If I had my way, the DLR would be extended all of the way to Penzance... That would mean that we would finally get some decent public transport here in West Cornwall!
In a deep tunnel... 100s on board... One needs an accountable person.. To be in charge One could automate to the point of having only one in charge.. Remotely And if s/he walks off the job? How much would you pay.. For a human being to be in sole charge Of the safe conveyance Of 1000s
Would be interesting if it was to terminate at Barbican, as some of the track on the widened lines could be used, and bring down the cost in line with the cheapness of light rail. The sidings could be kept for the metropolitan line. Nice video as always though, I had never known of these plans until today!
A tunnel portal to take over the Widened Lines is going to be as expensive as underground platforms - especially now lot of the infrastructure to get down to sub-surface platforms is already built.
@@hx0d It's not - portals are really expensive and just coming up to the surface merely to terminate is, if cheaper, only slightly cheaper. It was only ever proposed for the DLR extension because it was originally going to have two stations - Barbican and Farringdon, and so using the trackbed to get between the two would actually be a cost saving. If you are terminating at Barbican, you'd use the Widened Line alignment to mine out your station below, not raise the DLR up to - not least as getting up from Bank DLR to Barbican Widened line would be a sustained steep grade all the way that you'd want to reduce if possible.
They should add loop from Bank directly back to Bank with no intermediate stations. That way people can just sit on the line and pretend they’re driving the train all day.
Imagine the fights... imagine the house prices. I live in Lewisham borough, and the DLR is one of the factors in the crazy house price inflation, which isn't all good news if you are local and priced out of the area. A fascinating video as always, Jago.
House price inflation is rarely good news for anyone, despite what the press would have us believe - except, of course, for rich people who own houses as investments rather than to live in. (And possibly for older people looking to "cash in" and trade down.) If my house doubled in value, most likely so would have the next one I might want to buy, and I would actually be worse off. Provided I don't end up in negative equity, *deflation* would actually be better.
The DLR needs to stay away from central London! I'd much rather see it extend south from the docklands all the way down to Bromley! And then connect with the Bakerloo line planned extensions in those same areas of south east London.
Informative broadcast from the enigma who is known as Jago Hazzard. The movie The Long Good Friday was so prophetical with the development of east London
My solution would be to make the dlr go everywhere. Close everything. Rebrand it. The Elizabeth line only recently opened but the dlr is always superior.
When City Thameslink was opened in 1990, the station building was designed to incorporate a future interchange with the Jubilee line, on a proposed phase two routing, in a 1977 study. So, if the DLR was extended west of Bank, to Charing Cross, provision would already be made at City Thameslink. With regards to enlarging the tunnels, it's not just to do with the loading gauge of the DLR trains; as the trains have no cab end doors, the tunnels would need side walkways as well. These already exist on the current DLR underground sections, and also on the city centre underground sections of the Tyne and Wear Metro. That's another system which goes below ground but whose trains have no cab end doors.
Well I think there are enough options in (under) Central London already. How about Beckton-Barking-Ilford? Or maybe Lewisham-Bromley? However, the problem is that, as per the name, it's very much a LIGHT railway originally intended for short distances. People aren't going to want to trundle around slowly across large chunks of London.
@@samuelfellows6923 they feel like they move quite quickly, but most stations are very close together, so they rarely spend much time at their upper speed ranges.
A recurring theme in the comments is that of reusing extant tube tunnels, the problem in each case being the larger loading gauge of DLR stock. To re-bore tunnels is a massive challenge. No-one has mentioned inverting the logic: Running a new stock of DLR trains that fits the tunnels and then runs-out onto the extant DLR connections.
The final logical implication of your proposal would be to integrate the DLR with the tube . No more interchange stations, just run any necessary DLR trains into whatever tube line is required. Quite a few cities around the world have converted tram lines to rail lines when the density of traffic is high enough.
Definitely an interesting concept. I think one problem could be that the floor height of the DLR is significantly higher than the deep level tube (1.03m vs ~0.7m). This would make inter-operability pretty much a non starter, as any modern project would absolutely have to have level boarding at all platforms. You *could* potentially still take over the abandoned deep level tunnel sections like Green Park - CX - Aldwych and raise the platforms, but you'd wind up with an incredibly cramped interior, given how tight the existing deep level rolling stock is, even with it's lower floors - to the extent I don't think it'd be viable. Ultimately, re-boring tunnels is still much cheaper than new ones, and also means you don't need to avoid them, making routing much simpler. Rebuilding Aldwych station would be a pretty big build, but Holborn is already saturated and often has to stop any people entering at peak time, as does Covent Garden, so a new station in the area would take up some of the load and save having to rebuild one or both of the others.
Indeed an interesting thought. I suspect the problem might be that some of the curves on the DLR are actually too tight for tube trains, especially round the Poplar junction. Plus of course the driverless control system is totally different. Would a DLR/W&C train need to be both short/flexible and narrow cross section? There's an interesting parallel from the canal age. The Yorkshire canals had short wide locks and boats, the Lancashire/Midland ones had long narrow ones. When the Huddersfield Narrow Canal was built to connect them, only boats that were both short and narrow could do a full east-west passage via adjoining waterways, limiting the payload.
Jago used to use stock footage of Dr Who (Tom Baker era, complete with woolly hair and distinctive scarf) walking along a Tube platform. Sadly he seems to have stopped using it.
To be fair, if I had to choose between clay or chalk to dig a tunnel through. I would choose chalk every day of the week. Clay has a large tendency to flow about over short periods of time, making cave-ins rather likely, and the resulting disturbance to above ground property all that much more likely. Chalk at least has some rigidity to it. Though, I live in Stockholm, a city that almost exclusively has granite to work with. Unlike clay and chalk, one can't really put a scratch into it with one's nails alone.
Either is better where I am which is sitting on a huge deposit of an asbestos like mineral which makes every plan to dig a harbour crossing a hazmat nightmare.
Tunneling in any of London's geotechnical conditions is not particularly difficult, whether that be London Clay (very stiff but easy to dig), Woolwich and Reading beds (interbedded sands and clay), Thanet sands (very fine grained and almost cemented together, but again easy to dig) or the underlying chalk. Providing that the tunnels are adequately lined during construction (unlike the NATM fiasco at Heathrow in the early 90's) there should never be any issue with disturbance to property at the surface. Altogether much easier and quicker than tunneling through hard rock, such as granite.
I love your videos. You are clearly very knowledgeable and your delivery is witty but without any trivialisation. Please keep doing what you're doing! I'm a huge fan! 👏👍😊
Some fascinating possibilities. I think it would be incredibly useful for the DLR to go at least _somewhere_ west of Bank. Also, I feel they missed an opportunity during the Bank station upgrade by not moving one of the DLR platforms upstairs and swapping with the Northern line for cross platform interchange. That would be useful with the current DLR termination in Bank, but would be game changing with a DLR western extension.
Maybe the reason they didn't move one of the DLR platforms upstairs and swapping with the Northern Line is because the tunnels carrying the DLR don't run to those platforms (and vice versa). Civil engineering is so much easier in a You Tube comments section than it is in real life!
@@lostcarpark Both - if you have a rapid transfer between platforms then the platform is overcrowded in no time. With a risk to life so platforms get closed or trains don't stop. That's why there is such a long way at busy stations now like Kings Cross and Victoria. Basically it's buffering people. Ideally at tube stations it should be longest way in, shortest way out.
@@hairyairey I don't buy it. Sorry. Whether you make people walk further or not, unless you have trains taking people off platforms as fast as they arrive on the platform, you will get platform overcrowding. The distance they walk to get to the platform makes no difference to this. If you have trains to a lot of different destinations, as the DLR does, you will get people waiting on the platform waiting for the train going on their route. The only way to fix this is to have platforms big enough to accommodate the expected volume of people waiting, and to have enough frequency and train capacity to get people off the platforms. There have been a number of London Underground stations reconfigured to facilitate cross platform interchange (Finsbury Park, Oxford Circus and Euston spring to mind), and in general these are some of the easiest stations to move through and least congested on the network.
I almost wish they could connect the DLR to the Waterloo and City Line, and build a station at Blackfriars. Yes, the tunnels would need to be widened, but it would have added extra throughput between Waterloo and Bank.
If I had my way I would extend it from shadwell to King's Cross. All those comutters who come in there would save so much time. I work in the wharf and get the Stratford canary wharf line. Always loved it.
When I saw the title of the video I said to myself "Aldwych!". It has to be the station which has had the biggest number of plans turned down: extension to Waterloo through Temple (tried on, at least, four different times), Jubilee line, DLR... In fact, these would make an interesting series of videos, Mr. Hazzard O:) .
