Third New Station for W12
We also look at traffic, parking and cranes on Wood Lane
Wood Lane Tube station on the Hammersmith and City line opened up to passengers early on Sunday (12 October) in time for the first train. Situated at the junction of Wood Lane and Ariel way, the brand new station is the first to be built on an existing Underground line for more than 70 years.
However, as building work continues around the station, finding your way in is a minor challenge. Crucially, though, the station is fully accessible to wheelchair-and pushchair-users with a ramp leading up to the entrance and a lift going up to the platforms.
But for car drivers, the north-bound side of Wood Lane remains closed and the building work continues, causing ongoing traffic and parking problems.
“The traffic chaos means it takes twice as long as it used to to get anywhere," said Giles Phillips of Wood Lane's Albertine Wine Bar. He said parking was a major issue: "If you move your car, your parking space is immediately taken by a contractor’s van. At one point, at about 11am one morning, we counted 24 contractors’ vans parked in the parking bays. It’s perfectly legal, but inconvenient,” he said.
The Patels in Greenwood Newsagents next door told a similar story: “We pay for a parking permit but we can’t find anywhere to park. We used to stop outside to unload but now we have to park far away and carry everything,” they said. Both businesses said parking and unloading problems had been aggravated by the fact that a single yellow line outside their shops had turned into a double yellow line when the road was resurfaced.
The roads immediately surrounding the Westfield site are in parking zone G, where visitors can use pay and display tickets. Despite requests from residents, there are only very limited periods when the parking bays are kept exclusively for residents’ use. The Council say they will be carrying out parking surveys before and after Westfield opens before holding a full consultation with local people in late spring.
As well as parking problems, the Patels said the closure of the north-bound carriageway of Wood Lane had had an impact on their takings: “We are losing money, especially in the mornings. People used to stop and buy cigarettes on the way to work. Now they go a different way,” they said.
It is still not clear precisely when Wood Lane - which was part-closed to allow Thames Water to replace the Victorian mains - is set to re-open to two-way traffic. The Council say this will happen “before the shopping centre opens in October”. They say the road will be closed completely over three more nights for more resurfacing work.
Recently, the southern part of Wood Lane had to be closed to traffic for an entire weekend so that two tower cranes could be removed from the Westfield site. But the disruption appeared to come with little warning and the road closure was not mentioned in the Council’s ‘Roadworks Bulletin’.
The Council say they consulted TfL and the emergency services over the closure and say it is Westfield’s responsibility to contact residents. “Letters informing local residents about the work taking place were sent out seven days prior to the activity,” Westfield told us.
Albertine’s Giles Phillips said he had received no such warning: “I didn’t get a letter that they were going to close it (Wood Lane). I think that’s the second time they’ve done that,” he said.
While the road was closed, the pavement remained open to pedestrians, separated from the crane by a fence. In the light of a crane accident in Waterloo at the end of September - completley unrelated to Westfield - in which a woman waiting at a bus stop was injured by an item falling from a crane, we asked the Council and Westfield to reassure local residents:
“To minimise disruption to the area, the pedestrian walkway remained open on one side of the road. The safety of our residents is paramount and we made sure that Westfield and their contractors carried out proper safety measures while the crane was being moved. At no point were any pedestrians in danger,” said Councillor Nicholas Botterill, deputy leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council and cabinet member for environment.
A Westfield spokesperson said: “The work was entirely safe and was granted permission by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the police and Transport for London. Westfield is not planning any further closures of Wood Lane. We always endeavour to ensure residents are alerted to any works taking place and we would like to thank the local community for their continued patience and co-operation throughout the development.”
Yasmine Estaphanos
12 October 2008
