Fewer than 1,000 homes were built in London in the second quarter of this year. This is a truly abysmal construction rate – and at a time when the capital’s need for new housing grows more and more acute.
Whatever Sadiq Khan’s been doing the past nine years, it isn’t working. Time, therefore, to get much more creative with housebuilding. So, while no one asked, here’s my proposal to build another quarter of a million homes in London. It’s a plan that involves trains.
There are more than 1,000 trains zooming in and around the capital each day. Most of them go to sleep in a shed somewhere overnight. But while London was the first in the world to build an underground transport network, we’ve been remarkably slow at figuring out that trains can be stored underground, too.
The only major underground tube depot in London is at White City, built for the Central line under Westfield shopping centre and completed in 2007 for £80m (£135m in today’s money).
All the other depots are above ground – and take up vast amounts of space. At 64 acres, TfL’s Neasden depot, which stores Metropolitan and Jubilee line trains, is bigger than St James’s Park. Add to that over a dozen similarly-sized TfL and Network Rail depots across London, and you can start to see quite how much space these sites gobble up.
But copy the Westfield model and bury the tubes underground (where they belong), and even at a moderate density there is easily enough space for over 250,000 homes. These sites would also – for fear of stating the obvious – boast great transport links.
Based on White City pricing, the cost of moving all London train sheds underground would be in the region of £8-10bn. But the proceeds from selling the new build homes would comfortably net TfL upwards of £50bn.
That would leave ample leftover lolly for things like the much overdue Bakerloo line upgrade, replacing the graffiti-addled Central line stock or (dare I say it) funding to kickstart Crossrail 2.
It’s a win-win for everyone involved. And locking up the trains underground overnight might keep the graffiti mob at bay too.
So, how about it, Sadiq? Let’s get some shovels in the ground.