Whenever I come to Europe, my travel hub is my friend's place in London, and she recently moved near Limehouse. Over this summer, I've had to travel from hers to Liverpool Street (for the airport), KX (for Scotland) and St Pancreas (for the mainland-and yes, I know, but my autocorrect doesn't). Each time, the worst part of the journey was dragging heavy bags around Bank. Yes, I'm a pack rat, but Bank seems to have been designed less for rats, and more by rabid wombats, with tunnels haphazardly built where there's… well, clay and chalk according to you, and, given the wombat's medical record, rabies! But not much room, apparently, for escalators and lifts, nor other things that would make this pack rat's travel easier. (Although I suppose, if it was really built by a wombat, the wombat would sit and block the exit for the rat, to trap it and make it regret going there… wombats actually do that; and Bank admittedly doesn't have _that_ problem, although I did find myself very frustrated late one night, looking for an open exit from Temple.) Anyhow, as I watched this video, I wished that _any_ of those DLR extensions had been built. Also, my condolences about the Queen. I must admit, your particular English accent has always made me think of you as a monarchist, which might just be a terrible stereotype, but I think we're all at least a bit sad today, even those of us in the land of republican wombats. (In the classic sense, nothing to do with the rabid US political party… I'm so glad Australia doesn't have rabies! Wombats cause enough problems for foundations as it is!)
I would extend the DLR to Southend Providing much needed competition to the C2C.... We could test the viability of that idea By extending The Central Line To Stansted... Er... Irony Alert! Irony Alert!... Mr Hazzard Temper with some sarcasm!
I never understood why a DLR extension to Charing Cross was considered over a second Jubilee Line Extension. Does the Underground really cost that much more to build when you're digging tunnels anyway?
I guess the issue then becomes that you can only run half the number of trains on that branch (and the line through Westminster) since there's no more capacity to the north and west. Not unless you do it as a shuttle à la Aldwych.
If DLR did run through the city, the question them is, is there a distressed or underused líne it could take over and run to a Western suburb? How about DLR to Brentford? At least it had a dock!
I think the DLR would cost more - the loading gauge is bigger. I suspect the issue was two fold. 1. The Jubilee line is already rammed, so dumping more people on it while also lowering frequency on the Canary Wharf / Stratford branch would be self defeating. 2. The DLR desperately needed better connectivity at the western end, so adding the Jubilee line wouldn't really help with that.
Light rail is cheaper because it runs on the surface, usually recycling existing rails or in the middle of avenues. When you go underground, as other commenters have already said, the biggest cost is making the tunnel. Which is the reason why subterranean railways are a lot more expensive. The DLR isn't made cheap magically just by calling it a light rail, as any engineer could tell the politicians (if they dared to ask, that is).
Charing Cross would have been sensible as it offered a faster (fewer intermediate stations) alternative to the District / Circle lines. DLR trains approaching from the east could have had a crossover tunnels added (as part of the tunnel enlargement) on the eastern side of the station so that they did not need to travel beyond the platforms. Reusing the Jubilee platforms would have sensible - especially if the Jubilee line tunnels on the western side of the Charing Cross platforms could have been converted to a Jubilee line siding for stabling broken down trains, reversing trains, etc. The only disadvantage would have been the loss of the use of these platforms as film sets.
The Euston, St Pancras/Kings Cross (branching off a line to Victoria) would have had the benefit of connecting the Docklands area with a big chunk of the services serving rest of the country. So, it may have been worth the trouble.
@@dsmx85 So people can land at CA then travel to Paris/Brussels, when they could have just flown there in the first place? The easiest way to provide a connection between the DLR and Eurostar would be to make Stratford International live up to its name....
A video on the proposed DLR under Thames tunnel extension from Gallion's Reach to Thamesmead would be good, as this is the only extension under current serious consideration.
Well my suggestion would be a new eastern link from Stratford running parallel to the Romford road with a step free stop at the junction of Woodgrange road for Everest Fish Chips & Kebabs then continuing eastwards with the next pause at Bel Pomodoro ( for Manor Park). Then moving at street level in a straight line through western Ilford and coming to rest at Greggs in High road Ilford. This would be a busy interchange of fast food outlets. Still further east a brief halt at Jakes Hamburgers an interchange with the Elizabeth Line at Chadwell Heath, after that it is an express non stop final leg with the terminus at St Chads Park adjacent to the public toilets and park bench.
I've always wondered why they never built a raised track, a la US Elevated lines , maybe straight along Oxford Street and follow the wide roads they have on the main parts of London (not the old back streets). A few steel girders must cost less than boring a tunnel after all.
That would never get planning approval in London. Lots of the upper floors over shops are residential and privacy issues would arise. Plus it would be just plain ugly and need to have a minimum 15ft clearance beneath for buses. The foundations would have to be deep, as is mentioned London is built on clay with a myriad of tunnels, pipes and trunking for utilities just beneath the surface of streets, many unmapped as date from the 19th century. The Pigeons might like it though.
Funny you should say that @Mike Brown as Jago did a 'Lines that never were' video that looked at the Oxford Street monorail. You can see it here: ua-cam.com/video/Gv3_xkVOAg0/v-deo.html
I don't have a clue which way the platforms at Bank are pointing, or what level they are at, but I often used to think that it would be nice to join the DLR and Waterloo and City together. It would have made a few journeys I did many years ago, a bit easier, too!
The DLR platforms at Bank are directly underneath the Northern Line ones. I've not made that change since the rebuilding of the Northern Line at Bank, but it used to be a simple set of stairs or a lift between the two levels.
Interesting. I suspect that other than reusing existing tunnels and/or overground lines then extending the DLR west is going to prove problematic/expensive. It might be cheaper to build an above-river extension on concrete pillars then you could stop off almost anywhere - London Bridge, Blackfriars, Waterloo.... or how about reusing the Waterloo and city line as a DLR route? Require some rejigging at Bank but hey...
Above the river would spoil the view and only possible upstream of London Bridge as ships are tall, hence Tower Bridge to allow ships into the Pool of London. Also many other bridges to go above. There is an unwritten rule that the view of St Paul's cannot be obscured from the river as far upstream as Waterloo Bridge,
@@tonys1636 So, wait, wait, turn that thought backwards, we can have a network of elevated and subsurface hydrofoil canals. With _really, really fast_ locks.
I suspect the would be an issue with the DLR stock having to shift large numbers of passengers in central London. Longer trains or increased frequency would be needed.
Interesting to read about proposed DLR western extensions that never were. For years now here have been mutterings about reopening the abandoned Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace via Highgate line as a DLR type system so with an extension of the existing line from Bank to St. Pancras, it wouldn't require much thought to extend this north of St. Pancras to Finsbury Park for the old Ally Pally line to become part of the DLR itself, rather than just exist as an isolated driverless line. It would also bring rail travel back to the well-populated suburbs of Crouch End and Muswell Hill which, come July 2023, will have been rail-less for 69 years even though it should, by rights, now be part of the LU Northern Line - and the reasons why it is not are well known. Of course, I am being slightly selfish here as I live in Crouch End so the idea of being able to get on a DLR train all the way up to town and down into deepest darkest south London in one go is very appealing, rather than waiting around for buses to Finsbury Park or Archway before I even set sight on a train, never mind actually boarding one. This is particularly irksome coming home late after a night out in town with friends or at the theatre, for instance, having to toil out of the deep-level platforms at Finsbury Park station and then hang around in that cold inhospitable bus station for the W3 just to go the last mile or so home. And perhaps another name would be needed for the DLR since it would then be far and away from docklands, I would suggest London Light Rail even though this wouldn't cover the whole of the Capital. But then Croydon Tramlink got away with renaming that system as London Tramlink even though it is confined to just one small south-eastern corner yet the renaming gives the impression that trams are London-wide. But in any case, I can't see DLR trains being extended to Ally Pally via St. Pancras and Crouch End in my lifetime but its a nice thought. Kind regards, David, Crouch End, N8
Great video, thanks! Not being from London (nor indeed from Britain) I can't claim to know much about it; but I think I would extend the DLR with a loop. Not a horizontal loop... a VERTICAL loop! That would be a massive tourist attraction! 😄
In a city like London, in fact the Island of Great Britain from the south coast all the way up to and including Scotland's central belt, we want a grid of railway. The grid is more fine-grained in cities and in regions with cities close together. So, when considering where a rail line should go, you should look to the grid and people centres. What you don't want is railways that look radial as they get congested at the centre and thus are inefficient.
