utilising the available train paths with the proposed scheme in place is for Crossrail 2 to have exclusive use of the routes to Chessington, Epsom and Shepperton. But this means that there would no longer be any services to Waterloo from those locations and points in between. While Network Rail has not confirmed this, it is clearly being considered.

Replacing a Waterloo terminus with Victoria or TCR will be good for some, but probably worse for others (the TCR problems are discussed above). Bear in mind that a large number of people walk or cycle from Waterloo, which won't be possible to many destinations in the same way from TCR.

It is also the case that the proposed scheme makes it hard to reach Waterloo. There is no cross-platform interchange that allows the existing Waterloo commute to continue. As such, passengers will have to trog around either Wimbledon or Clapham Junction stations from the new underground station to the old main line station. This will likely add 10 minutes to the journey time to Waterloo, potentially a 50% increase in commuting time from Raynes Park.

Earlsfield

Related to the changing commutes problem is the Earlsfield problem. While Network Rail have yet to be clear on the topic they have said that other benefits (to long distance commuters) can only occur if there is a "significant reduction" in the residual services into Waterloo. Thus, it is highly likely that the service at Earlsfield will drop from 18tph (trains per hour) to 12tph or lower.

Earlsfield will also have fewer services to other London centres. There will probably be no through trains to Epsom and Kingston for example.

Northern branches

The Regional scheme includes two Northern branches. Documentation shows that the Alexandra Palace branch must have 20tph or more to be credible in its goal of relieving the Victoria and Piccadilly lines. This leaves just 10tph for the Lea Valley and Hackney. I suspect that many in Hackney who are supporting the scheme would be surprised that they will be getting at most one train every 6 minutes, and less outside the peak. Especially when the already well served Seven Sisters will be getting 20tph!

The proposed scheme fails in the North by trying to do two things, rather than focussing on one. As a result, it has a branch to Hackney that departs from the main branch south of Dalston, which is certainly odd. It then means that there are parallel tunnels one heading for Seven Sisters and one for Tottenham Hale, which is very wasteful. It is hard to see this passing more detailed scrutiny.

Wrong goals

A big part of the problems with the proposed scheme in the North is that they are heavily focussed on capacity relief of existing lines. This is an excessive focus in my opinion, and skews the scheme and the associated scoring.

The Victoria line is already a fast, modern metro line. As such, it is very difficult to build a parallel line that will encourage people to use the new Crossrail line as opposed to the original Victoria line they are familiar with. In fact, the only way to come close is to create a line that has very few stops. Hence Stoke Newington misses out. The proposal simply becomes a way of serving existing stations, rather than serving new areas which the Northern area actually needs.

North-South tension

The problems of the North and different to the problems of the South West. The proposed scheme does not really recognise this.

The Northern area has problems of capacity on existing lines, and serving new areas. This would be best achieved by a Metro-style solution, not a Crossrail one. The faster Metro acceleration and more frequent stops (like a tube line) would better serve the area. (And by Metro here, I don't mean the proposed Metro scheme, which fails to serve new areas).

By contrast, the South West is ideally setup for a Crossrail solution. It has large numbers of existing Network Rail lines to link into, all with existing infrastructure to reuse. The trains are already packed, and simply taking people to their desired destination would make a huge difference to tube crowding generally.

Thus, the proposed Regional scheme ends up as a weird combination. It correctly fulfils the needs of the South West, but is the wrong technology for the kind of purpose it is being used for in the North.

Summary

The proposed Crossrail 2 schemes have multiple flaws, far more than Crossrail 1 had. The over reliance on Tottenham Court Road and the lack of distribution of passengers directly to jobs are the prime concerns, but there are many others too.

Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree with the analysis!

Update: Next in the series: Crossrail 2 small changes

Crossrail 2 - Cost breakdown

This is the first post in a planned series on Crossrail 2. This one focuses on cost. Specifically, what might be a reasonable breakdown of the headline figures we have.

Cost breakdown

TfL have given us two estimates for the two variants of Crossrail 2 that they are putting forward.

The cheaper option is the Metro scheme, which plans 40tph (trains per hour) of 120m long trains based on DLR type technology. This is costed at £9.4bn (without optimism bias). This proposal can be thought of as a modern tube line, rather than as a Crossrail line in the style of Crossrail 1.

The more expensive option is the Regional scheme, which plans 30tph (trains per hour) of 250m long trains based on Crossrail 1 technology. This is costed at £12bn (without optimism bias)

In order to better offer my own alternatives to these schemes, I found it useful to break down these high level costs to more manageable units. The following is published to allow criticism and comment.

Metro scheme cost breakdown (estimated)

This is my estimated breakdown of the total £9.4bn cost.

Item	Cost estimate	Rationale
Tunnelling	£2,800m	27.9km at £100m per km
Stations	£4,400m	See below
Depot	£800m	Estimate
Track, Electrical, Comms	£1,000m	Extrapolation from Northern line extension
Fees, consultancy	£400m	Extrapolation from Northern line extension
TOTAL	£9.4bn

 

Regional scheme cost breakdown (estimated)

This is my estimated breakdown of the total £12bn cost.

Item	Cost estimate	Rationale
Tunnelling	£3,600m	34.4km at £100m per km plus one junction
Stations	£4,400m	See below
Upgrade Network Rail	£1,200m	Work needed in Lea Valley and South West
Depot	£1,000m	Bigger trains than Metro
Track, Electrical, Comms	£1,300m	More complex signals than Metro
Fees, consultancy	£500m	Bigger project than Metro
TOTAL	£12.0bn

 

Station cost (estimated)

I costed the stations up as follows:

Station	Metro	Regional
Wimbledon	£300m	£300m
Tooting Broadway	£300m	£300m
Clapham Junction	£500m	£500m
Chelsea	£300m	£300m
Victoria	£300m	£300m
Piccadilly Circus	£400m
Tottenham Court Road	£300m	£400m
Euston/St.Pancras	£600m	£600m
Angel	£300m	£300m
Dalston	£300m	£300m
Seven Sisters	£300m	£300m
Turnpike Lane	£300m	£300m
Alexandra Palace	£200m	£200m
Hackney		£300m

Summary

The headline figures from TfL are only of limited use, particularly if you are proposing changes. The purpose of this blog is to provide a basis for estimates in other posts.

If you are reading this and thinking that I've forgotten something, or got the cost breakdown greatly wrong, please leave a comment!

Update: Next in the series: Crossrail 2 flaws