Docklands Light Railway, from ugly duckling to

DOCKLANDS LIGHT RAILWAY, FROM UGLY DUCKLING TO TRANSPORT SWAN

London’s Docklands Light Railway has sometimes seemed like a minor service compared to its larger subterranean cousin, the London Underground. But it now carries more than 80 million passengers per year. Robert Williams reports.

Known colloquially as the DLR, the line was originally built to provide a modest public transport system for the growing London Docklands development, with a dozen trains serving a route just 7.5 miles (12 kilometres) in length. However, it has since grown dramatically owing to the ever increasing demand for transportation in East London, and was one of the unsung heroes of the 2012 Olympic Games.

The first phase, opened in 1987, went from the Isle of Dogs to Tower Gateway, next to Fenchurch Street station in the City and cost only £77m to build. Now its various phases and additions have resulted in ten times that amount of money being spent on a railway that critics say is now the wrong type of system for Docklands’ needs.

The history of the redevelopment of Docklands has been dominated by the issue of transport. At first much of the Docklands area, particularly Canary Wharf, was completely inaccessible. There were buses, a semidefunct railway line and roads which could not cope with traffic levels. The DLR was seen as a cheap way of bringing people from the City to the Isle of Dogs and was originally planned as a tram system at street level, although that idea was quickly dropped. To keep costs low, existing railway alignments enabled low-cost construction over much of the route. The central section through Canary Wharf, however, involved building a completely new overhead route. The original layout was a three-pronged star, with Poplar at its centre, Tower Gateway to the west, Stratford in the north and Island Gardens, on the north bank of the Thames, to the south.

The DLR was opened by the Queen at the end of July 1987, and began public services a month later. It originally had 11 driverless single-unit trains serving 15 stations and, in its first year of operation, carried 6.7 million people. Today the railway has 45 stations, 46km of track, and 149 units working

in multiples of two or three. Usage has risen to 86 million passengers a year.

The early system had little spare capacity, but the Docklands area very quickly developed into a major financial centre and employment zone, increasing the demand on the fledgling network. In particular Tower Gateway, at the edge of the City of London, attracted criticism for its poor connections (it did not physically connect with Tower Hill or Fenchurch Street, the two closest and most significant potential connections). This is partly because the system experienced higher-than-expected usage.

Plans were developed before the system opened to extend to Bank in the west, and Beckton in the east. All stations and trains were extended to two-unit length, and the system was expanded into the heart of the City of London to Bank through a tunnel, opening in 1991. The network has also been extended to Lewisham, and Woolwich Arsenal. The most recent addition to the DLR network was a conversion of part of the former North London Line east of Stratford, as well as a new spur to Stratford International which was heavily used during the Olympics.

Further extension

The growth of London City Airport and its lack of public transport facilities was the impetus for the next extension from Canning Town on the Beckton branch. It was initially built to King George V (the old royal dock) in 2005 and then subsequently via a second river crossing to Woolwich Arsenal in 2008. Both these extensions, costing £140 million and £180 million respectively, were privately financed by separate companies but the operations and maintenance is fully integrated into the DLR control & communications centre at Poplar. The Woolwich extension needed 2.5km of tunnels under the Thames.

Two new stations have been built on the existing railway, at Pudding Mill Lane and Langdon Park, both on the Stratford route. The latter is a prototype for a more adventurous architectural style.

Expanding the trains to two vehicles was done fairly soon after opening but the continuing growth in passenger numbers has led DLR to embark on further expansion of train length to three vehicles. Bank and Canary Wharf stations were built with this in mind but most others needed platform extensions. Some of these were relatively easy but many involved expensive civil engineering works to cantilever them out on viaduct sections.

There have been 55 new vehicles procured for the project. Unfortunately, the new and old types of trains are not electrically compatible so they cannot normally be coupled together, but they can be coupled together to recover a failed vehicle.

Fully automatic

DLR trains are fully automatic and are operated entirely by an onboard computer system linked to a central control room. The control system monitors all the relative positions and speeds from the onboard computer signals and trackside monitoring systems, and then sends data to the trains to ensure that safe distances are maintained.

The train is manned by a Passenger Service Agent, whose job is to check tickets, make announcements, open and close the doors at stops, and take over control if there are any problems with the system. Trains vary their speed automatically to ensure that services arrive on time, and are able to run at up to 50 miles per hour (80 kilometres per hour). Passengers are counted in and out of stations using infrared detection systems to ensure that no-one is lost in the system.

The system is operated via a concession, which is currently held by Serco.

During the Olympics 7.2 million passengers were carried on the system – double its normal levels. A new daily record of more than 500,000 passengers was set on 3 August during the Olympic Games.

Since the Olympics, further works are planned that will expand the DLR. Work on extending three-car operation to the Beckton route is already underway. Other proposed extensions include: • creating an extension to the east route from Gallions Reach to Dagenham Dock – • double-tracking from Bow Church to Stratford with a new station at Pudding Mill Lane to facilitate Crossrail • extending the line onwards from Bank in a tunnel to either Victoria or Euston/St Pancras – a very ambitious vision but would give much needed relief to the District Line as well as making an interchange with HS2 • heading southwards from Lewisham to Forest Hill to relieve the Jubilee Line.

Over the last 25 years, the DLR has been transformed from a small light rail system into a major transport operation in East London, serving the Docklands and Thames Estuary. Its current passenger numbers could only have been dreamed of back in 1984 and, even more impressively, this growth looks set to increase over the next 25 years. n