Others have mentioned the capacity issue. I suspect that the further the DLR is extended east, south and north, the capacity of a stub two track station at Bank will become a more serious issue. One option that doesn't seem to have been considered is to extend a different part of the DLR into London north of The City to reach Thameslink and CrossRail. This would spread the traffic and allow DLR passengers to avoid Bank altogether while on their way to locations in and outside London. I don't know London well enough to say where this would go but part of the scheme might involve integrating the east end of the District Line, with all its aboveground track, into new DLR route.
I think I've read somewhere that the reversing tunnels at Bank head towards Moorgate, and the plan for the Farringdon extension was to use the Widened Line between Moorgate and Farringdon; new platforms would have to be constructed at Farringdon
I think the Farringdon extension would be nice, the infrastructure is already there, there are abandoned platforms at Moorgate and Barbican, and at Farringdon you’d just need to build two new platforms
From my (stricly limited) memory of the DLR's history, it seems to me that planners always underestimate future needs, build something slightly cheaper than a full tube line, then act surprised later and point to the obvious need for upgrades, which are insufficient again so that even further upgrades are needed later, ultimately costing more for less capacity than building something adequate right from the start. So I am glad that all plans for extensions beyond Bank have been abandoned. For St. Pancras and Euston, it would make a lot more sense to take a commuter line into Euston underground and extend it to Shoreditch High Street, Mile End and Canary Wharf. For Charing Cross and Victoria, surely the bigger solution would be to take the Fenchurch Street Line underground from Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and let it go to Victoria, though even that would waste the potential of an even larger scheme.
Not sure why you would consider extending the DLR (a mainly surface light rail) underground. I thought its main advantage was its relatively cheap construction.
I do hope that we get that extension of the DLR, from Bank to Victoria, via City Thameslink, Aldwych, Charing Cross and Green Park, one day. We would not actually need to use Aldwych station itself, except as an entry point for tunnelling equipment, during construction, and as a ventilation point after the new line opens. If the DLR platforms were built to the north of disused Aldwych platforms, the old Piccadilly Line running tunnels, from Aldwych to Holborn could be converted into moving walkways, with another angled tunnel, connecting a new circulation area to the Central Line. At Charing Cross the disused platforms would be most useful for holding construction trains, which could be filled up with soil from TBMs and sent up the existing Jubilee Line at night. I would probably recommend retaining both the platforms and building new DLR platforms on either side of them, as the disused platforms could then be levelled off, like the closed Northern Line platform at Bank, giving the station an absolutely ton of circulation space. Going west from Charing Cross, I would not widen the disused tunnels all the way to Green Park station. Instead I would send the TBMs straight down the middle of The Mall and build a Buckingham Palace station where Green Park meets St James's Park. And I would not have the train go and terminate at Victoria. I would have it extend beyond Victoria with an eastern entrance, that links into the existing Underground Station and a western entrance built into Victoria Coach Station. I would even go further west...or rather north west. And here is where the fun starts. We use the disused Brompton Road station as an access point, for construction, but build DLR platfoms that connect to Knightsbridge Station. The next station we build with a station box dropped into the middle of Hyde Park, probably somewhere west of where they do that Chrismas market. Then it's on to Paddington, creating a direct DLR link between Victoria and Paddingdon. And then - the car lobbyists will love this bit - we close the Westway to car traffic. And we give one half of it to the DLR and the other half of it to trams and buses! The Westway gives us new DLR interchange stations at Royal Oak, Westborne Park and Ladbrook Grove. We build a new station, to the west of the Weststway Roundabout that has a connection to the West London Line at the east side and a connection to the Central Line at the west side. A new interchange station, where the Westway crosses the North London Line from Richmond (and probably a couple more stations before that). Then it's off to Park Royal and Hanger Lane, with interchange stations. I would move Greenford national rail station north, to make another interchange and terminate the DLR there...for now. 😉
With the possibility of construction work in disused stations, tunnel-widening and so on, one wonders if any long-hidden surprises will be uncovered. Hopefully nothing like what was uncovered at Hobbs End (hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink). :D
When digging Crossrail Tunnels a trick was missed to build three additional service tunnels, two of which could later be filled by the DLR with more closer Stations.
Connect the DLR to the Waterloo & City Line, Problem solved, immensly useful. Yes, even allowing the wider loading gauge, it's about reboring to Waterloo, and as an engineer myself, not a great problem! The new DLR, Drain Light Railway!
Quite possible. Gaps between train sections tend to be long on all national railways due to several reasons. Not only do DLR trains require a much shorter gap between trains, but in addition they've got the added automatic built in security which relieves drivers who can instead look after door closings, etc. At present DLR trains tend to be short, but that's due to the short platforms of their existing stations that were built in a hurry and on a budget. Any trains running to Charing X, etc, would be able to make use of national standard long platforms.
All those mentioned extensions for the DLR looked interesting, and should be given a go. It’ll definitely help with the overcrowding issue in London, and will make an interesting and kind of surprising difference. If I had been provided a chance to extend the DLR, I would extend it to Barking Riverside, Upminster, Romford, Abbey Wood, Waterloo, Walthamstow Central, and Rayners Lane.
In the early 2000s I heard tell of a possible DLR extension to Waterloo by having it replace the Waterloo & City line - with a possible new station at Blackfriars, where I believe the W&C tunnel runs quite close. But I'm sure that's fiendishly complicated, even if the tunnels to already exist.
My favourite extension idea is non stop from Bank to Farringdon, then King's Cross, Euston, Tottenham Court Road, Piccadilly Circus, and Victoria. Why? Victoria line is overcrowded on its journey north from Victoria. Although no passengers coming up from further south will gain by changing at Victoria passengers joining the tube system from the mainline would gain a faster journey if travelling to any stations on the Piccadilly line east of Green Park, or the Central Line east of Oxford Circus or to either Euston or King's Cross. That's a lot of passengers currently fighting to get onto a Victoria line train at Victoria who could use the DLR instead. It's the same story from Euston and King's Cross - the current lines running to both the west end and the city are overcrowded and with the enhancements due to the main line services into those stations the overcrowding will only get worse. In particular the northern line to Bank is fairly gruelling so a limited stop faster service by DLR would be welcome and with fewer stations on this section construction costs would be lower too.
Maybe an extension to Waterloo using the existing track should be used to avoid needless changes. Or if capacity/budget wasn't an issue possibly go to King's Cross via Charing Cross could be done. The would give commuters a route North, into Central London and a route South
I read an article about how they were considering a new underground line to connect HS2 at Euston to Cnary Wharf. The St Pancras extension would achieve this so I wonder of this may happen in the future.
All the extensions... but we need one to Dagenham Dock and Rainham, though getting it to Dagenham East to join the new film studios would be a massive coup!
I prefer the Victoria and King's Cross extensions. It connects Lewisham, Deptford, Greenwich and the Docklands to HS2 and Eurostar. I would also like the DLR to takeover the Waterloo & City line. People in Canary Wharf would have a second option if they need to go to Waterloo, while relieving congestion on the Jubilee line.
An extension to East Dulwich is needed to bring this suburb, which I once inhabited in to the 21st century of a London transport. This could r done from the Lewisham extension.
I know that congestion is an ongoing issue for the network, but as a foreigner who is fascinated with London's transport infrastructure, I believe priority should be given to areas currently without adequate service. How long will Thamesmead continue to get the short end of the stick?
I think the focus should be on Thamesmead and Abbey Wood/Crossrail. There's no money in the kitty, that bridge/tunnel will be expensive, and there's a real need for a rail link. Leave the Westend to the Underground, who have it well sussed anyway.
There is a planned DLR extension to go under the river from Beckton to Thamesmead. If Crossrail were ever to expand east, it would likely use the existing lines to go down to Dartford and Gravesend
I should be excited about the idea of the DLR coming within my reach to Charing Cross. The thing is even I have to admit how crazy awkward it would be, I couldn't even picture it. Yep...
Think the issue with any new extensions or tunnels will be the Elizabeth Line, and Crossrail 2 when it comes the quality uplift from tube lines just means why build more tube or DLR. Plus we need to upgrade stations with air conditioning and step free access, in the centre, this is a massive undertaking and TFL can not do this without central government finances, especially post Covid and the debt this has caused
The cost-benefit analysis didn't stack up in favour of the Liverpool Street / Shoreditch extensions? They had the best cost-benefit ratio (Shoreditch might have been not as good as Farringdon/Barbican) as they were relatively cheap and met the aims of a zone 1 extension - relieving Bank station of some of its DLR passengers by giving another outlet nearby and adding additional interchanges, while not further crowding the DLR into Bank. It was odd that Charing Cross went forward (and extended to Victoria) - the tube lines it was going to relieve (Jubilee, Central) were being relieved by Crossrail, it stuck a load more passengers on the DLR approaching Bank, and I think it even was modelled as increasing the number of people using the DLR platforms at Bank, especially in its Victoria iteration.
