Southwark concourse design

[Deleted]

A thought occurred to me today regarding the rather strange design at Southwark, and wondered whether anyone here had thoughts on the reasoning behind it.

As you know, money was almost no object when the JLE was built, and yet it appears that a chance was squandered to have step-free escalator access (a la Euston Victoria/Bank Branch) right down to the platform, at least from the ticket hall level.

There is a mezzanine level at the bottom of the long upper escalators from the ticket hall. A fair distance after this, there are three sets of escalators at right angles leading down to a raised platform level. Quite a few stairs then lead down from this raised level to the platform-level concourse.

Surely it would have been possible to build the mezzanine lower down with longer escalators leading from the ticket hall. Then the right-angle escalators would reach down to the platform-level. It would have involved removing a fair bit more spoil, although I wouldn't have thought a lot more, in the scale of things. Also slightly longer escalators.

Surely that would have been more important than the Italian marble and huge glass curtains you see everywhere on the JLE???

Any thoughts?

[Deleted]

When you look at the JLE you realise it was, fittingly for its initial purpose, a real triumph for the 21st Century way of praise for the celebrity architects and designers, and travelling public be damned.

A complete contrast with the Victoria Line, plain station fittings but so beautifully engineered to give cross-platform interchange at all points, something completely lacking on the JLE where they seem to have gone deliberately out of their way to make interchange as hard as possible.

Southwark station, described here, is really pointless in its current location, being just 5-10 minutes walk along The Cut from Waterloo station entrance, and providing an irrelevant (yet still inconvenient) third interchange with the Charing Cross mainline railway, to add to the Jubilee connections with that at London Bridge and Waterloo. Notably the Southwark interchange passages always seem to be deserted. Yet it ignores any connection with Thameslink, which passes just to the east. If the station had been located at the junction of Stamford Street and Blackfriars Road, a more sensible halfway point between Waterloo and London Bridge, with platforms above on Thameslink as well, it would have been far more useful for both locals and interchanging passengers, and for regenerating the South Bank.

But then look at West Ham, where to interchange between the Jubilee and the District you have to go up, along, then right back down again, then along, and then all the way up again. Any first year architectural student could look at the site plan here and work out how to do this with just one change of level. Unbelievably the designer won a design award for this one as well ! In fact there were design awards given out for so much of the Jubilee, many awarded before it even fully opened and all the stupidities were apparent.

[Deleted]

To be fair, the alignment of the Victoria line and the lines with which it has cross-platform interchanges were ideal in most cases. It didn't happen everywhere, Warren Street and Green Park being impossible to arrange without introducing sharp curves into the Vic alignment or rebuilding the entire station and other lines when it wasn't felt justified.

The Jubilee tends to cross most other lines pretty much at right angles, so it would have been impossible to put cross-platform interchanges in. At least the interchanges are not as tortuous as many Parisien ones are!

I do agree with you completely that while the Jubilee line stations are very nice architecturally, from a passenger use point-of-view an updated Victoria line station layout with wider platforms, passages, and a few more escalators would often have sufficed and been cheaper.

[Deleted]

Nov 12, 2009 12:10:24 GMT @diana said:

Southwark station, described here, is really pointless in its current location, being just 5-10 minutes walk along The Cut from Waterloo station entrance, and providing an irrelevant (yet still inconvenient) third interchange with the Charing Cross mainline railway, to add to the Jubilee connections with that at London Bridge and Waterloo. Notably the Southwark interchange passages always seem to be deserted. Yet it ignores any connection with Thameslink, which passes just to the east. If the station had been located at the junction of Stamford Street and Blackfriars Road, a more sensible halfway point between Waterloo and London Bridge, with platforms above on Thameslink as well, it would have been far more useful for both locals and interchanging passengers, and for regenerating the South Bank.

I disagree. I work within close proximity of Southwark Station. Waterloo is regulaly closed to passengers because of overcrowding. Southwark offers passengers coming from Docklands and needing a Southeastern service a much better interchange than would of or could ever be offered at Waterloo. Lastly, it allows a second exit for Waterloo East which is always very crowded as it is. Have you ever tried to get off those platforms when they have close Southwark because of a bomb or other threat? It can take 30 mins.

To your point about Thameslink. Blackfriars station is north of the river. It seems you are proposing a Blackfrairs Underground station one on each side of the river (almost 20 years in inception before The Thameslink Programme were to be completed).

Southwark interchange passageways always seem empty because they're vast. Maybe I'm about to slightly skew your meaning but in a certain light, it seems you like hot crowded tunnels with low ceilings that take a long time to traverse....

[Deleted]

What I would like is shorter interchanges (even when not cross-platform) and less stairs when possible. I think most passengers, sorry customers, would agree.

[norbitonflyer]

Nov 12, 2009 21:46:28 GMT @cityboy said:

Southwark offers passengers coming from Docklands and needing a Southeastern service a much better interchange than would of or could ever be offered at Waterloo. Lastly, it allows a second exit for Waterloo East which is always very crowded as it is. ....

It's also a useful dry-weather cut-through for people getting to Waterloo from buses on Blackfriars Road - the most direct route from the western half of the City to Waterloo, since TfL, in its wisdom, sends all the buses from Waterloo on a long dog-leg via Waterloo Bridge, apparently for the express purpose of getting stuck in the traffic on Fleet Street.

Nov 12, 2009 21:46:28 GMT @cityboy said:

It seems you are proposing a Blackfrairs Underground station one on each side of the river

No, a station roughly half way between Blackfriars and the Elephant, and interchanging with the Underground, would have been a very useful connection. Thameslink's connections with Tube lines in the Central area are atrocious: don't forget that City Thameslink was originally supposed to have had interchange with St Pauls Underground too - indeed, part of the reason for congestion on the Central Line is that there is no interchnage with any line to or from the south between TCR and Bank, so anyone joining the network at, say, Chancery Lane, has to go two stops east or west before they can head south.

As for the original premise: yes, MOST Victoria Line interchnages are excellent, but Green Park and Victoria are notable exceptions. But apart from Baker Street the Jubilee Line's interchanges are all form and no substance. Have you tried changing to the Jubilee at Waterloo?

Indeed, although Green Park is the Victoria Line's worst interchange, it's one of the Jubilee's best!

[Ben]

A station south of the river on the Thameslink line was proposed in 74 railway study.

I've often wondered if a travelator could be installed at Green Park along that long passage?

[Deleted]

Nov 12, 2009 23:42:35 GMT norbitonflyer said:

Nov 12, 2009 21:46:28 GMT @cityboy said:

No, a station roughly half way between Blackfriars and the Elephant, and interchanging with the Underground, would have been a very useful connection. Thameslink's connections with Tube lines in the Central area are atrocious

Well, more Thameslink trains will run via London Bridge as of 2015 than via E&C. LB already has a connection with the Jub and Northern. Aside from LB, in Zone 1 the connections are:
E&C (Bakloerloo and Northern) Blackfrairs (District and Circle), Farringdon (H&C, Circle, Met) and Kings X (Northern, Vic, Pic, Circle, Met, H&C). So what I believe you actually mean is there is no Underground connection at City Thameslink but all other central stations have at least 2 Underground Connections. Whether these interchanges are easy to make is another matter... but they are most certainly numerous!