The DNA of a London Underground Station
londonreconnections.com
londonreconnections.com
Maybe I'm harking for a design philosophy that never really existed. And I like the old District line trains so what do I know!
[1] http://now-here-this.timeout.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/...
[2] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dILlxEDvx20/UkwfeIhKOyI/AAAAAAAAAu...
It reminded me intensely of some of the Portal 2 levels.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10460471/Roland-P...
I find it disturbing that the first major item is "capacity", but then the design parts do not even care to note how the given idiom will work towards that end. Discoverability helps, by making it less likely for individuals to get lost and thus take up valuable commuter real estate, but without sufficient peak throughput it makes very little difference.
Not to mention that if station design does not accommodate for need to widen the tunnels in the future, they are not really aiming for future-proof. The only good measure for capacity is how many commuters can be moved through, and there is an upper bound to how many trains per platform you can fit in an hour. Once that limit is reached, the only way to further increase capacity is to get more people in per train. Hence: make trains longer (and extend platforms), or make them wider (which requires to expand the tunnels).
As for personal taste... I like Canada Water station. It's utilitarian, can sustain a lot of commuter traffic going both ways and doesn't even look that ugly. Sure, it has a weird bottleneck on the street level because all commuters need to take a long circular route to reach the escalators but all parts within the station are spacious and wide.
Not to say that the station couldn't look nicer, of course...
Neither of these are possible with any realistic budget, and the year-long line closures for the latter would be intolerable.
It's much cheaper to build a new line — for example, Crossrail and Crossrail 2.
I know overground has some stations where the last car can't fit on the platform. (Circle line might have couple of these too, if I remember correctly.) And I've noticed that a couple of fairly central stations have been closed for more than a year due to construction works.
So extending platforms a couple of stations at a time should be possible - one fully closed and another with just one end blocked off. It would take ages and insane amounts of money to do that for the entire line, you're right about that. But maybe just for the stations where it would provide the biggest benefit?
And, there are building foundations and other tunnels in the way in many cases, so it wouldn't be a temporary inconvenience.
In other words, they're currently running at n and want to instead run at n+2.
(Another example: Waterloo is overcrowded and they'd dearly like to start work on bringing the old Eurostar platforms into use. But they can't start that until work on Victoria underground station finishes, because the work will involve diverting some trains into Victoria rail station which would lead to overcrowding in the underground station if they did it while work there was still going on).
So I suspect there won't be as much spare capacity as hoped.
I moved to London in late 2013, shortly before London Bridge works started. I have been joking from the start that when the works are done and London Bridge opens up fully rebuilt in 2018, it can finally handle the traffic levels of 2008.
It looks like that may not have been much of a joke after all.
And if there's something I've learned: all other central stations suffer from the same problems. Too much traffic, not enough capacity, not enough trains or platforms, and not even close enough space to hold the people waiting to get either on or off.
At some point this city will have to take lessons from around the world and start building multi-level overground rails networks. That's the only direction there's any room to expand to.
There's been massive demand beyond available capacity for over a decade, but perhaps not much over a decade. That's about how long it takes to plan new lines.
I used the West London Line before it was the London Overground. Within a month or two, it went from a little-used train to not getting a seat. Areas like Dalston went from being places I was warned to avoid (as a student) to having loads of new nightclubs. The closure of the East London Like wasn't a massive issue beyond the local area, few people used it.
I expect the same to happen with Crossrail, and Crossrail 2. Royal Oak will become known, etc.
London needs two or three of these project to be built simultaneously, to catch up to what is needed, but that can't happen - there aren't enough skilled engineers in the UK. (This is why the plan to electrify all the remaining national rail lines stalled.)
Where is there a multi level rail line? I've never seen one, except within a station.
Directing people the long way around the station (as signage in more complex stations such as Bank/Monument does) arguably increases the bandwidth of a station, since the bottleneck is almost always the ticket hall and barriers (which are difficult to expand without significant street-level work, for example at Tottenham Court Road and the Cannon Street ticket hall at Bank).
I love this diversity. And dislike the suggestion of standardisation the article suggests. There appears to be inconsistency between what the article states as solutions and the 'problem' of modern design and construction.
Near the start of the article it states: >It’s a statement that an observer of TfL’s recent station builds and rebuilds would find difficult to dispute. Indeed in recent years it has become almost impossible to picture a new Underground station as being anything other than glass, brushed steel and concrete. A clean and efficient style, certainly, but hardly an inspiring one.
By this inconsistent with the answers offered:
The photo 'A station passage at Idiom Park.' has a very generic cylindrical passage... with stairs leading off at an odd angle. No character or indication of history or line, or individualisation (unless an oppressive blue is unique to Idiom Park). And disability incompatible.
The photo 'Escalators at Idiom Park' includes iconic steel and plate escalators I can imagine speeding at a pace leading to a... generic steel and concrete chasm mentioned in the lead above as undesirable.
The image 'Platform level at Idiom Park' flat out reminds me of the old Charring Cross Jubilee line. It could well be Charring Cross Jubille Line, with blue lighting. I'm surprised I have this reaction, as it is simply cut-away girding, blue lighting, which the lead again suggests isn't the way forward (and a lack of safety doors).
> The tube means so much more to Londoners than getting from A to B. We are a part of the city and what we want to make sure is that we are doing our best to make sure that life in London is getting better as well. A result of that is a real focus on design. I guess what we recognise is that great design doesn’t happen by accident.
The tube is a testament to, and a record of, design through the past century-and-a-half. More often than not, this was not by committee, as these designs seem to be.
What would be worth improving would be disabled access and cleanliness (which the article does mention), and affordability.
Is the article a parody of itself?
Presumably there is another passage with a lift/elevator for people in wheelchairs, or for parents with prams.
What attracted my attention was the handrail. Trains arrive and empty of passengers in "bursts". The handrail would confine them to a smaller portion of the passage, leaving the rest unused. I can see problems similar to the confined entrances of football stadiums, with dangerous overcrowding.