I feel this report was a options study for how to keep Canary wharf growing if Crossrail was not authorized by parliament. 3 years later the Crossrail Act was approved. If I was to extend the DLR now I would go west from Lewisham to Clapham junction. This could include conversation of one of the existing rail lines to DLR. When the Horizon report was produced the Lewisham section of the DLR was owned by a private company (carillon) as part of a design build and maintain contract.
The Charing Cross overrun tunnels would have to be completely rebuilt as the tunnel linings are ‘expanded’ precast concrete and not bolted. If they were bolted cast iron or spheroidal graphite iron it wouldn’t be that difficult to enlarge them.
That's why the Central Line makes a kink at Bank isn't it, to go round the vaults of the Bank of England 🏦. Anyway, with all these ideas, it seems the idea was because the existing Tube lines were at capacity already, so it was essentially just to relieve them? Does a DLR train have anywhere near the crush loading capacity of a Tube train? They're also rather slower aren't they. Would seem to be a rather extravagant and at the same time inferior duplicate.
I my humble opinion, heading for a major rail terminus such as Victoria, Charing Cross, St Pancras, Liverpool St., etc. would have caused more issue than they would have solved. A 3-car DLR has total capacity of 852 passengers, similar to a Bakerloo set (847), where as the Central line set has a capacity of 1,047, and sub surface lines (S7 set 1,034). With a double tracked loop line, it would be presumed alternate trains would be routed clockwise then anti-clockwise, hence a 50% service, the restricted capacity would have risked extreme overcrowding.
I'm assuming you mean a 3 x 2 car set? Hard to imagine you can get as many passengers on that as a Bakerloo tube train, but I suppose the larger loading gauge makes a difference.
It certainly does make one wonder at the impact such developments would have(a veritable Downtown Leftward Reach) on the accessibility of key areas of London to the east end and beyond. I suspect there will be som kind of inevitable enhancement, but equally I suspect there may be more leaning toward a new tube branch just because of the loading gauge and associated cost, plus with the limitations of technology, they still aren’t keen on driverless trains in tunnels, even if they do have attendants on board 🤔 The whole point of the DLR was it’s relative cheapness and theses schemes are, as you suggest, prohibitively pricey. I suspect there maybe some sort of feasible tram or DLR-like scheme out to the west or even partially circling the outer city at some point (nothin specific, I’m just talking out loud) which would be able again to take advantage of the low cost concept, but I’ll be amazed if there’s anything other than another tube line within the city walls so to speak (proposed Crossrail 2 excepted…but again, that is a ‘proper’ railway not an unmanned one 🤷🏻♂️). All very interesting, both in reality and in theory 😜 Cheers Mon ami 👍🍻🍀
Not counting the regular rail cars, the London metro has 3 type of cars: the larger subsurface "underground" cars, the shorter deep level "tube" cars, and the in between DLR cars. Is that correct? Also DLR are taller than the "tube" cars but seem narrower than the "underground" cars. My impressions just from the videos, not being arsed to look up statistics.
Essentially yeah. Each line has its own differences in rolling stock but all the London Underground stock is either larger open-gangway subsurface stock or smaller deep level stock
@@bobsteryt Thank you. I realized after posting, that the systems were created by different companies with different solutions. Modern day organizations have an "interesting" problem dealing with 150 year old infrastructure.
That old WW2 report on London Trains. Linking Euston with London Bridge and Victoria for places south, and likewise Kings Cross with a scissors interchange under Hyde Park would have made good sense.
An extension to St. Pancras linking HS1 and HS2 with East London would also be of great benefit to the tens of millions of British people who do not live in or near London.
Having known DLR from the start, known about campaign to get station at Canning Town, and attended opening of Beckton Extension as a community leader, I'd say all those westwards extensions are pretty much dead for two reasons: 1) DLR is, and always was, a step up from a tram - it's slow with stops close together. 2) While we all remember the days when it was unreliable, due to running in, and mostly empty during 1990s recession and before massive flat building, it is now crammed full and can't take many more passengers. Extending east, eg Barkingside, and south, eg Eltham, are options but will leave no room for folk to get on at Woolwich and might isolate Beckton. On speed: living close to Beckton station, it was same time to walk from home to Prince Regent as the short distance to Beckton station with train looping via Gallions Reach. Cycling beyond Bank or Tower Gateway was much faster as both faster than DLR and no change of train. If I didn't cycle, walk to East Ham and Underground to a job near Chelsea was faster than via DLR.
How about extending the DLR out of London, calling at every quaint little Miss Marple village around. You could call it the Beeching line, and get ready for lots of tourists!
If I had my way, the DLR would be extended all of the way to Penzance... That would mean that we would finally get some decent public transport here in West Cornwall!
Cornwall as a whole needs better transport, and that’s coming from someone who lives in Falmouth!
Good idea Ken!
Can you imagine sitting on a DLR train wobbling away as it trundles all the way to Penzance, stopping every 500 metres or so for a station?😅
Hopefully via Poole Dorset!
It would have to serve Penzance harbour.
0:03 “The docklands light railway as it's birth certificate calls it.” XD
Great video as always Jago.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I wonder who it's parents are. Probably just marked as illegitimate.
@@caw25sha Probably, yeah.
The bastard child of Margaret Thatcher and whoever was Mayor of London in 1987
@@msg5507 There wasn't a mayor in '87. Ken Livingstone was abolished in '86.
So, a chimera of Mrs T and Michael Tarzan Heseltine.
They could backronym it to "Driverless Light Railway"
retronym - the word of the day. Wuz zat frum werdle?
In a deep tunnel...
100s on board...
One needs an accountable person..
To be in charge
One could automate to the point of having only one in charge..
Remotely
And if s/he walks off the job?
How much would you pay..
For a human being to be in sole charge
Of the safe conveyance
Of 1000s
Just like when BP went from British Petroleum to Bastard Polluters
'They could retronym it to "Driverless Light Railway".' That makes no sense.
@@eattherich9215 Yes it does. But I'd give the Overground name, trains, ways, etc to DLR, then upgrade everything to DLR standards.
Would be interesting if it was to terminate at Barbican, as some of the track on the widened lines could be used, and bring down the cost in line with the cheapness of light rail. The sidings could be kept for the metropolitan line. Nice video as always though, I had never known of these plans until today!
A tunnel portal to take over the Widened Lines is going to be as expensive as underground platforms - especially now lot of the infrastructure to get down to sub-surface platforms is already built.
@@sihollett West of Barbican, yes, but there is a large area near moorgate that could be utilized for a portal
@@hx0d I wasn't doubting there was space for a portal, but they are not cheap things.
@@sihollett that wasn't my point. It's much cheaper than completely tunneling the whole way
@@hx0d It's not - portals are really expensive and just coming up to the surface merely to terminate is, if cheaper, only slightly cheaper. It was only ever proposed for the DLR extension because it was originally going to have two stations - Barbican and Farringdon, and so using the trackbed to get between the two would actually be a cost saving.
If you are terminating at Barbican, you'd use the Widened Line alignment to mine out your station below, not raise the DLR up to - not least as getting up from Bank DLR to Barbican Widened line would be a sustained steep grade all the way that you'd want to reduce if possible.
They should add loop from Bank directly back to Bank with no intermediate stations. That way people can just sit on the line and pretend they’re driving the train all day.
Imagine the fights... imagine the house prices. I live in Lewisham borough, and the DLR is one of the factors in the crazy house price inflation, which isn't all good news if you are local and priced out of the area.
A fascinating video as always, Jago.
Lovely price increases for owners
If rail in the UK didn't go hand in hand with new property development then that wouldn't happen on the scale that it does.
This is true, but Overground extensions from New Cross Gate, and proposed Bakerloo line extension are helpful too.
House price inflation is rarely good news for anyone, despite what the press would have us believe - except, of course, for rich people who own houses as investments rather than to live in. (And possibly for older people looking to "cash in" and trade down.) If my house doubled in value, most likely so would have the next one I might want to buy, and I would actually be worse off. Provided I don't end up in negative equity, *deflation* would actually be better.
@@ugiswrong Developers (owners get whacked for IHT when they die
I think it makes more sense to get the DLR over to Thamesmead, and finally get them a station!
With a station practically on every street corner North of the river, an extension to South East London and Kent would be nice.
