London Bridge station in the morning

Hi all,

I just moved to the area in November, so this may just be my naivety... but is London Bridge station actually getting worse in the mornings (or is this just a 'January effect'? 3 out of 4 times this week I've been unable to get anywhere near the Jubilee line. It averages out about the same every week since the beginning of January.

How will it cope with the Olympics?!

We've all been told to have a pint until all the tourists have gone.

Never mind the Olympics. That's just for a few weeks. What about when the Shard opens? It was crazy to build the tallest building in Europe above one of the busiest stations in London. London Bridge is horrendous at rush hour now, but imagine the scenes every day when thousands of people are working in the Shard.

Surely it would make sense to make the station bigger...? Or move the entrance to the train station away from the entrance to the Jubilee line!

Of course there are plans for a major redevelopment of the station.

Yeah, I've saw those. Something tells me it may only make things worse for the next 5 years at least!

James Hatts wrote:

Of course there are plans for a major redevelopment of the station.

It does seem like it might have made sense to redevelop the station BEFORE the Olympics and the Shard.

Well, perhaps if there was something like a cross river tram...or an extended Bakerloo Line, commuters from North to South London would have other options for constructing their journeys and could avoid the need to make a change here at this station...or the need to use one of those two lines altogether.

Sorry, I'm just being sarcastic...but also a bit true.

Also, here's another thought we haven't discussed much: what about Borough Tube Station? It's 8 minutes walking from the tallest building in Western Europe and within close walking distance of a host of new residential facilities about to go into construction. And it has the tiniest little ticket/entrance area of any Tube Station I've experienced in the system.

Will anyone be paying to upgrade this station? Perhaps a new entrance could be built by creating a new mixed-use facility on the site of the ghastly overseas record office?

Guy's street wrote:

It does seem like it might have made sense to redevelop the station BEFORE the Olympics and the Shard.

That was of course the plan. The original project to upgrade the station was called Thameslink 2000 with the completion date being rather rashly included in the project name. Even the current station design was essentially concieved in 1999 and had a planning consent resolved to grant in 2000. Had they got on with it it would have been finished in 2006 before the Shard even had approval. Such is the nature of public works in the UK that massive private projects like the Shard can be concieved 10 years later, designed, approved and implemented before the public ones can get going!!