Plans to create one of the capital’s largest transport hubs by linking HS2 to London Overground were unveiled yesterday by Mayor Boris Johnson, amid a bitter row with town halls about the development.
City Hall set out the options to build a new London Overground station on the sprawling west London industrial area at Old Oak Common, to fully exploit the economic potential of additional links with Crossrail and HS2.
Although Old Oak Common is already on the route of the London Overground, Johnson believes it needs a dedicated station — to be paid for by the government — which his transport planners calculate would link locals to a quarter of a million jobs.
Transport for London have produced three options for a station, the most eye-catching of which is building a viaduct diverting the Clapham Junction branch of London Overground to link with the Richmond branch at Old Oak Common.
In all three scenarios, passengers would have a walkway to the proposed new station, which would overarch HS2 and Crossrail lines.
With the new Overground station a greater number of HS2 passengers arriving from the north of England at Old Oak Common would avoid having to travel into central London, easing the pressure on Euston.
If all the new lines are built Old Oak Common could handle 250,000 passengers a day, similar to Waterloo station.
The mayor’s vision is to create a mini-Manhattan around the HS2/Crossrail station as part of a wider development at Old Oak Common which he says can create 24,000 new homes and 55,000 new jobs.
But his proposals to create an Olympics-style Mayoral Development Corporation to wrestle planning powers from Labour-run councils that currently span the area — Hammersmith & Fulham , Brent, and Ealing — have met stiff opposition.