The DLR needs to stay away from central London! I'd much rather see it extend south from the docklands all the way down to Bromley! And then connect with the Bakerloo line planned extensions in those same areas of south east London.
Informative broadcast from the enigma who is known as Jago Hazzard. The movie The Long Good Friday was so prophetical with the development of east London
My solution would be to make the dlr go everywhere. Close everything. Rebrand it. The Elizabeth line only recently opened but the dlr is always superior.
Yes. Upgrade the Overground and above ground branches of the Tube. And build a loop extension to Collier Row, Chigwell, Abridge, and back via Ongar.
When City Thameslink was opened in 1990, the station building was designed to incorporate a future interchange with the Jubilee line, on a proposed phase two routing, in a 1977 study. So, if the DLR was extended west of Bank, to Charing Cross, provision would already be made at City Thameslink.
With regards to enlarging the tunnels, it's not just to do with the loading gauge of the DLR trains; as the trains have no cab end doors, the tunnels would need side walkways as well. These already exist on the current DLR underground sections, and also on the city centre underground sections of the Tyne and Wear Metro. That's another system which goes below ground but whose trains have no cab end doors.
There are emergency exits front and rear. I think all the new tunnels have to have walkways now, meaning any new tunnel would be that much wider.
Well I think there are enough options in (under) Central London already. How about Beckton-Barking-Ilford? Or maybe Lewisham-Bromley?
However, the problem is that, as per the name, it's very much a LIGHT railway originally intended for short distances. People aren't going to want to trundle around slowly across large chunks of London.
Good point, the further East that they extend the DLR, the slower the journey into town will seem.
How fast can the DLR go? Can the speed be safely increased for those longer sections between stations
How about giving part of the Central line to DLR, then extending Loughton-Chigwell-Collier Row? And re-acquire Ongar.
There's no reason it should be slow. The DLR trains can go just as fast as the Tube trains. Depends how far apart the stations are.
@@samuelfellows6923 they feel like they move quite quickly, but most stations are very close together, so they rarely spend much time at their upper speed ranges.
A recurring theme in the comments is that of reusing extant tube tunnels, the problem in each case being the larger loading gauge of DLR stock. To re-bore tunnels is a massive challenge.
No-one has mentioned inverting the logic: Running a new stock of DLR trains that fits the tunnels and then runs-out onto the extant DLR connections.
Almost like a deep tube train! 😂
Yes, I've often thought the obvious route to do that on would be to extend the DLR through the Waterloo & City tunnels to Waterloo.
The final logical implication of your proposal would be to integrate the DLR with the tube . No more interchange stations, just run any necessary DLR trains into whatever tube line is required. Quite a few cities around the world have converted tram lines to rail lines when the density of traffic is high enough.
Definitely an interesting concept. I think one problem could be that the floor height of the DLR is significantly higher than the deep level tube (1.03m vs ~0.7m). This would make inter-operability pretty much a non starter, as any modern project would absolutely have to have level boarding at all platforms. You *could* potentially still take over the abandoned deep level tunnel sections like Green Park - CX - Aldwych and raise the platforms, but you'd wind up with an incredibly cramped interior, given how tight the existing deep level rolling stock is, even with it's lower floors - to the extent I don't think it'd be viable. Ultimately, re-boring tunnels is still much cheaper than new ones, and also means you don't need to avoid them, making routing much simpler. Rebuilding Aldwych station would be a pretty big build, but Holborn is already saturated and often has to stop any people entering at peak time, as does Covent Garden, so a new station in the area would take up some of the load and save having to rebuild one or both of the others.
Indeed an interesting thought. I suspect the problem might be that some of the curves on the DLR are actually too tight for tube trains, especially round the Poplar junction. Plus of course the driverless control system is totally different. Would a DLR/W&C train need to be both short/flexible and narrow cross section? There's an interesting parallel from the canal age. The Yorkshire canals had short wide locks and boats, the Lancashire/Midland ones had long narrow ones. When the Huddersfield Narrow Canal was built to connect them, only boats that were both short and narrow could do a full east-west passage via adjoining waterways, limiting the payload.
I always think of DLR carriages as repainted K9's salvaged from the Dr Who prop department
Jago used to use stock footage of Dr Who (Tom Baker era, complete with woolly hair and distinctive scarf) walking along a Tube platform. Sadly he seems to have stopped using it.
Victoria tube station could do with some extra capacity but a DLR extension wouldn't do much to help. How about another Crossrail project?
RIP Queen Elizabeth
She will be missed
At least she lived to see the Elizabeth Line open
Can you hear the noise of three thousand crayons on one thousand maps? Very enjoyable video, all the same.
To be fair, if I had to choose between clay or chalk to dig a tunnel through. I would choose chalk every day of the week.
Clay has a large tendency to flow about over short periods of time, making cave-ins rather likely, and the resulting disturbance to above ground property all that much more likely.
Chalk at least has some rigidity to it.
Though, I live in Stockholm, a city that almost exclusively has granite to work with. Unlike clay and chalk, one can't really put a scratch into it with one's nails alone.
Yes, I've heard chalk described as an almost perfect tunneling medium.
Thats why the channel tunnel was bored out in the thickest chalklayer beneath the channel.
Either is better where I am which is sitting on a huge deposit of an asbestos like mineral which makes every plan to dig a harbour crossing a hazmat nightmare.
I think he got it the wrong way around.
Tunneling in any of London's geotechnical conditions is not particularly difficult, whether that be London Clay (very stiff but easy to dig), Woolwich and Reading beds (interbedded sands and clay), Thanet sands (very fine grained and almost cemented together, but again easy to dig) or the underlying chalk. Providing that the tunnels are adequately lined during construction (unlike the NATM fiasco at Heathrow in the early 90's) there should never be any issue with disturbance to property at the surface. Altogether much easier and quicker than tunneling through hard rock, such as granite.
Having the maps, in the videos, makes such a big difference now. Very nice 🙂
I love your videos. You are clearly very knowledgeable and your delivery is witty but without any trivialisation. Please keep doing what you're doing! I'm a huge fan! 👏👍😊
The DLR already runs very close to the Bank, there are cooling grates in the middle of the street in Lothbury
I suspect the proposal to extend to CHX, was more about keeping the protected fleet line path alive rather than a serious idea
Some fascinating possibilities. I think it would be incredibly useful for the DLR to go at least _somewhere_ west of Bank.
Also, I feel they missed an opportunity during the Bank station upgrade by not moving one of the DLR platforms upstairs and swapping with the Northern line for cross platform interchange. That would be useful with the current DLR termination in Bank, but would be game changing with a DLR western extension.
Long walks between platforms for changing trains are actually preferred.
@@hairyairey Preferred by whom? Transport companies? Commuters?
Maybe the reason they didn't move one of the DLR platforms upstairs and swapping with the Northern Line is because the tunnels carrying the DLR don't run to those platforms (and vice versa). Civil engineering is so much easier in a You Tube comments section than it is in real life!
@@lostcarpark Both - if you have a rapid transfer between platforms then the platform is overcrowded in no time. With a risk to life so platforms get closed or trains don't stop. That's why there is such a long way at busy stations now like Kings Cross and Victoria. Basically it's buffering people. Ideally at tube stations it should be longest way in, shortest way out.
@@hairyairey I don't buy it. Sorry. Whether you make people walk further or not, unless you have trains taking people off platforms as fast as they arrive on the platform, you will get platform overcrowding. The distance they walk to get to the platform makes no difference to this. If you have trains to a lot of different destinations, as the DLR does, you will get people waiting on the platform waiting for the train going on their route. The only way to fix this is to have platforms big enough to accommodate the expected volume of people waiting, and to have enough frequency and train capacity to get people off the platforms.
There have been a number of London Underground stations reconfigured to facilitate cross platform interchange (Finsbury Park, Oxford Circus and Euston spring to mind), and in general these are some of the easiest stations to move through and least congested on the network.
Very interesting video. Thank you 👍🙂
So good it made me go back and watch the one about the Waterloo & City line extension (or lack thereof...!!)
I’m so old I remember when DLR trains were blue and had folding doors.
Forget the heist movie - Thunderbirds already did it.
The uploads are always welcome. 👍🏻🇬🇧
I almost wish they could connect the DLR to the Waterloo and City Line, and build a station at Blackfriars. Yes, the tunnels would need to be widened, but it would have added extra throughput between Waterloo and Bank.
It would be cheaper to build a brand new line, and considerably less disruptive.
If I had my way I would extend it from shadwell to King's Cross. All those comutters who come in there would save so much time.
