Transit-oriented development built without the transit

We’ve been following the curious tale of Beam Park, a new transit-led development in east London. Like many of the sites we follow, we have visited it at various stages of it being built. But one crucial part of the development has yet to be started – the station.

Beam Park sits on the River Beam, which forms the boundary between two outer east London boroughs. Located on 29 hectares of land that was formerly part of the Ford Dagenham plant, planning of the site as a transit-based scheme can be traced back to 2002. As a former industrial area, it performs very badly on the Transport for London public transport accessibility scale with a PTAL score of between 0 and 1.

To remedy this, Beam Park is planned as a 3,000 home mid-density scheme, located around a new station on the London Fenchurch Street to Grays railway line. The planned station forms part of a “station square” hub within the development. We saw something similar at Kidbrooke and thought it worked well.

The funding for the station build – from the developer and mayor of London – has been in place since 2016. However, in 2021 the Department for Transport refused to provide passenger services and the station has been delayed ever since with future phases of development in the area paused or cancelled.

Where there should have been a station is now an empty plot, next to the mid-density flats with limited parking. The development as a whole is designed for low levels of car ownership. Residents who have already moved in expected the option of a car-free lifestyle.

This scheme should have been an exemplar of transit-oriented brownfield development that enabled lower levels of car ownership than would be typical for the area. Similar to phases of Barking Riverside built after the London Overground station.

The design of the development in general is good. It deals with a number of issues including community severance from roads, railways and a river very well. For example, we liked the way the space under a main road was turned into a well lit recreational amenity.

However, despite all the attention to detail this scheme shows how vulnerable transit-based development is to the unpredictable nature of railway “planning”. New stations can be delayed or cancelled on a whim without any care for sustainability.

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