Discussion. Preliminary Planning for a New Tube Railway Across London.

Abstract

said that the cost of an underground railway system was very high, but the value of such a system to a city was in fact considerably higher than its direct commercial value measured in terms of receipts from fares. An underground railway in a city was just as important as its sewerage system or fire service; it was essential. In any city with a population approaching one million an underground railway was needed, whether the authorities wished to provide it or not. Efforts were sometimes made to avoid providing it. For example, at Caracas in Venezuela, which had been essentially an old Spanish colonial town, the Government had used bulldozers to knock down buildings and make great straight avenues to enable motor-cars to move faster, but the result had been a great many more motor-cars and the roads were as jammed up as before; so the authorities had had to think again about the provision of underground railways. The cost of such railways was extremely high, but it was impossible to do without them.92. The cost, however, was the real difficulty. The average citizen was compelled to live some distance from his place of employment and to travel there and back on at least 5 days a week. If he lived, say, 12 miles from Charing Cross, the cost was about E40 a year. From nearer the centre, say from Hammersmith or Clapham, it was about f 2 2 a year. Since 75% of the population of Britain earned E12 a week or less, that represented a large proportion of income, yet it was not sufficient to pay for the construction of underground railways. That was the problem. The streets of London were congested with parked cars, and Mr Morgan was convinced that the vast majority of them belonged to people who lived near the underground system but insisted on coming into the centre by road. To take legal proceedings against the drivers would require many hundreds more magistrates! He had been told that 873% of these cars were subsidized to some extent by the employers of those who used them. That pointed to the need for the development of underground railways on a bigger scale than at present.93. Mr Morgan mentioned an underground railway which had been proposed in Calcutta at one time which would have required a passenger density of 10 persons/sq. m or ]/sq. ft. He had suggested that 0.5 person/sq. ft was a more realistic figure and he was shocked to learn that the figure went up to 0.6 person/sq. ft at the worst periods in London.94. Mr Morgan had made an estimate (based on experience with the precast concrete lining used for the main-line tunnels at Potters Bar) of the saving in prime cost by the use of a new type of concrete lining in place of the cast-iron lining. It appeared that the tunnelling costs could be reduced by about 50% by using such a lining for a plain tunnel; it would not be so advantageous with the number of stations on the proposed tube line, and the cost of the whole scheme would not be reduced in that proportion. For the running tunnels, however, such a reduction in cost should be possible. This type of lining, h...

Development over London Underground tunnels: No. 1 Grafton Street

“…The Victoria Line was constructed from 1962 to 1971, following Parliamentary approval in 1955 (Turner, 1959). The section from Warren Street to Victoria, which is relevant to this development, was opened on 7 March 1969 (Clark et al, 1969;Follenfant, 1969).…”