Was talking to a guy who worked on the railways his whole life and recently retired.
He recons there are now hundreads of disused lines running from the edges of London to the very centre.
So, why not concrete over the lines and create single track one way high speed private roads in to the centre, for an approriate fee of course.
I smell a business here...
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I didn't think there were many disused lines into London but I could be wrong.
Of course there's still the problem of parking when you get there!
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He is wrong. Lots of disused railway lines, but none running from the edge to the very centre of London.
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Even if they exist they will not be direct. They will intersect with existing lines, so you'd need bridges/underpasses built; large lengths of them will run in tunnels and deep cuttings, so you'd need lighting, ventilation, emergency access and so on. It's not as convenient as it looks, even if the infrastructure is actually there (and I'm not so sure). However there has been some success using sections of disused railway line for cycle tracks at very low cost--the Tyne valley, where you get to ride on some of Stephenson's original wagon ways, is a good example.
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Some disused rail lines were taken over by the DLR which used them to route between Island Gardens and Tower Gateway. But that was ages ago. There are still some odd sections of rail track here and there which are barely used but these are away from the centre.
In fact there's now a shortage of rail track capacity coming into Central London and this will hamper the growth of rail services in the future unless trains can be made longer (not always possible because of platform restrictions) or become double-deck (also difficult because of loading guage and safety requirements).
Look at every mainline London station and you'll see that capacity is at a premium. Any spare paths at Paddington are taken up with the Heathrow service (now six trains an hour: 4 LHR Express plus 2 LHR Connect). And St Pancras, once threatened with closure because it was so little used, will be home to Eurostar in 2007.
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