The Anonymous Widower

The New Cardinal Place Entrance At Victoria Tube Station

In The Start Of Change At Victoria Tube Station, I talked about the new Cardinal Place entrance to Victoria tube station.

It opened this morning and I took these pictures as I used it to get to an Eastbound District Line train.

It’s obviously not fully finished and it had only just been opened.

But passengers were able to flow straight through the gates and down the escalators to the Victoria Line platforms. So there won’t many of them, but it was lunchtime.

The Victoria Line platforms now have three sets of escalators.

• The original set of three at the Southern end linking to the original ticket hall and Victoria station.
• The new set of three at the Northern end linking to the new ticket hall and the new Cardinal Place entrance.
• In the middle another bank of three link to cross passages under the District and Circle Line platforms.

Passengers only wanting to change lines at Victoria would appear to be separated from those needing to enter or exit the Underground station.

It’ll be interesting to see, how passengers distribute themselves between the two station entrances.

• If you are coming from or going to Victoria station, you’ll probably still use the existing route.
• If you are coming from or going to Victoria Street, Westminster City Hall, Westminster Cathedral or Cardinal Place, you’ll probably use the new Cardinal Place entrance.
• Travellers to and from the Victoria Palace and Apollo Victoria rheatres, who want to use the Underground, will probably have better access.

A guy who worked in the station, felt that passengers wanting to get to or from the District and Circle Lines could be the major beneficiaries and he should know his passenger flows better than most.

As this is only an interim solution until the rest of the Underground station opens in 2018, it is certainly a quality improvement.

Wikipedia also says this about improvements at the main line station end of the Underground station.

The work will also enlarge the existing Victoria line ticket hall serving the railway station and add a new relief bank of escalators there. This aspect of the scheme has been criticised as access to platforms from the new escalators will be very long and indirect compared to the direct access using the existing escalators.

On the other hand, with all the new routes and escalators in Victoria tube station coupled with substantial capacity improvements on the Underground Lines through the station, I suspect that it’ll all even out, as passengers find their own best routes.

Incidentally, I arrived at Victoria station on a 38 bus from Piccadilly Circus and although it was the middle of the day, the access couldn’t be faulted.

Once all the building work is complete, I suspect the buses will have a bugger part to play.

January 16, 2017 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Buses, Victoria Line, Victoria Station