The Anonymous Widower

All Change At South Kensington Station

The title of this post is the same as that of this article in Rail Engineer, which describes the plan for developing South Kensington station.

The article gives a lot of insight into the expanding of the station and how it will be funded.

It is a busy station that in 2016 handled nearly thirty-four million passengers.

It was certainly busy today with visitors today, when I passed through as I went to and from the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has now been expanded.

Expanding the station will certainly test the skills of those managing the project. Especially, now that the V & A will be drawing more people to the area.

Funding Station Expansion

I said earlier that South Kensington station has a yearly traffic of just under 34 miilion.

These are figures for 2015/2016 for some important provincial stations in England.

• Bank – 94 million
• Birmingham New Street – 39 million
• Blackpool North – 2 million
• Brighton – 17 million
• Bristol Temple Meads – 11 million
• Camden Town – 23 million
• Dalston Junction – 5 million
• Dalston Kingsland – 6 million
• Euston – 42 million
• Liverpool Lime Street – 15 million
• Manchester Piccadilly – 26 million
• Newcastle – 8 million
• Nottingham – 7 million
• Peterbirough – 5 million
• Sheffield – 9 million
• Waterloo – 39 million

These stations were chosen pretty much at random, but I do think they show that London Underground stations seem to attract a lot of traffic near tourist attractions.

So perhaps we should built more stations near to major tourist attractions.

Are these the sort of projects that can be funded privately by property development?

It is proposed to use this model at South Kensington station.

I deliberately put in my two local stations of Dalston Junction and Dalston Kingsland.

Dalston Junction, is the bigger station, with twice as many platforms as Dalston ingsland.

It is also step-free with blocks of flats on top.

So is it surprising that it is not the busier station of the two?

I think it just goes to show, that predicting passenger numbers, is not an easy task.

June 30, 2017 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Development, South Kensington Station, Stations, Victoria And Albert Museum