West London Line
Response to question on West London Line Group’s campaign for greater transport links, raised at Full Council Meeting 23 January 2019
West London Line
Comments by Mark Balaam
The Council has policies supporting both an Elizabeth Line station at Kensal Portobello, and a West London Line station at Westway Circus. They would serve different purposes and distinct catchment areas; we do not regard one as a substitute for another.
The Council has expended more energy on the station that would serve our last remaining Opportunity Area, at Kensal, than on an additional station on the West London Line, on the boundary with LBHF.
We have not accepted that the Kensal Portobello Station cannot be included on the Elizabeth Line, and we continue our discussions with Network Rail on this project. Irrespective of the ultimate outcome of that work with Network Rail, the transport plan for the Opportunity Area would seek to improve bus links between Ladbroke Grove and Old Oak. The soon-to-be adopted Local Plan states that it is a Council “Priority” to “deliver a new road linking onto Mitre Way near Scrubs Lane in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham” and to “provide an integrated public transport network”. Implicit in that is the provision of a bus route.
The same draft Local Plan already provides explicit support for a Westway Circus station, in Policy CT2b. It says that the Council will: “support the creation of a new station on the West London line at Westway Circus, as proposed by the St Quintin and Woodlands Neighbourhood Plan;”
Previously, the Council had supported the construction of a station at North Pole Road, on the site of the old St Quintin Park and Wormwood Scrubs station, which was destroyed in WW2. That would be within walking distance of the centre of Kensal Canalside, whereas Westway Circus would be about a third of a mile further away. There appears to be no appetite from Transport for London for a station at North Pole Road.