Last month, I was sitting on a train reading the Times, and I found a page devoted to the government's plans for building new homes in the South East. Basically, population is increasing in this part of the country, and in addition the average number of people living in a house is declining. The government has plans for the construction of 200000 homes in new developments around London. (This is in addition to houses planned by local authorities).
The articles in the Times had little to say about transport, and transport is of course crucial. Many people living in these areas are going to want to commute to London.
This is why it is particularly interesting to look at these two maps that were provided with the article, and to compare them with a map of the domestic services that will run on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, as I do below.
The government is particularly interested in building homes in what they call the "Thames Gateway" zone to the east of London. One reason for this is that much of the land in these areas is what is called "brownfield" sites: essentially disused industrial areas. Hopefully the area can be turned into residential land and somebody will pay to clean it up in the process. Perhaps better than this, building in this type of area is less likely to upset people who are attached to green countrysides than is bulldozing green countrysides. (As a downside, building on a brownfield is generally more expensive due to the cleanup costs).
This is where it gets interesting. Patrick linked to this piece on my own blog that I wrote a couple of months ago on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL). When I wrote that piece I was thinking primarily about international services. Domestic services using the CTRL between London and Kent are also planned. Look at this map, and compare with those above.
The CTRL has two junctions in Kent designed to allow domestic services to switch from the old network onto the CTRL, one at Ebbsfleet and the other at Ashford. It so happens that inhabitants of virtually the entire southern section of the government's "Thames Gateway" zone, specifically the developments at Ebbsfleet and Medway City, will be able to make a short journey on the existing network, and will then be able to travel along to CTRL and be in central London in only a few minutes. Without the CTRL, the new towns would face longer and likely far less reliable commutes, and their commuters would put a lot of pressure on existing routes into London from the South East, and on existing terminal stations. (London Bridge, Canon Street, Charing Cross). However, thanks to the CTRL they will be able to use the newest infrastructure in the country rather than some of the most run down.
Secondly, the town of Ashford is to double in population due to the presence of the CTRL. What was a self contained Kent town will turn into a commuter location, and the journey to London will be only a few minutes.
All this starts to explain another thing to me: the new station being built on the CTRL at Stratford. I tried and failed to justify this station in terms of international services, but as a commuter station it is in an ideal location. It allows interchange to the Jubilee line and Docklands Light Railway(for access to Docklands and Southwark) and the Central line (for access to the City). If many commuters actually get off at Stratford rather than St Pancras, this will also reduce pressure on St Pancras, which with the combination of Midland Mainline, international and domestic Kent services is going to be quite crowded. (If Thameslink 2000 is ever built, it will alleviate this congestion somewhat. In the longer term, so will the Chelsea-Hackney line if it is ever built).
What can we conclude from all this? Whereas stage 1 of the CTRL is largely about international trains, stage 2 (the section approximately from Ebbsfleet to London) is as much about domestic travel and in particular is about the government's development of new residential areas. Its presence will be responsible for much shorter commuting times and much greater convenience than would be the case without it, and as a consequence property values in the Thames Gateway area (and also Ashford) will increase quite considerably. (There will also be a dramatic improvement in the quality of the area around Kings Cross / St Pancras). Will these property value increases be sufficient to justify the cost of building the CTRL? Well, if the property value increases due to the building of the Jubilee Line Extension (at least 10 billion pounds - Patrick gave a number at his Junto talk the other night but I cannot remember what it was) then the answer might well be yes. Of course, the return on this investment will not go to the taxpayers who actually made the investment, but all this is worth considering. Another benefit is that pressure on the Southern London passenger terminals is going to be reduced, and given the lack of reliability of this part of the network, this may well be a good thing.
As one final observation, it is worth thinking about how a couple of the other development zones on the top map fit into various transport plans on the drawing board. Trains from the northern section of the Thames Valley region in Essex presently come into Fenchurch Street or Liverpool Street. A lot of extra trains coming from this direction would cause problems at those stations, unless you increased capacity. Trains from the "Stansted Zone" would mostly come into Liverpool Street (or in some instances King's Cross). Similar issues arise. To fix this, you need to build Crossrail, which is probably what the private consortium that wants to build Crossrail is thinking of. (This would also be another argument for building Thameslink 2000, as Kings Cross services would then be able to use it).