The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has said a new station on the Overground line in Brixton would cost £80-£120million and is ‘unlikely to be affordable’.
In a reply to a question by Assembly Member Val Shawcross, published today, Johnson went on to say that a new station down the line at East Brixton would cost up to £50million, but that benefits would be “much lower”due to its distance from the town centre.
Earlier this year, Lambeth Council commissioned a £25,000 feasibility study into the opportunities for a new stop on the line from from Clapham Junction to east and north London.
Carriages on the line currently sail high above Brixton Road without stopping, and Transport for London have previously said that a stop at Brixton would be too expensive as the line is “elevated, curved and on a gradient.”
In a written response published today, Johnson wrote: “The study identified the significant benefits that a high level station would have but found that the major infrastructure constraints and construction difficulties remain. The estimated cost of a new station is at least £80m and could be as high as £120m. This means that a station here is unlikely to be affordable, so alternative locations were reviewed.
“A new station at East Brixton appears more feasible, but this still has a high cost for a new station, estimated between £30m and £50m, and would have much lower benefits as it is further from the town centre.”
He added: “TfL will continue to provide support to Lambeth Council as they further develop the case for new stations and improvements to existing stations.”
The London Overground Line links Clapham Junction with Highbury and Islington, via Peckham, Surrey Quays, Whitechapel and Shoreditch. This stretch of line was opened in December 2012.
www.disused-stations.org.uk
I’m at the other end of the Victoria Line and we have a very bad interface at Highbury and Islington. In the 1960s, they built the Victoria Line with peanuts and it shows.
The only hope is that engineers from TfL and Network Rail can come up with an innovative solution that sorts the mess out.
Having looked at the plans for extending the Overground through South London in the next twenty or thirty years, I’m hopeful, that the pressure can be taken off Brixton.
But I doubt it will be an Overground station in Brixton, although I can see one in Camberwell.
They’ll need to get the special hat with the appearing rabits out!
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East Brixton would be good for Loughborough Junction residents too. If the station were in central Brixton, the quarter-hourly service of 4 (soon to be 5) carriage trains wouldn’t cope with overcrowding from interchange passengers – they are already pretty full up from Clapham High Street towards Docklands in the morning, and there is no room for increased frequency. East Brixton would also help spread more commercial activity up towards the ‘other end’ of Station Road.
That would be a good idea but it should just be called Loughborough junction.. I live in stockwell and quite often use brixton and my family live in east london and it would benifit as an easier way as the london overground goes around shoreditch!