Thinking Laterally on Newmarket
CBT committee members have been grappling with the vexing issue of Newmarket Station. Read our thoughts on a possible lateral solution.
Currently all services from the West, South and East terminate at Britomart. This, coupled with design and timetabling issues at Newmarket mean that:
- Britomart - West (and vice versa trains) have to change direction at Newmarket. This involves a wait while the driver walks from one end of the train to the other.
- Britomart has a train capacity constraint as there are only two tracks in and out of the station. Since all services terminate at Britomart there are very few slots left at peak times.
- Travel from West to South is not possible as there is currently a 40 minute wait for the connecting service at Newmarket.
To date proposed solutions have involved building a second station in Newmarket at Kingdon Street, along with an associated pedestrian connection to the current station. Another option put forward is for Western line services to not stop at Newmarket at all.
Being the lateral thinkers we are, the CBT now have another proposal to throw into the mix. The basic idea is to convert the Western line service from Newmarket to a shuttle.
We think this has the following advantages:
- it is simple
- no need for the expense of Kingston St station. Western line passengers change at Newmarket for Britomart and Southern services
- less train movements required through Britomart station which is a bottle neck for the foreseeable future
- possible to travel from West to South and vice versa without long waits at Newmarket. Current waits are around 40 mins.
- track switching at Newmarket avoided.
For this to work it is crucial that Western services are tightly synchronised with high capacity services on the Southern line. Western line passengers need to be assured that changing trains won't add to the journey time.
What are your thoughts? Let us know by reply to the Thinking Laterally on Newmarket thread on the Maxx forum.