I work in the wharf and get the Stratford canary wharf line. Always loved it.
Of all the Old Boy's vids, this one must have taken some serious time consuming research. Hats off to Mr Hazard.
When I saw the title of the video I said to myself "Aldwych!". It has to be the station which has had the biggest number of plans turned down: extension to Waterloo through Temple (tried on, at least, four different times), Jubilee line, DLR... In fact, these would make an interesting series of videos, Mr. Hazzard O:) .
Whenever I come to Europe, my travel hub is my friend's place in London, and she recently moved near Limehouse. Over this summer, I've had to travel from hers to Liverpool Street (for the airport), KX (for Scotland) and St Pancreas (for the mainland-and yes, I know, but my autocorrect doesn't). Each time, the worst part of the journey was dragging heavy bags around Bank.
Yes, I'm a pack rat, but Bank seems to have been designed less for rats, and more by rabid wombats, with tunnels haphazardly built where there's… well, clay and chalk according to you, and, given the wombat's medical record, rabies! But not much room, apparently, for escalators and lifts, nor other things that would make this pack rat's travel easier. (Although I suppose, if it was really built by a wombat, the wombat would sit and block the exit for the rat, to trap it and make it regret going there… wombats actually do that; and Bank admittedly doesn't have _that_ problem, although I did find myself very frustrated late one night, looking for an open exit from Temple.)
Anyhow, as I watched this video, I wished that _any_ of those DLR extensions had been built.
Also, my condolences about the Queen. I must admit, your particular English accent has always made me think of you as a monarchist, which might just be a terrible stereotype, but I think we're all at least a bit sad today, even those of us in the land of republican wombats. (In the classic sense, nothing to do with the rabid US political party… I'm so glad Australia doesn't have rabies! Wombats cause enough problems for foundations as it is!)
I would extend the DLR to Southend
Providing much needed competition to the C2C....
We could test the viability of that idea
By extending The Central Line
To Stansted...
Er...
Irony Alert!
Irony Alert!...
Mr Hazzard
Temper with some sarcasm!
As a tourist I love the DLR but the extensions mentioned seemed complicated and expensive. Maybe the western ones will excite me more!
I never understood why a DLR extension to Charing Cross was considered over a second Jubilee Line Extension. Does the Underground really cost that much more to build when you're digging tunnels anyway?
Given that the DLR needs wider tunnels, this does not seem likely.
I guess the issue then becomes that you can only run half the number of trains on that branch (and the line through Westminster) since there's no more capacity to the north and west. Not unless you do it as a shuttle à la Aldwych.
If DLR did run through the city, the question them is, is there a distressed or underused líne it could take over and run to a Western suburb? How about DLR to Brentford? At least it had a dock!
I think the DLR would cost more - the loading gauge is bigger. I suspect the issue was two fold.
1. The Jubilee line is already rammed, so dumping more people on it while also lowering frequency on the Canary Wharf / Stratford branch would be self defeating.
2. The DLR desperately needed better connectivity at the western end, so adding the Jubilee line wouldn't really help with that.
Light rail is cheaper because it runs on the surface, usually recycling existing rails or in the middle of avenues. When you go underground, as other commenters have already said, the biggest cost is making the tunnel. Which is the reason why subterranean railways are a lot more expensive. The DLR isn't made cheap magically just by calling it a light rail, as any engineer could tell the politicians (if they dared to ask, that is).
Charing Cross would have been sensible as it offered a faster (fewer intermediate stations) alternative to the District / Circle lines. DLR trains approaching from the east could have had a crossover tunnels added (as part of the tunnel enlargement) on the eastern side of the station so that they did not need to travel beyond the platforms.
Reusing the Jubilee platforms would have sensible - especially if the Jubilee line tunnels on the western side of the Charing Cross platforms could have been converted to a Jubilee line siding for stabling broken down trains, reversing trains, etc.
The only disadvantage would have been the loss of the use of these platforms as film sets.
The Euston, St Pancras/Kings Cross (branching off a line to Victoria) would have had the benefit of connecting the Docklands area with a big chunk of the services serving rest of the country. So, it may have been worth the trouble.
Would be neat to be able to travel from Canary Wharf to La Defense without ever leaving a train station
It would also mean you could have a direct connection from City Airport to HS2 and Eurostar services, which would of been interesting.
@@dsmx85 Now this idea I like
@@dsmx85 So people can land at CA then travel to Paris/Brussels, when they could have just flown there in the first place?
The easiest way to provide a connection between the DLR and Eurostar would be to make Stratford International live up to its name....
A video on the proposed DLR under Thames tunnel extension from Gallion's Reach to Thamesmead would be good, as this is the only extension under current serious consideration.
An extension to Hull would be nice.
Well my suggestion would be a new eastern link from Stratford running parallel to the Romford road with a step free stop at the junction of Woodgrange road for Everest Fish Chips & Kebabs then continuing eastwards with the next pause at Bel Pomodoro ( for Manor Park). Then moving at street level in a straight line through western Ilford and coming to rest at Greggs in High road Ilford. This would be a busy interchange of fast food outlets. Still further east a brief halt at Jakes Hamburgers an interchange with the Elizabeth Line at Chadwell Heath, after that it is an express non stop final leg with the terminus at St Chads Park adjacent to the public toilets and park bench.
I've always wondered why they never built a raised track, a la US Elevated lines , maybe straight along Oxford Street and follow the wide roads they have on the main parts of London (not the old back streets). A few steel girders must cost less than boring a tunnel after all.
London isn't NYC. It wouldn't work, would look ugly and be rejected by the majority of people
That would never get planning approval in London. Lots of the upper floors over shops are residential and privacy issues would arise. Plus it would be just plain ugly and need to have a minimum 15ft clearance beneath for buses. The foundations would have to be deep, as is mentioned London is built on clay with a myriad of tunnels, pipes and trunking for utilities just beneath the surface of streets, many unmapped as date from the 19th century. The Pigeons might like it though.
Funny you should say that @Mike Brown as Jago did a 'Lines that never were' video that looked at the Oxford Street monorail. You can see it here: ua-cam.com/video/Gv3_xkVOAg0/v-deo.html
Except, as we learned in NYC, elevated lines really downgrade the streets below.
Rather than do that over the roads, do it down the middle of the Thames. 🙂🙂
I think the extension to Charing Cross would have been a great idea.
I don't have a clue which way the platforms at Bank are pointing, or what level they are at, but I often used to think that it would be nice to join the DLR and Waterloo and City together. It would have made a few journeys I did many years ago, a bit easier, too!
The DLR platforms at Bank are directly underneath the Northern Line ones. I've not made that change since the rebuilding of the Northern Line at Bank, but it used to be a simple set of stairs or a lift between the two levels.
Bank DLR and W&C platforms are perpendicular to each other sadly
The ad placement after the 'be right back' joke is spot on
It’s September 2025 and Jago Hazzard’s Bank of England heist movie is THE movie of the year. Well done Jago. 👏👏👍😀
Interesting. I suspect that other than reusing existing tunnels and/or overground lines then extending the DLR west is going to prove problematic/expensive. It might be cheaper to build an above-river extension on concrete pillars then you could stop off almost anywhere - London Bridge, Blackfriars, Waterloo.... or how about reusing the Waterloo and city line as a DLR route? Require some rejigging at Bank but hey...
they'll probably merge the waterloo and city line with dlr
There's the carriage (loading) gauge problem again.
Above the river would spoil the view and only possible upstream of London Bridge as ships are tall, hence Tower Bridge to allow ships into the Pool of London. Also many other bridges to go above. There is an unwritten rule that the view of St Paul's cannot be obscured from the river as far upstream as Waterloo Bridge,
@@tonys1636 So, wait, wait, turn that thought backwards, we can have a network of elevated and subsurface hydrofoil canals. With _really, really fast_ locks.
@@tonys1636 Yep, can't see that idea getting planning permission. I suppose the nearest equivalent is the Wuppertal monorail!
I suspect the would be an issue with the DLR stock having to shift large numbers of passengers in central London. Longer trains or increased frequency would be needed.
