As readers of this blog will have realised, Willesden Junction Train Station is the source of numerous intractable problems but the one which really annoys me is the Hythe Road public footpath, which seems to sum up son many of the difficulties about boundaries and so on.
If you turn left out of the main ticket office in Willesden Junction, you can walk across a bus turning circle and under a bridge. Just to your right is a foot bridge that goes over the railway and leads on to the Hythe Road Industrial estate in Hammersmith & Fulham (In fact you crossed over to Hammersmith & Fulham as you went through the turning circle).
If this footbridge and the path were done up it would meet every tickbox of a public project. It would encourage employment, by making it easier for people to get into the Industrial Estate (particularly from Harlesden, Kensal Green and Stonebridge which are all high unemployment areas). It would discourage crime by creating a well lit space where people feel safe. Most of all it would encourage sustainable transport. People could either walk on to the Estate from Harlesden or Kensal Green, or (if they were from further afield) they would be encouraged to uses the buses or the trains by knowing they could walk the remaining distance.
Why doesn't this happen? Two reasons. (1) Hammersmith & Fulham isn't interested because their residents come from the South not via Willesden Junction (2) Brent isn't interested because the footpath is in a different Borough.
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