West Hampstead Interchange

Contract value

£120,000

Key features

• Passenger demand forecasting
• Engineering design
• Business case development

Skills utilised

• Multi Modal Transport solutions
• Step-free access
• Complex structural solutions with operational rail environment
• Rail alignments

Project detail

Laing Rail Ltd (the owner of Chiltern Railways Franchise) was developing a private sector funded scheme for West Hampstead which involved the construction of a multi-modal interchange station on West End Lane combined with a regeneration development of the surrounding area. 

West Hampstead is served by Thameslink, Silverlink (North London Line), and Jubilee Line services from three separate stations on West End Lane. However, currently these stations are not directly linked and interchange between them requires leaving the stations and crossing the congested West End Lane. The Laing Rail proposal provided an improved interchange at this location and the incorporation of platforms and facilities to allow Chiltern Services to stop at Hampstead. Faber Maunsell was commissioned to develop the engineering aspects of the Laing Rail proposals, producing structural solutions in this busy rail and city centre environment, initially providing a robust feasibility solution which could then be taken forward.

Following the submission of Faber Maunsell's Demand Forecasting Study in January 2004, Laing Rail entered into discussions with TfL Interchanges. The aim of this was to progress the development of the West Hampstead Interchange project and assessing the scale of support that it might attract from other key organisations, such as the London Boroughs, the GLA and LDA. These discussions led to the decision to engage in public consultation on a slightly modified version of the scheme, the results of which were sufficiently supportive for Laing Rail to appoint Faber Maunsell to undertake not only further demand forecasting, but also outline engineering design for a number of different options for the layout of the interchange. The options ranged from a reduced version of the original scheme, which had included extensive property development at the interchange and in the surrounding area, to an 'interchange only’ option without development.

Further analysis was undertaken using Faber Maunsell's South East Regional Rail Model (SERRM) to assess the impact of the revised interchange layouts and assist Laing Rail in the development of a business case for the project. The work was repeated using TfL's Railplan model, to allow TfL to benchmark the project against others using its standard procedures for comparative assessment of competing schemes.

Contact

Tim Smith: tim.smith@fabermaunsell.com