Interesting to read about proposed DLR western extensions that never were. For years now here have been mutterings about reopening the abandoned Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace via Highgate line as a DLR type system so with an extension of the existing line from Bank to St. Pancras, it wouldn't require much thought to extend this north of St. Pancras to Finsbury Park for the old Ally Pally line to become part of the DLR itself, rather than just exist as an isolated driverless line. It would also bring rail travel back to the well-populated suburbs of Crouch End and Muswell Hill which, come July 2023, will have been rail-less for 69 years even though it should, by rights, now be part of the LU Northern Line - and the reasons why it is not are well known. Of course, I am being slightly selfish here as I live in Crouch End so the idea of being able to get on a DLR train all the way up to town and down into deepest darkest south London in one go is very appealing, rather than waiting around for buses to Finsbury Park or Archway before I even set sight on a train, never mind actually boarding one. This is particularly irksome coming home late after a night out in town with friends or at the theatre, for instance, having to toil out of the deep-level platforms at Finsbury Park station and then hang around in that cold inhospitable bus station for the W3 just to go the last mile or so home. And perhaps another name would be needed for the DLR since it would then be far and away from docklands, I would suggest London Light Rail even though this wouldn't cover the whole of the Capital. But then Croydon Tramlink got away with renaming that system as London Tramlink even though it is confined to just one small south-eastern corner yet the renaming gives the impression that trams are London-wide. But in any case, I can't see DLR trains being extended to Ally Pally via St. Pancras and Crouch End in my lifetime but its a nice thought. Kind regards, David, Crouch End, N8
Great video, thanks!
Not being from London (nor indeed from Britain) I can't claim to know much about it; but I think I would extend the DLR with a loop.
Not a horizontal loop...
a VERTICAL loop! That would be a massive tourist attraction! 😄
I just want the DLR to go from London City Airport to Liverpool St Station. What an easy way to the office that would be.
In a city like London, in fact the Island of Great Britain from the south coast all the way up to and including Scotland's central belt, we want a grid of railway. The grid is more fine-grained in cities and in regions with cities close together.
So, when considering where a rail line should go, you should look to the grid and people centres. What you don't want is railways that look radial as they get congested at the centre and thus are inefficient.
Others have mentioned the capacity issue. I suspect that the further the DLR is extended east, south and north, the capacity of a stub two track station at Bank will become a more serious issue. One option that doesn't seem to have been considered is to extend a different part of the DLR into London north of The City to reach Thameslink and CrossRail. This would spread the traffic and allow DLR passengers to avoid Bank altogether while on their way to locations in and outside London. I don't know London well enough to say where this would go but part of the scheme might involve integrating the east end of the District Line, with all its aboveground track, into new DLR route.
I think I've read somewhere that the reversing tunnels at Bank head towards Moorgate, and the plan for the Farringdon extension was to use the Widened Line between Moorgate and Farringdon; new platforms would have to be constructed at Farringdon
It kind of defeats the purpose of “docklands” light railway. The extension to bank was good for getting from the docks to the city vis-à-vis.
I think the Farringdon extension would be nice, the infrastructure is already there, there are abandoned platforms at Moorgate and Barbican, and at Farringdon you’d just need to build two new platforms
From my (stricly limited) memory of the DLR's history, it seems to me that planners always underestimate future needs, build something slightly cheaper than a full tube line, then act surprised later and point to the obvious need for upgrades, which are insufficient again so that even further upgrades are needed later, ultimately costing more for less capacity than building something adequate right from the start.
So I am glad that all plans for extensions beyond Bank have been abandoned. For St. Pancras and Euston, it would make a lot more sense to take a commuter line into Euston underground and extend it to Shoreditch High Street, Mile End and Canary Wharf.
For Charing Cross and Victoria, surely the bigger solution would be to take the Fenchurch Street Line underground from Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and let it go to Victoria, though even that would waste the potential of an even larger scheme.
Not sure why you would consider extending the DLR (a mainly surface light rail) underground. I thought its main advantage was its relatively cheap construction.
I do hope that we get that extension of the DLR, from Bank to Victoria, via City Thameslink, Aldwych, Charing Cross and Green Park, one day.
We would not actually need to use Aldwych station itself, except as an entry point for tunnelling equipment, during construction, and as a ventilation point after the new line opens. If the DLR platforms were built to the north of disused Aldwych platforms, the old Piccadilly Line running tunnels, from Aldwych to Holborn could be converted into moving walkways, with another angled tunnel, connecting a new circulation area to the Central Line.
At Charing Cross the disused platforms would be most useful for holding construction trains, which could be filled up with soil from TBMs and sent up the existing Jubilee Line at night. I would probably recommend retaining both the platforms and building new DLR platforms on either side of them, as the disused platforms could then be levelled off, like the closed Northern Line platform at Bank, giving the station an absolutely ton of circulation space.
Going west from Charing Cross, I would not widen the disused tunnels all the way to Green Park station. Instead I would send the TBMs straight down the middle of The Mall and build a Buckingham Palace station where Green Park meets St James's Park.
And I would not have the train go and terminate at Victoria. I would have it extend beyond Victoria with an eastern entrance, that links into the existing Underground Station and a western entrance built into Victoria Coach Station.
I would even go further west...or rather north west. And here is where the fun starts.
We use the disused Brompton Road station as an access point, for construction, but build DLR platfoms that connect to Knightsbridge Station.
The next station we build with a station box dropped into the middle of Hyde Park, probably somewhere west of where they do that Chrismas market.
Then it's on to Paddington, creating a direct DLR link between Victoria and Paddingdon.
And then - the car lobbyists will love this bit - we close the Westway to car traffic. And we give one half of it to the DLR and the other half of it to trams and buses!
The Westway gives us new DLR interchange stations at Royal Oak, Westborne Park and Ladbrook Grove.
We build a new station, to the west of the Weststway Roundabout that has a connection to the West London Line at the east side and a connection to the Central Line at the west side.
A new interchange station, where the Westway crosses the North London Line from Richmond (and probably a couple more stations before that).
Then it's off to Park Royal and Hanger Lane, with interchange stations.
I would move Greenford national rail station north, to make another interchange and terminate the DLR there...for now.
😉
With the possibility of construction work in disused stations, tunnel-widening and so on, one wonders if any long-hidden surprises will be uncovered. Hopefully nothing like what was uncovered at Hobbs End (hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink). :D
When digging Crossrail Tunnels a trick was missed to build three additional service tunnels, two of which could later be filled by the DLR with more closer Stations.
Connect the DLR to the Waterloo & City Line, Problem solved, immensly useful. Yes, even allowing the wider loading gauge, it's about reboring to Waterloo, and as an engineer myself, not a great problem! The new DLR, Drain Light Railway!
The DLR 'as is' is great. By far my favorite form of transport through London... after crossrail.. and the riverboats.
Quite possible.
Gaps between train sections tend to be long on all national railways due to several reasons.
Not only do DLR trains require a much shorter gap between trains, but in addition they've got the added automatic built in security which relieves drivers who can instead look after door closings, etc.
At present DLR trains tend to be short, but that's due to the short platforms of their existing stations that were built in a hurry and on a budget.
Any trains running to Charing X, etc, would be able to make use of national standard long platforms.
All those mentioned extensions for the DLR looked interesting, and should be given a go. It’ll definitely help with the overcrowding issue in London, and will make an interesting and kind of surprising difference. If I had been provided a chance to extend the DLR, I would extend it to Barking Riverside, Upminster, Romford, Abbey Wood, Waterloo, Walthamstow Central, and Rayners Lane.
Rayners Lane?! Isn’t that far too northwest for the DLR?
In the early 2000s I heard tell of a possible DLR extension to Waterloo by having it replace the Waterloo & City line - with a possible new station at Blackfriars, where I believe the W&C tunnel runs quite close. But I'm sure that's fiendishly complicated, even if the tunnels to already exist.
My favourite extension idea is non stop from Bank to Farringdon, then King's Cross, Euston, Tottenham Court Road, Piccadilly Circus, and Victoria. Why? Victoria line is overcrowded on its journey north from Victoria. Although no passengers coming up from further south will gain by changing at Victoria passengers joining the tube system from the mainline would gain a faster journey if travelling to any stations on the Piccadilly line east of Green Park, or the Central Line east of Oxford Circus or to either Euston or King's Cross. That's a lot of passengers currently fighting to get onto a Victoria line train at Victoria who could use the DLR instead. It's the same story from Euston and King's Cross - the current lines running to both the west end and the city are overcrowded and with the enhancements due to the main line services into those stations the overcrowding will only get worse. In particular the northern line to Bank is fairly gruelling so a limited stop faster service by DLR would be welcome and with fewer stations on this section construction costs would be lower too.
the DLR is above the road what the Tube was beneath it, a great achievement. more DLR'S are needed maybe as well as Tramways too.
again inciteful Jago
Maybe an extension to Waterloo using the existing track should be used to avoid needless changes.
Or if capacity/budget wasn't an issue possibly go to King's Cross via Charing Cross could be done. The would give commuters a route North, into Central London and a route South
The DLR to Victoria would have been a Godsend for tourists, if it was more easily accessible than the MENSA maze that is the Underground station(s).
