Barking Riverside - Hammersmith and City Line?

[DynamicSpirit]

A random thought that just occurred to me. When Barking Riverside station was built, the Overground Goblin line was extended to run to it. But why the Overground? You'd think it'd have been more useful if instead it had been the Hammersmith and City Metropolitan line that was extended from Barking to Barking Riverside. The Hammersmith and City line runs much more towards where most people are likely to want to travel to, and it could provide a more frequent service than the Goblin's 4tph too.

Would that have been doable? Would it be worth swapping from Overground to Hammersmith and City line today? (I imagine, much harder now that the infrastructure has already been built for the Overground).

EDITED to fix the tube line name. Original post had Metropolitan line. Thanks @SynthD

 

[zwk500]

I suspect the primary reason is that no changes needed to be made to Barking's NR infrastructure for the Riverside Extension. The Flyover and chords were already there for freight - it's the bit from Ripple Lane to Riverside that's new. Rebuilding Barking's tube lines to fit in connecting lines when it already ducks and dives around the C2C lines for cross-platform connections wouldn't have come cheap or without disruption.

Keeping NR and LU separate also has benefits for punctuality, safety, cost, avoiding admin overheads, and maintenance. Especially the problem of LUL moving to CBTC on the Sub-Surface lines and NR still being conventional signals for a long time yet in that area.

 

[SynthD]

Hammersmith and City terminates at Barking, so that would be my pick of the sub surface lines. I think the goblin makes sense, as it’s already NR and had the crossover. It would have been a far more expensive project to link LU to the line, and far riskier in spreading delays.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Hammersmith and City terminates at Barking, so that would be my pick of the sub surface lines. I think the goblin makes sense, as it’s already NR and had the crossover. It would have been a far more expensive project to link LU to the line, and far riskier in spreading delays.

DRAT! DRAT! DRAT! I'm sure something in my brain was going 'no' when I wrote Metropolitan but I couldn't put my finger on it. Of course, it's the Hammersmith and City, not the Metropolitan line, that terminates at Barking. Thankyou! I've fixed the starting post and will now see if I can figure out how to fix the thread title.

My only excuse is that it used to be the Metropolitan line, before they separated and renamed the Hammersmith bit. I think part of my brain still thinks of the two as the same line.

 

[Bald Rick]

It would have required an extra two grade separated junctions immediately east of Barking, including reconfiguration of the existing Grade separation, which would have involved substantial residential demolition. It also would have lead to considerable disruption to all services in the area for a prolonged time. And the extra benefit would be minimal - all you save is the change to the H&C. Passenegrs wanting the District, or c2c, or the Overground would have had to change. Indeed for many destinations the frequency by changing is better than if the H&C was extended.

Others will correct me, but I’d always assumed that people heading for most of the city from east of Barking change at Barking for c2c services anyway (hence the cross platform interchange). West end is different, but then the H&C isn’t particularly handy for that.