London Victoria Station

[modernrail]

In the vague hope London Victoria might be redeveloped in the not too distant future, I have always thought two fairly obvious options are:

1. To introduce a southern entrance at the far end of the platforms.

2. To dig out an undercroft in the main concourse and send arriving passengers for the tube into that straight out of the platforms. Ideally you would also have a tunnel through to Cardinal Place but is probably too late now as it should have been done with the tube scheme. This approach would effectively make the station one way on each floor.

 

[telstarbox]

How much would it cost and who would fund it?

 

[yorksrob]

As long as they don't destroy the Chatham side trainshed and what's left of the Brighton side trainshed.

 

[Busaholic]

Aren't there major plans for Victoria associated with Crossrail 2?

 

[modernrail]

According to Londonist, the station is built over the former warehouses of the Grosvernor Canal. That may provide a head start on digging out. I am not a one man QS, architect, and structural engineer and so I am afraid it is not possible for me to guess how much it would cost. The answer is likely to be quite a lot but hopefully less than a bit too much.

http://londonist.com/2014/08/the-secret-corners-and-peculiar-nicknames-of-victoria-station

As for who pays for it, the retail at Victoria is a mess. Most of it needs to come out and be reconfigured to declutter the concourse. What is in the buildings above the main entrance to the buildings? I presume they are not part of the hotel? I would personally strip out the M&S and other shops around the entrance. Use some of the space to take you to a full mezzanine and put lots more retail up there. I would also take out the whole of the current monstrosity in between the southeastern and southern platforms and incorporate it into a revised mezzanine with the ground floor kept largely clear. Retail schemes like this would provide some of the funding through capitalising future rents.

I would have hoped the developers of the large adjoining sites would have been told to contribute to improvements at Victoria. Maybe this all went into the tube scheme though.

I agree the trainsheds need to be retained and see no reason why they would be affected.

 

[Hophead]

Network Rail took over the shopping centre above the south Central platforms a few years ago. I'd hoped that this was with a view to redeveloping the area to remove the obvious pinch-point getting to platforms 15-19. There don't seem to have been any obvious changes though.