Property News: Work on new Behind the boards, work on new Crossrail and Tube stations is about to enter its next phase

Published: 03 February 2011
by DAN CARRIER

THE massive building project to create a new Tube and Crossrail station in the heart of the West End is entering a new phase as air shafts for tunnels and foundations for ticket halls approach completion. 

With builders taking over a huge site on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street, anyone heading through the centre of the West End will have noticed the massive work currently under way.  

The new Tube stop, an enlargement programme to make the ticket area more suitable for the 21st century, will be open two years earlier than Crossrail.

London Underground’s Ben Coultate and Crossrail’s Stephen Deaville have been overseeing how the various elements of these two huge civil engineering projects meet in the middle. 

Mr Coultate said the sense of space at the new Tottenham Court Road station will be similar to that currently enjoyed in the new ticket halls in King’s Cross. 

London Underground have already commissioned French conceptual artist Daniel Buren to ­liven up the space. However, lovers of the mosaics  by Eduardo Paolozzi that currently greet Tube passengers will be pleased to hear they too will be used – staff have already re­moved sections and made sure they can recreate exactly his colours and textures in case are damaged during the rebuild. 

Mr Coultate revealed that Tottenham Court Road’s basic layout had been up for a major re-vamp for many years. In the 1930s two stations were essentially pushed together to create the current Tube stop – previously they had been separate Northern and Central line stations, run by two different rail companies.

“They were never designed to carry the number of passengers who use it today,” said Mr Coultate. “There are around 150,000 people a day or about one million a week. It simply doesn’t have the space. We have been wanting to do it up for a long time.”

With Crossrail being signed off by the previous Labour government, it gave London Underground added impetus to start work. The history of the project goes back to the late 1980s. Political wrangling – Crossrail was dropped by the Transport Select Committee in 1993 – meant that the scheme was essentially mothballed until a business study took place again in 2000. In 2004, the decision to press ahead with the job of tunnelling out six million cubic metres of clay  beneath London from west to east was taken and work began.

At Tottenham Court Road Tube station, planners were faced with  myriad problems to overcome. They would need to use a large corner site with such iconic buildings as the Astoria on it, build a new ticket hall and underground station in what is Europe‘s busiest shopping street, pick their way past scores of underground pipes and cables, and then build a cavernous new ticket hall, as well as a whole new Crossrail station. It would mean sinking 900 massive concrete foundation piles for the Tube station alone.

Mr Coultate added: “At any time around 150 builders are working on site, and we recognise our work is taking place right in the centre of London and that causes disruption. But this is an important project for the long-term.”

Beneath the West End, the Central line lies 20 metres below ground, while the Northern line is 25 metres down. Crossrail will snake above them both, meaning a massive survey of all basements and foundations was needed. 

The Crossrail station includes one kilometre of platforms, and to carve out the required space, thousands of tons of earth will be moved and a tunnel-boring machine similar to one that created the Channel Tunnel, will also be used.

Above ground, Islington architects Stanton Williams won a competition to design a new public area. While new glass entrances shaped like wonky pyramids have been designed, there are now plans to pedestrianise parts of St Giles High Street under Centre Point to create a new area linking Covent Garden, Renzo Piano’s new development in St Giles, and Charing Cross Road. 

Crossrail should be completed by 2018, while the London Underground section should be ready by 2016.