There should be a station nearer to Victoria coach station.
I read an article about how they were considering a new underground line to connect HS2 at Euston to Cnary Wharf. The St Pancras extension would achieve this so I wonder of this may happen in the future.
Considering there was Jubilee station at Charing X, it would make sense to have a loop/branch by Jubilee line to feed Charing X.
All the extensions... but we need one to Dagenham Dock and Rainham, though getting it to Dagenham East to join the new film studios would be a massive coup!
I think that the western extensions will get built sometime...its just when...around 2060 I reckon!
I prefer the Victoria and King's Cross extensions. It connects Lewisham, Deptford, Greenwich and the Docklands to HS2 and Eurostar. I would also like the DLR to takeover the Waterloo & City line. People in Canary Wharf would have a second option if they need to go to Waterloo, while relieving congestion on the Jubilee line.
South London is is much greater need than anything in the City or Westminster.
Joining the DLR at Lewisham to the Tram makes much more sense.
An extension to East Dulwich is needed to bring this suburb, which I once inhabited in to the 21st century of a London transport. This could r done from the Lewisham extension.
I know that congestion is an ongoing issue for the network, but as a foreigner who is fascinated with London's transport infrastructure, I believe priority should be given to areas currently without adequate service. How long will Thamesmead continue to get the short end of the stick?
I think the focus should be on Thamesmead and Abbey Wood/Crossrail. There's no money in the kitty, that bridge/tunnel will be expensive, and there's a real need for a rail link. Leave the Westend to the Underground, who have it well sussed anyway.
There is a planned DLR extension to go under the river from Beckton to Thamesmead. If Crossrail were ever to expand east, it would likely use the existing lines to go down to Dartford and Gravesend
London was a swamp so first we replaced it with brick and mortar then we replaced it with reinforced concrete. Both above and under ground.
I should be excited about the idea of the DLR coming within my reach to Charing Cross. The thing is even I have to admit how crazy awkward it would be, I couldn't even picture it. Yep...
Think the issue with any new extensions or tunnels will be the Elizabeth Line, and Crossrail 2 when it comes the quality uplift from tube lines just means why build more tube or DLR. Plus we need to upgrade stations with air conditioning and step free access, in the centre, this is a massive undertaking and TFL can not do this without central government finances, especially post Covid and the debt this has caused
The cost-benefit analysis didn't stack up in favour of the Liverpool Street / Shoreditch extensions? They had the best cost-benefit ratio (Shoreditch might have been not as good as Farringdon/Barbican) as they were relatively cheap and met the aims of a zone 1 extension - relieving Bank station of some of its DLR passengers by giving another outlet nearby and adding additional interchanges, while not further crowding the DLR into Bank.
It was odd that Charing Cross went forward (and extended to Victoria) - the tube lines it was going to relieve (Jubilee, Central) were being relieved by Crossrail, it stuck a load more passengers on the DLR approaching Bank, and I think it even was modelled as increasing the number of people using the DLR platforms at Bank, especially in its Victoria iteration.
I feel this report was a options study for how to keep Canary wharf growing if Crossrail was not authorized by parliament. 3 years later the Crossrail Act was approved. If I was to extend the DLR now I would go west from Lewisham to Clapham junction. This could include conversation of one of the existing rail lines to DLR. When the Horizon report was produced the Lewisham section of the DLR was owned by a private company (carillon) as part of a design build and maintain contract.
I would build an extenison from Startford Highspeed station to Walthamstow Central. I have heard of the extenison to Euston, but not to St Pancras.
The Charing Cross overrun tunnels would have to be completely rebuilt as the tunnel linings are ‘expanded’ precast concrete and not bolted. If they were bolted cast iron or spheroidal graphite iron it wouldn’t be that difficult to enlarge them.
That's why the Central Line makes a kink at Bank isn't it, to go round the vaults of the Bank of England 🏦. Anyway, with all these ideas, it seems the idea was because the existing Tube lines were at capacity already, so it was essentially just to relieve them? Does a DLR train have anywhere near the crush loading capacity of a Tube train? They're also rather slower aren't they. Would seem to be a rather extravagant and at the same time inferior duplicate.
I my humble opinion, heading for a major rail terminus such as Victoria, Charing Cross, St Pancras, Liverpool St., etc. would have caused more issue than they would have solved. A 3-car DLR has total capacity of 852 passengers, similar to a Bakerloo set (847), where as the Central line set has a capacity of 1,047, and sub surface lines (S7 set 1,034).
With a double tracked loop line, it would be presumed alternate trains would be routed clockwise then anti-clockwise, hence a 50% service, the restricted capacity would have risked extreme overcrowding.
I'm assuming you mean a 3 x 2 car set? Hard to imagine you can get as many passengers on that as a Bakerloo tube train, but I suppose the larger loading gauge makes a difference.
Thanks for this. I think I clicked on this by mistake but it was highly entertaining and amusing so I left a like for your sinister UA-cam paymasters
It certainly does make one wonder at the impact such developments would have(a veritable Downtown Leftward Reach) on the accessibility of key areas of London to the east end and beyond. I suspect there will be som kind of inevitable enhancement, but equally I suspect there may be more leaning toward a new tube branch just because of the loading gauge and associated cost, plus with the limitations of technology, they still aren’t keen on driverless trains in tunnels, even if they do have attendants on board 🤔
The whole point of the DLR was it’s relative cheapness and theses schemes are, as you suggest, prohibitively pricey. I suspect there maybe some sort of feasible tram or DLR-like scheme out to the west or even partially circling the outer city at some point (nothin specific, I’m just talking out loud) which would be able again to take advantage of the low cost concept, but I’ll be amazed if there’s anything other than another tube line within the city walls so to speak (proposed Crossrail 2 excepted…but again, that is a ‘proper’ railway not an unmanned one 🤷🏻♂️).
All very interesting, both in reality and in theory 😜 Cheers Mon ami 👍🍻🍀
In real, it would be a good idea to unclog the existing lines after everyone has their opinion on the subject.
Not counting the regular rail cars, the London metro has 3 type of cars: the larger subsurface "underground" cars, the shorter deep level "tube" cars, and the in between DLR cars. Is that correct? Also DLR are taller than the "tube" cars but seem narrower than the "underground" cars.
My impressions just from the videos, not being arsed to look up statistics.
Essentially yeah. Each line has its own differences in rolling stock but all the London Underground stock is either larger open-gangway subsurface stock or smaller deep level stock
@@bobsteryt Thank you. I realized after posting, that the systems were created by different companies with different solutions. Modern day organizations have an "interesting" problem dealing with 150 year old infrastructure.
i think the DLR needs a Loop-de-loop to make it a little more exciting, and would wake up those morning commuters :v
Tower Gateway down to the Embankment along the river route used by the old Trams..
At extension using Moorgate and Barbican would be interesting, considering both stations have surplus platforms now Thameslink no longer uses it.
That old WW2 report on London Trains. Linking Euston with London Bridge and Victoria for places south, and likewise Kings Cross with a scissors interchange under Hyde Park would have made good sense.
An extension to St. Pancras linking HS1 and HS2 with East London would also be of great benefit to the tens of millions of British people who do not live in or near London.
Having known DLR from the start, known about campaign to get station at Canning Town, and attended opening of Beckton Extension as a community leader, I'd say all those westwards extensions are pretty much dead for two reasons:
1) DLR is, and always was, a step up from a tram - it's slow with stops close together.
2) While we all remember the days when it was unreliable, due to running in, and mostly empty during 1990s recession and before massive flat building, it is now crammed full and can't take many more passengers.
Extending east, eg Barkingside, and south, eg Eltham, are options but will leave no room for folk to get on at Woolwich and might isolate Beckton.
On speed: living close to Beckton station, it was same time to walk from home to Prince Regent as the short distance to Beckton station with train looping via Gallions Reach. Cycling beyond Bank or Tower Gateway was much faster as both faster than DLR and no change of train. If I didn't cycle, walk to East Ham and Underground to a job near Chelsea was faster than via DLR.
How about extending the DLR out of London, calling at every quaint little Miss Marple village around. You could call it the Beeching line, and get ready for lots of tourists!
"One specific example they give, is the Bank of England & I've just had a Great idea for a hist movie - be right back!!!" very good / funny Jago 😄🚂🚂🚂
Hmm, but I doubt if they keep huge piles of dosh in the Bank of England.
It's where they keep all the 1s and 0s from electronic banking
@@camenbert5837 Very good 🙂🚂🚂🚂