Plans to redevelop Clapham Junction railway station are underway. A feasibility study is set to be carried out on the South London station to see whether an over site development could fund a major redevelopment of the UK’s busiest station.

Network Rail, who’ll be speaking at our London Public Estates Conference in June, are carrying out the study, and think the potential over site development could pay for works to ‘sort out the station once and for all’ through third party funding.

Head of Crossrail 2 Chris Curtis said: ”Clapham is a very large area as there is a lot of tracks plus sidings, so there could be a substantial development there and, although difficult to build, could provide value. This is the sort of thing that government said it was interested in pursuing when it published the documents earlier this year on ‘how can more private funding could be brought into the railway’ and this is an example of how that could be done.”

The study is set to be carried out by Innova, a 50-50 JV between Network Rail and property developer Capco. Meanwhile, WSP is looking at the engineering design feasibility of constructing a building over a live railways.

The concept is still in its infancy but the redevelopment could include realignment of the tracks, platform alterations to reduce the size of gaps between train and platform, as well as increasing capacity on platforms. We are carrying out this work to see how viable it is to deck over a significant part of the station and then build something on top. What that will be, we don’t know yet. Given that we would be decking over the station, it essentially gives us an opportunity to sort out the problems at Clapham once and for all.”

Details such as risk and which body would have ultimate responsibility for paying and completing station works are still unclear but with the huge volume of visitors through the stations the improvements are needed. In the last decade the station has seen passenger numbers rise from 17m annually to over £32m in 2016. With numbers set to grow improvements to manage passenger flow could be introduced to improve the customer experience and safety of the passengers.

Network Rail took over the running of Clapham station last week – in a bid to allow it to take any decision on its redevelopment more easily. The congestion relief system and the over site development would be designed to incorporate Crossrail 2 should it also get the green light from the government.

We’re looking forward to hear more about the development and future of Crossrail 2 at the London Public Estates Conference in June. Join us there!