Crossrail 2 consultation

Public consultation on the latest plans for the north-south Crossrail 2 line in London opened on October 27, with residents, businesses and other stakeholders invited to share their views.

The latest plans involve a change to the route from Wimbledon to Clapham Junction - it is now proposed to run via Balham rather than a previously consulted route via Tooting Broadway. The core central section from Clapham Junction to Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale remains the same, while provision for a future branch to East London is secured by the safeguarding of a spur to Hackney Central from Angel and Dalston.

The change to the route to serve Balham is in response to investigations that found “a number of challenges” in building a station at Tooting Broadway.

Instead, Crossrail 2 says a station at Balham could be built that would cause “significantly less disruption” and provide many of the benefits of a station at Ealing Broadway. In the revised plans, new platforms, entrances and exits would be built at Wimbledon and Balham, along with a tunnel portal at Wimbledon to connect the new underground central section of the route with existing National Rail tracks.

Thirty trains per hour are expected to use the central tunnelled section between Wimbledon and Dalston, with around ten trains expected to terminate at Wimbledon and 20 continuing to serve Shepperton, Hampton Court, Chessington South and Epsom. A minimum of four trains per hour would run during operational hours.

Extra capacity would be needed on the South West Main Line between Wimbledon and New Malden, but the ability to run Crossrail 2 and suburban services on the new tracks would free space on the existing route. Crossrail 2 says this could be reallocated to longer-distance services on the South West Main Line.

North of Dalston Junction, trains would run on a new tunnelled link via Seven Sisters to New Southgate (there are options for tunnels to run either via Turnpike Lane and Alexandra Palace or via Wood Green), with others running on the West Anglia Main Line north of Tottenham Hale to Broxbourne. Peak services of up to 15 trains per hour to New Southgate and 12 to Broxbourne are expected to run.

Additional tracks north of Tottenham Hale will be needed in order to provide a National Rail service of four trains per hour between stations south of Cheshunt to Stratford, and to cater for an increase in longer-distance services between the likes of Cambridge, Stansted Airport and London Liverpool Street.

Crossrail 2 is expected to open in 2030 and cost between £27 billion and £32bn to build (at 2014 prices). Its proponents claim it would allow an additional 270,000 passengers to travel into London during the morning peak periods, a capacity increase of 10% on the existing heavy rail and Underground networks. It would also help create 200,000 new homes in the region and support up to 200,000 jobs, says Crossrail 2.

The public consultation ends on January 8 2016.