{"id":66160,"date":"2016-01-07T13:58:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T13:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=ee343b86d901d277d75b1ef39325df5f"},"modified":"2016-01-07T13:58:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T13:58:23","slug":"news-story-transport-secretary-tours-700-million-victoria-tube-station-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=66160","title":{"rendered":"News story: Transport Secretary tours \u00a3700 million Victoria tube station upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin toured Victoria tube station today (7 January 2016) to see progress on work worth \u00a3700 million that will improve over 2 million journeys a week.<\/p>\n<p>Transport for London (<abbr title=\"Transport for London\">TfL<\/abbr>) is currently upgrading the station, one of the busiest in London which serves passengers on 3 major tube lines, commuters coming into London from across the south-east and tourists heading to or from Gatwick airport.<\/p>\n<p>The Transport Secretary travelled to the station in the cab of one of the 191 British-built Bombardier trains being rolled out across the tube network. This week saw the addition of the 150th new S-Stock tube train, increasing capacity by as much as 25%, improving passenger information and offering significant energy savings. His journey started on a brand new electric bus \u2013 part of a growing fleet of greener buses cutting emissions across the capital.<\/p>\n<p>Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A transformed Victoria will be a world-class hub ensuring quicker, easier journeys for passengers in London and the millions of people across the south of England who travel into the station.<\/p>\n<p class=\"last-child\">Carrying out this immense project while millions of people a week pass through this station is an impressive feat of engineering and showcases exactly the sort of high-level skills helping transform our transport network across the country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Improvement works at Victoria tube station are due to be completed in 2018 and will ease congestion at the station and improve accessibility making journeys quicker and easier.<\/p>\n<p>A new underground northern ticket hall at the junction of Bressenden Place and Victoria Street is due to open later this year. The final plans include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a larger southern ticket hall<\/li>\n<li>9 new escalators<\/li>\n<li>a new interchange tunnel connecting the 2 ticket halls<\/li>\n<li>new lifts increasing step free access<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The London bus network carries 2.4 billion journeys a year &#8211; over half of all bus journeys made in England.<\/p>\n<p>Last week the Department for Transport announced that London would benefit from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/hundreds-of-cleaner-buses-for-englands-towns-and-city-centres\">latest round of the Clean Bus Fund<\/a>, providing <abbr title=\"Transport for London\">TfL<\/abbr> with \u00a3500,000 to retrofit 50 buses with green technology to cut harmful emissions by up to 90%.<\/p>\n<p>This continues the Department for Transport\u2019s commitment to improve air quality in the capital and brings the total number of <abbr title=\"Transport for London\">TfL<\/abbr>\u2019s retrofitted greener buses to 900 since the fund was launched in 2011.<\/p>\n<div class=\"contact \" id=\"contact_1016\">\n<div class=\"content\">\n<h3>Local transport media enquiries<\/h3>\n<div class=\"vcard contact-inner\">\n<div class=\"email-url-number\">\n<p class=\"tel\">\n              <span class=\"type\">Press enquiries<\/span><br \/>\n              020 7944 3118\n            <\/p>\n<p class=\"tel\">\n              <span class=\"type\">Out of hours<\/span><br \/>\n              020 7944 4292\n            <\/p>\n<p class=\"tel\">\n              <span class=\"type\">Public enquiries<\/span><br \/>\n              0300 330 3000\n            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Patrick McLoughlin sees scale of improvements that will transform over 2 million journeys a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}