The team working to turn a disused railway in North London into a public walkway have shown off initial concept images from the design team.
The Camden Highline, at three-quarters of a mile long, will be about half the length of the original New York version, aims to create a 10-minute walking pathway from Camden Gardens to Camley Street just to the north of King’s Cross with the elevated line passing over 8 busy roads.
The £35 million project is currently expected to open, in phases, from 2024, subject to funding being secured.
Earlier this year it was announced that the design agency, James Corner Field Operations, who lead the design of the New York original Highline, is working with Kentish Town-based vPPR Architects on its Camden baby brother.
The concept images that have now been shown divide the route into a number of zones reflecting in part the varying widths available and the need in places to keep people sensibly away from the live railway and running trains.
The group behind the project is now fundraising to build the Highline, and there will be an online presentation on Wed 1st December, that’s open to the public. Book tickets here.
Route plan / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
Play Garden / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
St. Pancras Bridge / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
Edible Gardens / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
Camden Road Bridge / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
Artefact Wall / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
Woodland Walk / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
Garden Walk / James Corner Field Operations / vPPR Architects
And the re-use of this line for extra Stratford to Camden Road trains by London Overground and freight trains that I saw in the London Rail Strategy, what of that?
You can’t really have Camden Road platform 3 as a reversable platform and this highline can you?
It’s not often you come across a stretch of railway that could quite easily be (re)converted to 4 tracks to remove a substantial bottleneck. But here we are, trendy linear park. I must be missing something.
The one mile long Paris “Viaduc des Arts” and its “Promenade Plantée” linear Park was opened in 1994 and predates the NY High Line by 15 years. The artisans and crafts shops under the vaults of the viaduct are also a whole lot more interesting.
It looks great of course, but it’s stupid in regards to ready rail corridor which could be re-activated for the future. Whether it is turning NLL, an ELL project or a QP route – or just for freight and resilience – it seems short-sighted.
A linear Marble Arch Mound. Need one say more?
That Camden is a bottle neck in the network and NNL has been covered in other posts and I agee .
But is the or will the be any provishion for those that wish to photo trains or just sit and enjoy them going by. Rail viewing points and web cams are very populer and can put place on a would wide map as a location of intrest
Yes, a very good idea to keep people and traffic away from each other on a green short cut. Make it beautiful, and make it free.
We need to make the urban world beautiful to calm our souls. Why not set London on a path of beautifying itself and calming itself at the same time? It would also cut the cost of holidays and psychiatrist’s bills.
The homelesness levels in Camden are through the roofs and there are families living in overcrowded accommodation with children and all. There are parts of the borough (Kilburn south at the back of Kilburn high Road) where the rubbish bags pile up to Napoli levels, and where rats have the size of castarted cats …
But where do the Camden Council ‘public servants’ decide to spend taxpayer money”? In a copy of a New York unnecessary walkpath.
I presume from your comment that you have evidence that this is being funded by Camden Council as opposed to the charity fundraising the money themselves, so can you send it to me. Thanks
What’s the sense of developing a lavishly detailed and expensive mini park here – that will never be maintained properly, just look at the other parks in Camden – and might be demolished in due course for rail improvements? This just has “garden bridge” written all over it, in the sense that it will soak up money for a fragment of park in a borough that struggles to maintain the parks it already has.