Transport for London has issued a late-notice notification that “maintenance and repair work” is to be undertaken on Church Street in Croydon town centre all through next week, starting on Monday July 15.
More works: Church Street will have repairs conducted on the tram network in the early hours of July 15 to 21
The works – on the tracks between Middle Street to Tamworth Road – will be conducted through the night, between 1am and 4.30am, and therefore should not impact the tram services. The works will take place until Sunday July 21.
While the works are being undertaken, “the road will be closed and a traffic diversion plan will be in place”, according to TfL.
The diversion will run west of Church Street along the A236 then on to Coombe Street, High Street and Charles Street.
“This is one of the final stages of work that was undertaken in February 2024,” TfL says, “and will include minor repairs to the concrete upstands situated either side of the tram track.”
TfL warns of the use of heavy machinery and “construction noise” that will be unavoidable during the works.
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I feel sorry for anyone living in the vicinity, there won’t be much sleep being had during those nights. I know the work has to be done again. It only feels like five minutes ago that Church Street works were being done.
Although the trams are very convenient now, if you lived in Croydon in the 1990’s you will remember the catastrophically bad way for the town that they were installed.
Instead of first converting the old British Rail tracks outside of Croydon to be temporary shuttle tram services, and only then doing a final 18 hour-per-day blitz to install the central Croydon part to link it all together, they dug up the whole of central Croydon into WW1-style trenches first, and then left it untouched for over a year, such that many small shops closed from reduced business because shoppers went to Bromley or Wimbledon instead.
This may have been the seeds of Croydon’s comparative decline as a shopping centre.
Didn’t they find the old LCC tram tracks in the East Croydon area when they were digging up the roads for Tramlink?
Yes. We certainly found them in George St West. They were almost in the exact position as the new track. Rail geometry theory and practice really doesn’t change with time so it was refreshing to see that the designers were consistent in choosing the best alignment.
Interesting comments and ideas Ron. Perhaps you could suggest how trams running a shuttle service east of central Croydon would have been serviced as the depot is on the Wimbledon branch? It would be ok for a few days but no more.
The works in central Croydon involved “pre tram track installation” diversion of utility services that could not be left under the track. Thus roads were left excavated for considerable periods as several contractors had to work sequentially. Co-ordinating the various contractors as well as providing temporary delivery arrangements was challenging.
One can debate these matters 24 years after the event (with many of the key people no longer with us) but the best measure of the success of the construction and opening of the system was that it was delivered just about to budget and although one aimed to complete for the Millennium I’d did open that Spring. Find me another recent complex project that has achieved that?