Crossrail release aerial images of stations along route
Crossrail have today released a number of aerial images showing various stations along the route.
Much of the works is years late, but at least a finishing line is in sight. What’s interesting to me about many of these photos is they show just how much scope there still is for new housing around stations.
Crossrail’s aerial images start at West Ealing where a large retail shed and car park sits next to the station. With John Lewis and Waitrose’s current problems, perhaps a profitable endeavour would be to rebuild as mixed-use. They can keep the supermarket and parking with new homes above. Voila, there’s more custom for public transport, more for the shop, less reliance on cars, less family homes being divided into flat shares (if new homes are affordable) across the wider area and a pretty much a win all round.
Retails sheds and car parks around busy urban stations are a common site on the images Crossrail have released.
Head west to Southall and it’s a similar story – though there are big developments further away.
West Drayton bucks the trend with new homes underway:
On the eastern stretch similar retail sheds are located near major stations such as Romford:
Not all stations are amongst tarmac and wasteful low density commercial buildings – but too many are. One way to prevent sprawl onto greenery is build up around stations. Many of these places are ripe for mid-rise or higher. The sky wouldn’t fall in at Waitrose in West Ealing if a 5-6 storey block was built including a new shop.
I’m sure the usual comments about noise will be made, but there’s ample solutions to that, and it’s probably far nosier than living in a family home converted into a houseshare.
Incentives could be provided to encourage building, with incentives not to build homes in new developments such as a zero CIL rate for parking removed at future sites. Perhaps a tax on large supermarket or retail parking spaces in the immediate area around stations would help.
To view Crossrail’s newest batch of photos click here.
Clearing these “wasteful low density commercial buildings” in favour of new prison-block style housing has an overall negative effect. Already people who would have travelled on foot to work have been forced to use cars to head to work outside London (or at the very least outer London). Public transport used to enable these people to travel further to work within London but it’s now so slow with bicycle lanes taking space away from vehicles. There is an ever-increasing divide between people who travel into town (or high streets) to do service, sales or Government jobs, and those who actually make things, drive buses, lorries, and deliver our purchases to us. All we’re going to end up with at this rate is a sea of high-rises and miserably slow-traffic areas only suitable for home workers. Not a single development gives any consideration for desperately needed road widening or even a layby for a bus stop or the massively increased need for legal delivery driver parking.
Many of these spaces were old goods yards. And, of course, in the past we knew all freight would be by trucks and everyone would drive or drive to park at the station. Yes such a waste of space, and of the investment in Crossrail.
Another observation, is that the suburban stations still manly have a single entrance/exit. Crossrail trains are long, and most central stations have two exits (effectively two stations in one). Nothing more frustrating than to have to walk the length of the station to get in, knowing that at your destination you’ll have to walk back.