Following our recent meetings and correspondence with Transport for London (TfL), I'm delighted to report back to you with excellent news in regards to Crossrail 2 and what it means for our area.
Last year TfL discovered serious geological issues with the ground beneath Tooting Broadway, the proposed site for our local Crossrail 2 station. Citing the additional cost and town centre disruption that the construction would necessitate in Tooting, TfL proposed an alternative station at Balham and included this as our local Crossrail 2 station in its recent public consultation.
Through the local campaign and survey I ran at www.BalhamOrTooting.org,uk, 3,200 people had their say on where they thought the Crossrail 2 station should be built, with the large majority preferring that it be retained at Tooting Broadway. This feedback was fed into the public consultation, which is likely to show a similarly strong opinion across the board.
I’m pleased to tell you that in response to the huge demonstration of local views, TfL has confirmed to me that it will do additional studies into the Tooting Broadway option, keeping it open as an alternative to Balham. This additional research will allow a full evaluation of the benefits and costs of Tooting as compared with Balham, which will then be subject to a further engagement exercise with local people, before a preferred station is chosen in the summer.
Many of us were very concerned that Balham was going to be chosen for the station site prematurely, without all of the benefits of Tooting having being fully considered, nor with alternative construction options having been evaluated. As such, we are pleased that TfL has agreed to commit additional time and monies to ensure that Tooting gets full consideration.
Currently TfL are still reviewing the many thousands of responses they got from across London to the Crossrail 2 consultation, but once that is completed, and the results released, I will be able to provide further details on the next steps for our area.
For now, I want to say a huge 'thanks' to all of you who helped spread the word of this consultation, by email, social media and via the 25,000 leaflets we hand-delivered across Tooting and Balham. This huge exercise in ‘people power’ clearly worked and I hope you can once again spread this good news to all those gave their view via my survey and the public consultation.