It’s just two stops and opened during a pandemic, but the Northern line extension to Battersea power station has already clocked up its 2 millionth journey.
Since opening the line six months ago, Transport for London (TfL) is now recording approximately 60,000 passengers entering or leaving the new Battersea Power Station tube station each week and around 30,000 entering or leaving Nine Elms per week.
The two new step-free Zone 1 stations opened on 20 September 2021 following the completion of a 3km twin tunnel rail extension from Kennington.
Rob Niven, TfL’s Head of Investment Delivery Planning, said: “It’s wonderful to see how popular the two new stations at Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms have been in their first six months of operation. As London continues to recover from the pandemic and development in the Battersea and Nine Elms areas continues, we expect this number to keep growing. It’s extensions and improvements like this that make a huge difference, and with sustained long-term funding we hope to be able to bring the Tube network to new parts of the capital.”
Later this year, TfL plans to increase the frequency of trains on the Northern line extension to 12 trains per hour during the peak and 10 trains per hour off-peak.
Battersea Power Station
While they commend this feat, perhaps TfL could push ahead with an extension via Clapham Junction. After all, if they built a shirt spur linking with Network Rail infrastructure, they could recoup more than £300 million in sixth months.
How do you get £300m?
I would surmise that the vast majority of journeys are by people with existing travel cards rather than the purchase of individual cash tickets.
Aside from whether an extension to Clapham Juncion is even feasable technically let alone fundable (the extension was basically paid for by private developers) was could the Northern Line cope with an influx of people joining the line there?
One of the justifications (other than expense and engineering issues) of the extension NOT having a station at Vauxhall were capacity issues on the Victoria Line.
Ian do you know what the predicted passenger numbers were going to be for the extension?
But remember this isn’t 2 million more revenue. TFL is still on financial life support. And being staggeringly over charged for things like this extension, also Crossrail, can bring about the death blow that much sooner. TFL is being mismanaged into the grave.
What would have been the extra cost proportionately of taking it the minimal distance on to Battersea Park for interchange with National Rail, and/or running past the Morden depot to National Rail at Morden South?
Adrian, you can very easily walk from BPS to either Battersea Park station, it’d be a massive waste of money to put either station on the Northern line. There are much larger OSIs on the transport network.