The newly-opened concourse at one of London's busiest railway stations will not meet demand in the long term, the head of Network Rail has said.
Two-thirds of the £1 billion redevelopment at London Bridge station, which was unveiled on Monday, will enable passengers to access all platforms from one level for the first time. Once complete, the concourse will be bigger than the pitch at Wembley Stadium.
But Network Rail (NR) chief Mark Carne, speaking at the opening of the new development, said he was not confident it would meet the needs of passengers in the future as the number of people using the station swells.
"There's no doubt at all that this is not going to meet the demand for 50 years. As the passenger demand continues to grow, we will need to continue to invest and there will need to be significant investment in the railways over the next 20 years just to keep pace," he told the Press Association.
Members of the public try out the new concourse and platforms at London Bridge Station. Photo: PA
Mr Carne said there had been a "staggering" growth in passenger numbers on services that pass through London Bridge of 5% to 6% every year.
"Since this project was originally approved, the passenger numbers have grown by 35%. So it's a constant challenge to keep pace with demand but that's a problem of success and I think Britain's railways are a huge success story."
Over the bank holiday weekend, the project's construction site was moved away from the Southern and future Thameslink platforms to focus on the north of the station, used by Southeastern.
Trains into Charing Cross have now begun calling at London Bridge for the first time since January 2015, but Cannon Street trains stopped serving the station on Friday and will not resume until January 2018.
The south London station has suffered incidents of severe overcrowding since work began four years ago. Reconfiguring the complex track layout around the station has exacerbated the impact of any delays.
NR, which owns and operates Britain's railway tracks, signals and busiest stations, including London Bridge, said the improvements will allow up to 24 Thameslink trains an hour to run through the capital - equivalent to one every two to three minutes - compared with just eight previously.
Members of the public try out the new concourse and platforms at London Bridge Station. Photo: PA
There will also be more connections to Gatwick and Luton Airports, and beyond to Peterborough and Cambridge.
Mr Carne said he was "very excited" about the changes and apologised to passengers who had been affected by the delays.
"I would like to thank passengers actually for their patience over the last couple of years that we've been doing this but I hope that they will now really see that it's been worth it because this is a real transformation."
The station's transformation is part of a £7 billion programme to improve the Thameslink network for people travelling across London. It was originally called Thameslink 2000, but, after series of delays, the project is now expected to be completed in 2018.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel