Westminster (London Underground)
Westminster is a London Underground tunnel station in the City of Westminster . It is in the Travelcard tariff zone 1 under Parliament Square . There are numerous attractions nearby including the Palace of Westminster , Westminster Abbey , St Margaret's Church , Whitehall , Downing Street and the London Eye . In 2014 there were 26.03 million passengers.
The station consists of two different parts. A few meters below the surface are the 1868 put into operation Seitenbahnsteige the subsurface railways Circle Line and the District Line . The platforms of the Jubilee Line , a tube railway , have been located at a depth of 32 meters since 1999 . This makes Westminster one of the deepest stations in the entire underground network.
history
Upper level (lower pavement)
On December 24, 1868, the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, predecessor of the District Line) opened a station when it started operating a steam-powered line from South Kensington . The station, initially known as Westminster Bridge , was the eastern boundary of the MDR until May 30, 1870, the cut ended at a concrete wall buffered with wooden sleepers. The station is approached in the west through an open-cut tunnel below the road structure of Broad Sanctuary and diagonally under Parliament Square. Under the Broad Sanctuary, the tunnel runs close to Westminster Abbey and St Margaret's Church; For this reason, special care was required not to undermine the foundations when digging in loose rock.
The original station building was a temporary structure above the tracks. The platforms were equipped with separate awnings instead of the wide-span glass roof that is usual at other MDR stations. A corridor from Bridge Street and an underpass under the street provided access to the station. On May 30, 1870, the line was extended in an easterly direction under the Victoria Embankment to Blackfriars station. In South Kensington the MDR had a connection to the route of the Metropolitan Railway (MR, later Metropolitan Line ). Although both companies competed, their trains ran on the other company's tracks. This Inner Circle was a kind of forerunner of the Circle Line . From 1872, MDR and MR offered further ring route services ( Middle Circle and Outer Circle ). In 1900 the Middle Circle was abandoned, eight years later the Outer Circle as well . Electrical operation began on July 1, 1905. In 1907, the station was given its current name, Westminster .
In the mid-1890s, the station entrance was integrated into a larger building. In 1922, a new canopy- designed entrance was built on Bridge Street by Charles Holden , and two years later he made changes to the east entrance on the Embankment. These were the first of many other projects by Holden for the London Electric Railway (one of the predecessor companies of Transport for London ). The platforms were renovated with new tiles - in the tile pattern in green, blue, black and white that Holden used in numerous other stations of the era and is still visible in the neighboring station St. James's Park . In 1949, the Inner Circle operated by the Metropolitan Line was given its own label as the Circle Line.
Between the end of 1962 and the beginning of 1964, the eastern ends of the platforms were lengthened to enable the use of longer eight-car trains. Work included the careful widening of the tunnels under the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at New Scotland Yard. The Unterpflaster station was completely rebuilt in the 1990s to create access to the new, deep-set platforms of the Jubilee Line . While the train was in operation, the tracks had to be lowered by 30 centimeters. This happened millimeter by millimeter in numerous small steps during the short night breaks.
Lower level (tube track)
When the first section of the Jubilee Line was planned in the 1970s, the second leg of the line should lead from the terminus Charing Cross east to the City of London , Woolwich and Thamesmead . Westminster would therefore not be on the planned route. But the redesign of Docklands aroused the need to provide transport infrastructure in east and south-east London. This resulted in a change in the planning of the Jubilee Line, which should lead via Westminster and connect the new urban development areas with the stations Waterloo and London Bridge . Since several surrounding buildings had to be demolished anyway, the complete renovation of the underground station was carried out together with the construction of the Portcullis House above . The architecture firm Michael Hopkins & Partners was responsible for both projects .
The construction of the new section of the station comprised the excavation of a 39 meter deep cavity below the sub-paving station in order to install the escalators , elevators and stairs down to the platforms of the Jubilee Line. The cavity was the deepest shaft ever dug in central London. The excavation took place between thick reinforced concrete diaphragm walls , which were braced horizontally for greater stability. Below Bridge Street, the platform tunnel leading west is located under the east leading one. For the stability of the foundation of the clock tower of the parliament building (popularly known as Big Ben ), the depth of the cavity and the small distance to the tunnels posed a considerable risk. To protect the foundation and to control the subsidence of the subsoil , several 50 meter long steel pipes rammed into the ground around and below Big Ben. These tubes were equipped with a control system with which mortar was injected in order to compensate for the settlement of the clock tower determined by detailed measurements. Between January 1996 and September 1997 a total of 22 injections were necessary. The procedure limited the movement of the clock tower to an acceptable maximum of 35 millimeters. Without the mortar injection, the movement would have been at least 120 millimeters, which would have caused cracks in the tower and the parliament building. The new platforms of the Jubilee Line opened on December 22, 1999, but the trains had been on the section between Green Park and Waterloo since November 20, 1999.
The interior of the station looks very strict: gigantic concrete columns intersect with 17 escalators, five elevators and mezzanine levels made of stainless steel. This creates the feeling of being in a huge spaceship. As in the other tunnel stations in the Jubilee Line extension, the platforms in Westminster are also equipped with platform screen doors to improve air circulation and increase passenger safety. With his design for this cave-like station complex, architect Michael Hopkins won several prestigious prizes, including the 2001 Stirling Prize , which is awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects for particularly remarkable buildings.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ COUNTS - 2014 - annual entries & exits. (PDF, 44 kB) (No longer available online.) Transport for London, 2015, archived from the original on February 21, 2016 ; accessed on December 29, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ A b Mike Horne: The District Line . Capital Transport, London 2006, ISBN 1-85414-292-5 , pp. 9 .
- ^ Edward Walford: Underground London: Its railways, subways and sewers . In: Walter Thornbury (Ed.): Old and New London . tape 5 . Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London 1878, p. 224-242 ( online ).
- ^ M. Horne: The District Line. 2006, p. 16.
- ↑ Eitan Karol: Charles Holden: Architect . Shaun Tyas, Donington 2007, ISBN 978-1-900289-81-8 , pp. 271-272 .
- ^ M. Horne: The District Line. 2006, p. 90.
- ^ A b Robert Mair, David Harris: Innovative engineering to control Big Ben's tilt. (PDF, 748 kB) (No longer available online.) In: Igenia. Royal Academy of Engineering , August 2001, pp. 23-27 , archived from the original on April 10, 2017 ; accessed on July 28, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ John R. Day, John Reed: The Story of London's Underground . Capital Transport, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-85414-316-7 , pp. 183 .
- ↑ JR Day, J. Reed: The Story of London's Underground. 2008, p. 201.
- ^ Westminster Underground station. Hopkins Architects, accessed July 28, 2014 .
- ^ Portcullis House. Hopkins Architects, accessed July 28, 2014 .
- ↑ JR Day, J. Reed: The Story of London's Underground. 2008, p. 213.
- ^ Mike Horne: The Jubilee Line . Capital Transport, London 2000, ISBN 1-85414-220-8 , pp. 65 .
| Previous station | Transport for London | Next station |
|---|---|---|
| St. James's Park |
|
Embankment |
| St. James's Park |
|
Embankment |
| Green Park |
|
Waterloo |
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 4 " N , 0 ° 7 ′ 30" W.