How do you solve a problem like East Croydon?
Network Rail has started a six-week consultation on its solution to remove the worst train bottleneck in the country, it was announced on Monday.
Increasing the number of platforms from six to eight, adding two extra tracks and replacing five junctions with flyovers and dive unders are part of a grand plan to reduce delays on Southern, Thameslink and Gatwick Express services between London, Surrey and the south coast.
The station itself would also be modernised.
Seventeen hundred trains pass through East Croydon each weekday, that’s two thirds more than the number of services at King’s Cross and a third more than Manchester Piccadilly.
The bottleneck is blamed for exacerbating delays when problems happen elsewhere on the network.
This aerial footage has been released showing 39 trains being delayed over a two-hour period because of congestion during one evening rush hour:
Network Rail warns that trains will continue to be unreliable for hundreds-of-thousands of daily passengers without any improvements.
“Removing the Croydon bottleneck is the only practical way to provide the step-change in reliability and capacity that passengers and businesses so desperately want to see," John Halsall, Network Rail’s route managing director for the South East, said.
“For too long, train performance on the Brighton Main Line has been below the level that commuters and other passengers expect and deserve. While a number of factors have contributed to these issues in recent years, the basic layout of our railway through the Croydon area and the bottleneck it creates means reliability won’t ever improve to acceptable levels without significant changes.
John Halsall, Network Rail’s route managing director for the South East
An online questionnaire is now available for people to have their say on the proposals and Network Rail are also putting their plans on show at a number of public events.
The consultation closes on Monday 17 December.