Category: London

The third tour I managed during the Construction Open Doors week of events back in June was to the site of the Bermondsey Diveunder. After visiting the (re)beginnings of a skyscraper, and a huge building development – this was something very different – a project building downwards, reusing old Victorian arches and the space between tracks on a very busy junction near London Bridge station, to allow for a “metro” frequency service into London Bridge and up through the centre of the capital to St Pancras – the so-called Thameslink Programme.

The project is building a “diveunder” – letting certain inbound services pass beneath outbound services elsewhere, so allowing a greater frequency of service. Essentially it is “grade separating” a busy junction, which happens to be part of the world’s oldest railway viaduct and once the longest viaduct of any kind, stretching over four miles from London Bridge to Greenwich.

From a historical perspective, it is nice to see that as much use of the existing, historic arches as possible is being made – the main part of the diveunder itself sitting on them until it ducks too low and they are replaced with smaller, modern ones, and eventually solid concrete. With the first big part of the new London Bridge station concourse opening up this weekend, things are starting to gear up and hopefully the extra capacity created by the diveunder will, in the short term, help to repair the currently badly suffering Southern services through the area, once it is opened in just a few short months.

The tour ended personally for me with a sour note – I returned back to find my bike was stolen. I’m happy to put South Bermondsey on my list of places to avoid in London in the future, except perhaps looking out of a train window at the new, sweeping lines that have been installed here.

I’ve been slow to write about all my Open Doors week construction-site visits back in June, but as well as seeing a soon-to-be-skyscraper, I also made it to two other sites, the largest of which far-and-away was Battersea Power Station – more specifically, the “Phase 1” work beside it, which is the construction of two huge 20-story-high blocks that will surround the venerable power station – itself also a building site right now as part of the “Phase 2” work.

The blocks were all sold off-plan long ago, and construction is taking place at a frenetic pace, as the developer aims to deliver the accommodation as soon as they can. The sheer amount of activity is breathtaking, with over 2000 workers on site.

The tour included a visit to the basement infrastructure of the new blocks, as well as looking inside a couple of the flats (which include pre-fabricated bathrooms that have been just dropped in), and – the definite highlight – a journey up a hoist to the roof, from which you looked down to the roof of the old power station, or across the Thames to central London, and to the garden of the £4m+ penthouse that will be there soon.

There were a few additional surprises, such as a spiral staircase being constructed, and a close-up view of the power station in transformation (the route to the Phase 1 work is along a narrow pathway between the station and the river).

It was great to see too the chimneys of Battersea Power Station being restored – having disappeared from the skyline at the beginning of the project (sulphur damage had made them structurally unstable), the first of the four replacements, constructed with the same techniques and materials, has now reappeared.

It’s Open Doors week this week, where the public get a glimpse into many construction sites, and this morning I visited the site of 22 Bishopsgate, in the City of London. The site itself has an interesting recent history – it was going to be the Pinnacle, an elaborate, spiraling skyscraper. But construction stopped as the downturn hit hard in 2011, and for the last few years, it’s been nicknamed “The Stump” – an abandoned nine-storey concrete core. It’s taken Brookfield Multiplex, the chief contractors for the new skyscraper, around a year to dismantle the old core, by slicing up the concrete into 8-14 tonne sections, lifting them out, digging back down into and rebuilding the basement to the new design. Finally, pretty much in the last few weeks, they’ve been able to stop digging down and start building up again.

The building will start to rise quite quickly in the next few weeks. The new design consists of two cores – a square-ish one, which will lead a rectangular one alongside. This reflects the non-square shape of the site – it being narrow to the north than to the south, and squeezed to the east by the Cheesegrater and the long-suffering Hiscox building. Both will rise by around a storey a week, with the square one leading the rectangular one by around five storeys, and the metal structure of the floors surrounding the cores another five or so storeys below. Currently, the main core is 2-3 storeys up already and is about to start its long continuous rising phase. The rectangular core, which we looked down on from the elevated viewing platform, is a storey below ground level at the moment, and today is having a temporary wall added to the top of it, creating a platform and work area “raft” that will rise up with it. The square core already has its temporary wall erected, coloured black and made of perforated steel, and can be seen as the main feature in both the photos above and at the bottom, surrounding a small yellow crane and other yellow machinery that will sit on the raft.

