Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a major travel issue – and what it means for you.
Old Oak Common is a muddy, poorly defined area in the top end of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham adjacent to Wormwood Scrubs – which has been ambitiously described as a nature reserve. Old Oak Common is also the name of the west London stop for High Speed 2 (HS2), the hugely expensive new line between London Euston and Birmingham. I imagine that by the time the station opens, it will be called “West London Parkway”. But it will not go any closer to the center of the capital.
For a brief period on Friday morning it appeared the final six miles of the HS2 route from the West Midlands to the capital could be scrapped entirely, as the cost of the failed and delayed project ballooned by an unsettling but shocking number of billions. . The Chancellor later clarified that the line would be completed to London Euston.,
Meanwhile, Labor has vowed to fully complete the first UK high-speed rail line to go somewhere other than Kent or France. This includes the Leeds leg, which has been scrapped by the current government. I will hold Labor to its promise. But whichever party is in power when HS2 eventually opens, we already know that the line will temporarily end at Old Oak Common.
A skeleton service will appropriately stop just west of Kensal Green Cemetery, a part of northwest London where almost no one wants to be.
three years ago i wrote: “The current expectation is for a token service of three trains an hour between Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street starting sometime between 2029 and 2033, with 10 trains an hour from Euston between 2031 and 2036 are.”
Since then, start dates have slipped alarmingly, but the long wait for Euston will remain for the last mile.
“Really a heart touching gesture by the government,” Professor Anand Menon tweeted on Friday, “Stay on the bus replacement service from Old Oak Common, and northerners commuting on HS2 will feel right at home as they approach central London.”
In fact, the Elizabeth Line – another mega-project that came years later and a budget of billions – would take the strain. I predicted with full confidence that whoever will have the Transport Secretary’s poisoned cup when HS2 finally starts rolling will explain how wonderful it is to step through central London from a 225mph express to an Essex suburban service from all stations. But other places with out-of-town rail stations show how silly and annoying it is to force inter-city commuters to switch to another service to reach the centre.
The French are fond of randomly locating stops on high-speed lines and then taking a “Ryanair” approach to placenames (Europe’s biggest budget airline has long been ambitious in naming some of its lesser-known airports). The “Aix-en-Provence TGV” is much closer to Marseille airport than to Cézanne’s home town.
Some inter-city stations in Australia are equally unusable. The East Perth Terminal, a glorious bus station on the Indo-Pacific from Perth to Sydney, begins its endless journey seven miles from the sea. In Adelaide, the Indian-Pacific meets three other long-distance trains – the Ghana, the Great Southern and the Overland – in the south-eastern suburb of Keswick rather than in the scenic city centre. And in New Zealand, the Trans Alpine’s wonderful journey across the South Island from Greymouth via Arthur’s Pass ends humiliatingly at Christchurch station – crushed between an old car dealer and Tower Junction the city’s shopping centre.
America has hit the self-destruct button on many of its glorious stations; To board an express from Detroit to Chicago last summer, I had to take a streetcar several miles north of the heart of the “Motor City” and stand at a single-platform stop. Inter-city rail journeys should not be inter-suburban. Passengers deserve and demand better.