Old Oak super station site
Thursday March 11, 2010
A patch of underused industrial land in the north of the borough has been earmarked as a prime site for a high-speed super station by the Government’s Transport Secretary.
Lord Adonis named Old Oak Common as the nation’s next major rail hub earlier today. A new station just north of Wormwood Scrubs would connect Heathrow with the rest of Britain and beyond and minimise the need for a third runway at the airport, according to Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council.
The council submitted a detailed study to the Chairman of High Speed 2 (HS2) – the company set up to examine options for a high speed line between Scotland and London – last November arguing that Old Oak Common should be a major interchange on the route. Residents in the north of H&F, the south of Brent and eastern part of Ealing would all be major beneficiaries if the hub station is built.
Cllr Mark Loveday, H&F Cabinet Member for Strategy, says the decision is the ‘obvious and sensible’ solution to modernise the nation’s transport network for the 21st century. He says: “Old Oak Common is unrivalled as a site for west London’s High Speed 2 interchange. The site is perfectly placed to connect the rest of the country with Heathrow and will deliver tens of thousands of new jobs and homes to one of the most deprived communities in the country.”
HS2 will speed commuters from London, via Birmingham and Manchester, to Glasgow in just over two hours. The Government expects the first section, between London and Birmingham, to be completed by 2020.
An HS2 station at Old Oak Common would link Heathrow with rest of the country and act as a major catalyst to regenerate a deprived corner of west London. The council’s in-depth study argues that a super station centred on 90 hectares of underused railway and light industrial land north of the Scrubs would connect existing railways and create up to 27,000 jobs.
An Old Oak super-station would intersect the Great Western mainline and the West and North London Lines and provide an ideal location for a future Crossrail station. The location also creates an ideal interchange linking Heathrow Express services to Birmingham, the north and Gatwick Airport, as well as reducing the strain on central London stations like Euston, Paddington and Marylebone. Journey times from the Old Oak hub to Heathrow would be just 11 minutes.
Unemployment near the Old Oak Common site is well above the national average and poor access to housing and other services are also a challenge for local people.
Cllr Loveday adds: “The council has been lobbying hard for this for two years. The north of our borough could experience a once in a lifetime renaissance if the HS2 station is built in Old Oak Common.”