Even with a storey-per-week rise, this process will take more than a year, for 22 Bishopsgate will be a huge “slab” type skyscraper, with vertical walls, stretching an impressive 64 storeys high. It will be only marginally lower than the nearby Shard skyscraper, at 278m. It will fit snuggly in to the skyscraper cluster of the Cheesegrater, Gherkin, Natwest Tower and various others. The design is not “exciting” – it is a straight up-and-down building which is using up its full footprint, but his means it will provide a good balance to the nearby flamboyant Gherkin and Walkie Talkie building. In this artist’s impression, in which it is the obvious tallest building in the cluster here, it looks like an updated, taller/wider and glassier version of the classic Natwest Tower nearby which is just to the right hiding behind another under-construction skyscraper, 100 Bishopsgate:

From the viewing platform, we could also see active work going on for 100 Bishopsgate, just up the road as the name suggests, as well as the recladding and height extension of One Angel Court, and finally a very small tower going up in the small space between Bishopsgate and the Natwest Tower. As part of this latter project and 22 Bishopsgate itself, the Highwalk around the Natwest Tower has now been completely removed. This is a shame – it was a largely unknown but nice elevated walking space. However, I understand that the Highwalk will be rebuilt once both projects are complete, so we will once again be able to walk above the roads and amongst the towers.

Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photographers on the tour, but you can see the square core clearly from Bishopsgate now – see the photos here. Our wooden-clad viewing platform can be see in the background of the first photo, on the left.

Middle image is an artists impression of the completed cluster, from Lipton Rogers.

1. Tube trains do run to a strict timetable, rather than just “saturating” the tunnels with trains, as can appear to be the case on many lines during the rush hour.

This is not normally useful because the gap between trains is so small, so TfL doesn’t publish the timetables, except for first/last trains and, for train geeks, the Working Timetables are hidden away on their website. However, the timetables (which are accurate to quarter-minutes) are useful near the start or end of the day – particularly around midnight, where the frequencies drop right down. Journey Planners, such as Google Maps, make use of the hidden timetables. Case in point – a recent journey suggested a Circle Line train arriving at 0002 at Paddington, going eastwards. Sure enough, as I ran down the stairs a hundred seconds after midnight, it was just pulling in. For less frequent services, such as Metropolitan Line trains to Amersham, the timetables become event more important. Crossrail will also likely be relatively infrequent, especially for services to the far ends.

2. Out of Station Interchanges (OSIs) can be useful for saving money (i.e. avoiding Zone 1) or time (as distances can be much smaller between other lines than the tube map can suggest). They are “free” transfers which are not shown on the tube map, but which count as only one journey, even if you go out through ticket barriers and back in at the other station. The system does the maths so you don’t end up paying for too. Each OSI has a time limit between the two sets of barriers, so don’t go shopping in between the stations! You can see the current OSIs between tube/DLR/Overground stations on this map, or see this page for the complete list.

3. You don’t have to flag down, hail or otherwise signal TfL buses. This has been the case for a few years. Bus drivers will always stop if they see you at the stop and you show a vague interest towards the bus – such as facing it and looking at it. Save your weary arms and don’t give passing cyclists frights!

4. The Santander Cycles (a.k.a Boris Bikes, or generically, the London Bicycle Sharing System bikes) stretch across a wide area of central London. They charge £2 for every 30 minutes after the first half hour. You can save money on a long journey by docking just before the 30 minutes is up, waiting at least 5 minutes, and then starting the next leg of the journey, either from the same docking station or a nearby one. (N.B. Santander Bikes are not included in the Oyster/Contactless/travelcard system – yet. They may be included from summer 2017 onwards.)

5. Oyster/Contactless is always cheaper than paper tickets when travelling in Zone 1-6, or on any TfL services outside of these zones, but not necessarily when on non-TfL services travelling outside of Zone 1-6. For example, paper tickets from Gatwick Airport to London Bridge/Blackfriars or to London Victoria can sometimes be cheaper than Oyster/Contactless – particularly at weekends with “Super Off-Peak” paper tickets and especially if you have a railcard that you can’t use with Oyster/Contactless. I can travel from Gatwick to Blackfriars for £5 on Sundays with a buy-on-the-day paper ticket and a Network Railcard, but it’s £8+ with Oyster. N.B. In rare cases, the end-of-day batch calculation that Contactless uses, compared to Oyster with its immediate charging, means that Contactless can work out cheaper than Oyster. Geoff Marshall (Londonist) investigated this.

