
Wandsworth Council is considering plans to extend the Northern Line further into south London – to Clapham Junction.
The London Underground north/south divide is a pretty hot topic when it comes to the city’s transport links.
While south Londoners are in fairly easy reach of several tube stops, there are far more underground stations north of The Thames.
But those living in and around Clapham Junction could be about to get a new travel option – the Northern Line.
There are plans from Wandsworth Council to renovate the popular stop, which welcomed over 17million visitors in 2021-22.
Clare Fraser, cabinet member for transport, spoke of her ‘ambitions’ for the future of Wandsworth amid a current £35 million makeover designed to ease congestion at the station.
She said: ‘This includes increasing prosperity and opportunity and delivering a fairer, more compassionate and more sustainable borough.
‘Our proposed Clapham Junction Urban Heart masterplan builds on those ambitions to utilise the many strengths of Clapham Junction to deliver new jobs, growth and new affordable housing.’
She aadded that the aim would be to work with partners such as the Mayor of London, Network Rail and TfL to ‘invest and revitalise’ the mainline, overground only station.
‘As part of that work we are exploring extending the Northern Line to Clapham Junction.
‘This would be a fantastic step forwards for Wandsworth residents,’ she concluded.
Currently those wanting to travel to Clapham Junction via the Northern Line have to disembark at Clapham North, Clapham Common, or Clapham South, which are each more than a 30-minute walk to the mainline station.
The Northern Line extension to Battersea Power Station opened 2021 and it’s suggested this could eventually make its way to Clapham Junction.
Conservative councillor John Locker said: ‘The overhaul of Clapham Junction as a station and of course the extension of the Northern Line, which I’m really pleased to see because it’s something that we always advocated…
‘I think we consciously made sure that when it was being extended to Battersea Power Station that it was designed in such a way that it would be able to be extended straight into Clapham Junction – but that’s going to take a heck of a lot of funding.’
However, linking up Clapham Junction to the existing Northern Line would be no easy task.
It is unlikely TfL will be able to fund the project and the council would instead be reliant on private developers to fund the cash, as was the case in Battersea.
An executive decision on the proposals is set to be made on February 13 after the council’s transport committee unanimously green-lit proposals to draw up a masterplan on February 1.
It’s not the first proposed tube extension, with a Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham already planned for 2029.
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