At last! A
new ticket hall and entrance has opened at Victoria Station.
A long wait tends to go very quick!
From TFL Press release
Journeys through Victoria Underground
station are set to become easier as a new North ticket hall, a key part of the £700m project to upgrade Victoria Tube
station, has opened. A new entrance on
Victoria Street, at the junction of Bressenden Place, near Cardinal Place,
is now open and leads to the ticket hall and Victoria line. The entrance means
that customers can now easily exit the
station onto Victoria Street without
having to cross the series of busy road junctions outside the station.
Victoria, the fourth busiest Tube station,
currently serves more than 82 million customer journeys each year, linking major
rail routes to the south of London with the Victoria, District and Circle
lines. The modernisation of the station, which is being done in stages and will
finish in 2018, will double the size of the station, ease congestion for
customers and provide, for the first time, step-free access.
The
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said:
'The opening of the new North ticket hall at
Victoria is great news for the tens of millions of Londoners and tourists who
pass through the station each year. It marks a significant step forward in a
modernisation programme that will make journeys through this vital hub easier
and more accessible for all.'
Mark
Wild, Managing Director of London Underground, said:
'Opening the new entrance to Victoria is a
huge step in the station's modernisation project, and will make journeys easier
for many thousands of customers every day. Once completed, the new station will
enable quicker journeys, allow people to move around more easily and make the
station more accessible for everyone.'
The tunnels connecting the North ticket hall to the District and Circle lines will open in
summer 2017.
The station will then become step-free in early 2018, enabling
customers with accessibility needs to access the Victoria line, connecting with
other mainline stations like King's Cross, St. Pancras, Vauxhall and Tottenham
Hale, as well as central London via Green Park station. Similarly, the District
and Circle lines will connect with Earl's Court, Westminster and Hammersmith.
The final part of the station to be
completed, the expanded South ticket
hall, will open in 2018. Once completed, the station will feature eight new lifts, nine new escalators and 20 new ticket
gates and be double the size of the
original station before work began
in 2009.
Ruth
Duston, Chief Executive Officer at Victoria BID, said:
'On behalf of local business, we are
delighted the first phase of the Victoria Station upgrade has opened. It means
safer and easier access to Victoria Street and the surrounding area for the 82
million customers that pass through every year.
'We're pleased the Underground station is
being modernised, joining the rest of Victoria, which is undergoing rapid
transformation.'
In relation
to Victoria station – here is my video of buses in Victoria bus station which I
captured last month.
I’ll wrap up
with the news from LOTS:
1) Last weekend saw Metroline’s new DELs
enter service on route 235 when they took over from Abellio. On Monday 9th Abellio’s new E20Ds (8162-65)
began service on route U9 and from Saturday 14th the first couple of the next
batch (8166-70) for route H26 entered service. A lot of older Abellio Darts
have thus been made redundant. Otherwise, new buses into service have been very
few, still with several of Go-Ahead’s LTs, WHVs, EHs, WSs outstanding, although
delivered. Still at Go-Ahead, just one
VWL (10) is left operational, until the last MHV (44) arrives and can be found
on route 185.
2) There is no sign yet of Stagecoach’s new
E20Ds for the 273 renewed contract from 7th January, while the new E40Hs for
the 277 are not due for another few weeks yet. However, all 34 of Arriva London’s new E40H-City buses
HA20-53 have been delivered and, together with HVs already at Brixton, should start to enter service next Saturday 21st on the 133 (moved to BN from
Norwood) and 333 (gained from
Go-Ahead). To make space at Brixton, most of the LTs for route 137 will move to
Norwood.
3) In Essex, with some possible retraction
of some Trustybus services, EOS is due to begin another new service, the 500 Harlow
& Epping via Thornwood. It is billed to begin on Tuesday 17th on Mon-Sat
every 20mins. The recent withdrawal of Trustybus 392 has resulted in a
Community Transport minibus to partly replace it from 4th January. After Amber
Coaches withdrew its 261 (Brentwood & Blackmore) before Christmas, the
service has been revived (as 61) since 3rd January by Ensignbus.
As always, I
invite you to follow me on Twitter
and Google Plus which is @CLondoner92
Image attribution
By Ralf Roletschek (talk) - Fahrradtechnik auf fahrradmonteur.de - Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11808190