6. 2-for-1 to top London Attractions: If you have a paper train ticket (i.e. for National Rail and London Overground, not the tube) to the stations nearest the attraction then you can get a 2-for-1 on entry (e.g. Richmond to Kew Gardens for visiting the aforementioned gardens is £3 for 2 people – save £16+ on getting in). You don’t actually have to do the journey though, and you don’t need to buy the tickets from the start of your theoretical journey – buy it at the station nearest the attraction if there’s a ticket office there. Buy a journey which is very short, as then it will be cheap!

7. The tube map is far from geographical. Here are some journeys that are shorter by walking, than by taking the tube:

• Leicester Square to Covent Garden (450 people a day do this journey by tube! Don’t!)
• Bayswater to Queensway
• Paddington to Lancaster Gate (i.e. Hyde Park)
• Farringdon to St Paul’s

8. Sometimes, you don’t need to get the tube. A day bus pass is £4.50, but you get a free one automatically put on your Oyster/Contactless after 3 bus journeys that day, and then you can go on unlimited other TfL buses for free until 0430 the following morning. A “Hopper” ticket giving you two journeys in an hour for £1.50, is coming in September. In both cases, you pay for the electronic ticket through Oyster or a contactless credit/debit card – buses don’t take paper tickets.

9. Buses don’t have zones, but are included in any travelcard. So you can have a Zone 1-2 travelcard and then travel out from Zone 2 on a bus, to Zone 3 or right to the edge of London etc, then back into Zone 2 from Zone 3 on a bus, all on the travelcard.

10. If you avoid Zone 1, long journeys can be extremely cheap. For example, stay on TfL rail services (Underground, Overground, TfL Rail, Tramlink) and it’s just £1.50 off-peak, no matter how far you go – you’ll need to touch on pink Oyster card readers when changing trains, to prove you went that way. Uxbridge to Upminster is just £1.50 off-peak with Oyster/contactless, despite being over 31 miles as the crow flies. Just touch the pink reader at Stratford’s Overground platforms. This doesn’t always work – if you have to travel back on yourself then you may not get the discount. For example, Earl’s Court to Highbury and Islington doesn’t work (despite both being in Zone 2), but very close by West Brompton to Highbury and Islington does, because you leave the same direction as you arrive, when changing at West Brompton. The single fare finder is extremely useful as it will always tell you if there’s an avoid Zone 1 option for your journey, and where you may need to touch a pink reader to prove it.

To complicate things even more, there’s certain journeys where touching a pink reader, will *increase* the fare you made – even if you didn’t go into Zone 1. A pink reader acts as proof you were at that place, and TfL will apply rules about logical/sensible journeys, based on this information. For example: Canada Water to Tottenham Hale: Single Fare finder says it’s £1.50 if you end at the National Rail gates there, and £2.80 if you end at the Underground gates.

There are, I think, seven sensible off-peak routes, based on Zone 1/not Zone 1 choice, whether you have a bike and that the Stratford-to-Tottenham line being very infrequent – below, I’ve assumed leaving Canada Water as soon as possible after 8pm on a normal Friday and got the times from TfL’s Journey Planner or Google Maps:

Cheaper than it should be, Pink validator increases your fare, more expensive than it should be, Pink validator increases your fare, correctly

There are other possible routes, but they are less sensible (i.e. not as fast), such as taking the Overground circle the long way around (via Clapham Junction).

If you go via Canonbury and Hackney Central/Downs (route 3), you pass through Zone 1 (Shoreditch High Street station), however the default off-peak fare is £1.50 as you finish at the National Rail gates. Touching at the interchange between Hackney Central and Hackney Downs will increase the fare to £2.80, because you proved you’ve gone that way, not via another route changing at Stratford only, which does avoid Zone 1. You could go in fact still change at Stratford and Hackney Downs/Central, which avoids Zone 1, but touching at Hackney Downs/Central will charge you the Zone 1 fare. This route is sensible, because the direct Stratford trains are only once every 30 minutes (and often not running at all). An even more convoluted route, changing at Whitechapel, West Ham, Stratford and Hackney Downs/Central, is still viable for me, as if I’m taking a bike on the train, I can’t do the Mile End to Stratford or Canada Water to Canning Town sections…