Transport for London has produced an updated London Underground map showing the two new Northern Line stations due to open next Monday, which will extend the service into the Nine Elms regeneration development on the south bank of Thames.
The Northern Line extension, on which work officially began in November 2015, will connect the Kennington Charing Cross branch station first to the new Nine Elms station to its west and then to the final stop at Battersea Power Station, which takes its name from the converted former power station there, now a mixed-use development.
The estimated final cost of the two Zone One stations is put by TfL at £1.1 billion, slightly less than the £1.26 billion it was authorised to spend in January 2016.
Funding for the project was initially secured by the Greater London Authority borrowing just over £1 billion from the the government’s Public Works Loan Board, which is intended to be repaid by contributions from the area’s property developers under Section 106 agreements and the Community Infrastructure Levy and through special local business rates which began being collected from April 2016.
Some of the “affordable” housing that was also supposed to come from developers was foregone in 2017, when Wandsworth Council, one of the two boroughs the Nine Elms development bestrides, agreed to reduce its original requirement after the power station developer said it could no longer meet the full cost due to its £266.4 million contribution towards the Tube link.
The first passenger trains travelled the 3.2 kilometres of tunnel between Kennington and Battersea Power Station over Christmas 2020. The stations are the first new ones to be added to the Northern Line since Morden in 1926. TfL says there will be an initial peak time service of six trains an hour on the extension and five an hour off-peak. These frequencies are intended to increase to 12 and 10 trains an hour respectively by the middle of next year.
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While “Public Works Load Board” sounds perfectly credible, I think that should be … Loan …