Londoners who have for decades benefited from having the capital’s coach travel hub based centrally, look set to suffer a massive inconvenience at the start of their journeys in future, if the land owners get their way and flog off Victoria Coach Station in a £150million property deal.
Victoria Coach Station: 3.3 acres in Belgravia, worth around £150m
Victoria Coach Station has operated since 1932, and now is used by 14million passengers every year, who travel on 250,000 coaches to 1,200 destinations around Britain and 400 in continental Europe.
The Art Deco terminal building has been Grade II-listed since 2014 and could not be demolished, but it is owned by a property company run for one of Britain’s richest men, the Duke of Westminster, and according to a report in the Standard, the 3.3 acre site in the heart of Belgravia is ripe for redevelopment.
Transport for London, together with Westminster City Council, are considering alternative sites, including Royal Oak, near Paddington – which would be a significant additional schlep across central London for anyone from Croydon setting off on a long-distance coach journey.
“We know that we need to adapt operations at Victoria Coach Station as the area is likely to change,” TfL said this week.
“No decisions have been made on a location and we are looking at a wide range of options across London that ensure the city is adequately served by coaches, while allowing them to operate more efficiently and reduce both pollution and road danger.”
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Everyone knows the existing site is the most efficient location. It is sited next to major transport hubs.
However, TfL, is now saying they need a site that allows the coaches to operate “more efficiently and reduce both pollution and road danger.” Rather than lobbying the current owner or undertaking a compulsory purchase of the site, they are going down the blinkered route of health and safety and efficient. There goes another piece of transport infrastructure over the Cliff courtesy of the idiots who brought us the Garden Bridge.
I have been thinking about where a new coach station could be sited, and the answer is not at all easy. As Sebastian above says, Victoria Coach station (VCS) is located close to a major transport hub, Victoria Railway Station, which itself is well connected to the Underground Central Line and Victoria Lines, which give quick and direct East to West and Northward connections to other London train termini.. It would be hard to beat the location for coach journeys outwards to all points of the compass –Wales and W of England, Scotland, Midlands, N and S England, but perhaps not so easy from the East.
Likewise, it works for the passenger who has arrived in London, and wants to travel on to their destination in London by bus , tube or train.
The problem is that, if that single termnal were moved, for example, to North London, a huge amount of journey time would result from that decision for coaches and their passengers going Southwards.
However, coaches take a huge amount of time, once they get to the outskirts of London, to get into Victoria. The amount of diesel pollution caused by all these coaches crawling through the narrow streets of West London must be collosal .
I am not sure if a significant number coach passengers arriving at VCS change coaches for an onward journey? If few people change, instead of having one central terminus, one could have 4 terminals, one in each of N, E S and W London. These would have the advantage of being closer to the London ends of the motorways like the M1, M4 etc etc. The slow slog for coaches and passengers and drivers through inner London would be eliminated. — so pollution would be lessened, and congestion reduced.
My view is that ALL coaches, buses and delivery lorries operating in Central London should be powered by hybrid, electric or low-polluting fuels, at least, for their Inner London leg of each journey. As this happens, air quality should get better, so the “pollution downside” of the central location at Victoria would be lessened. But the congestion issue remains..
Should it stay or should it go? and if the latter, where? Or would a multi-terminal , one in the East, one in the North, West and South, be better?