The new Nine Elms and Battersea Park stations are now open and operational.Taking 6 years to complete, adding 2 miles of tunnel, it is the first LU extension in over 20 years (since the jubilee extension eastwards in 1999) and costing £1.1bn. What are everyone's thoughts? For those who commute through London regularly or perhaps have visited and taken the journey on the new extension, what is it like?
I'm sure the new stations are perfectly nice but this extension has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I've never been convinced it offers any value for money except for the developers of Battersea Power Station itself (which is a ghastly enough development without cronyism thrown in too). Even TfL seem to have designed the extension to be of little use through fear it would generate too many passengers and cause the interchange at Kennington to become (even more) swamped. So as it is, despite both new stations being in absurdly close proximity to existing stations, neither offers any interchange with other tube lines or national rail services. All in all a rather expensive shuttle service to Apple's new office.
It does offer the Battersea area a link to London town which they haven't had before. Going into Waterloo or Victoria still leaves you essentially nowhere without needing to change.
Both Geoff Marshall and Hidden London Hangouts have videos out. I love the new Nine Elms Station with its not to Charles Holden designs.
I understand a long term goal is to extend to Clapham Junction, but that wouldn't be until after the mainline station* is rebuilt as the current setup wouldn't be able to handle things. *Clapham Junction is struggling to cope as it is, without adding a large number of passengers changing on to the Northern line. The new plan is to have a large underground version of Reading's Transfer deck - with the platforms above being straightened and then elevated development above to offset the cost - expected to take about 10 years to complete as the station will have to be kept open throughout
There's also the problems of interchanges upstream. Kennington, Bank and Kings Cross in particular would have to be altered, but all of it may be unnecessary depending on where and whether Crossrail 2 is ever built, which could connect Southwest and Northeast London and remove the need to connect to the underground in the City as it would connect with the major East West routes anyway (All sounds a bit too "Forward planning" for the UK government though)
