Bigger thinking is needed for London’s Old Oak/Park Royal Infrastructure.

Old Oak/Park Royal in west London is being increasingly recognized as having the potential to be the capital’s next major regeneration area after the Olympic Park in east London.

The planned HS2 station at Old Oak is the major catalyst for the raised interest in this hitherto forgotten part of London. The area is now designated as a new Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) and mayor Boris Johnson himself has been announced as the chair of the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC).

However, with a public consultancy on the draft Planning Framework for OPDC ongoing, there are significant questions on the adequacy of strategic infrastructure planning for the area.   

"For Old Oak/Park Royal’s sake, Boris should get his OPDC team to think bigger before he leaves his mayoral post."

GLA press releases for Old Oak suggest “Mini-Manhattan” visions akin to another Canary Wharf. Whilst there will be plenty of new railway infrastructure at Old Oak Park Royal (HS2, Crossrail and new London Overground stations), plans for complementary new road and utilities infrastructure are notable by their absence.

The case for new road access capacity in/out of Old Oak/Park Royal is made in TfL’s Strategic Transport Study for the area which considers the transport impacts of an additional 24,000 homes and 55,000 jobs being provided at Old Oak Common. The report concludes that the existing local road network “would be unable to cope with the additional development related traffic”. 

In the same way that Canary Wharf could not flourish before the Limehouse Link tunnel solved its highway access problems, Old Oak/Park Royal will need an equivalent highway link to the A40 and North Circular if its future development potential is not to be stifled. 

The lack of urgency to provide new road infrastructure at Old Oak Park is compounded by TfL’s curious looking projections for passenger entry/exits at the new HS2 station at Old Oak. The new station will be a major gateway station for West London and is expected to become the UK’s second busiest station (after London Waterloo) with some 250,000 passengers per day.

"Evidence exists to suggest that projections for entry and exit at Old Oak could be underestimated by an order of magnitude. As such, the rail-road interchange infrastructure currently envisaged at Old Oak would be grossly inadequate to meet future demand."

However, despite the new HS2/Crossrail station being served by fast, direct and frequent trains to every major conurbation in Great Britain as well as Heathrow and central London, TfL’s projections suggest that the Old Oak station will have fewer passengers entering in the morning peak hours than the nearby Willesden Junction station which is served only by local trains.

Evidence exists to suggest that projections for entry and exit at Old Oak could be underestimated by an order of magnitude. As such, the rail-road interchange infrastructure currently envisaged at Old Oak would be grossly inadequate to meet future demand.  

Whilst bigger thinking looks to be needed on Old Oak/Park Royal's infrastructure, some bolder thinking would also be welcome for the design of the proposed Old Oak station itself. Current plans suggest that it may be a rather uninspiring design akin to that at Stratford International.

The station’s status as a new gateway station for London surely merits a scale of architectural ambition similar to Berlin’s impressive new Hauptbahnhof station. 

For Old Oak/Park Royal’s sake, Boris should get his OPDC team to think bigger before he leaves his mayoral post.  

Alistair Lenczner, director of Infrastructure, Planning and Design at Useful Simple Projects