New entrance opens at Finsbury Park railway station

A new entrance that will replace an old 1970s extension has opened at Finsbury Park station.

(c) TfL

The station at Finsbury Park is a major interchange, serving two tube lines and two mainline services, and is also the primary connection between mainline and tube services before mainline trains reach central London.

As a result, it’s the third-busiest station outside central London, with over 30 million customers using the station in 2018. It’s also a station that has developed piecemeal over the decades and is rich in long narrow tunnels to get around, and lacked much in the way of step-free access.

Thanks in part to a large housing development, a new entrance has been built which included new lifts.

The original plans were to upgrade the old entrance, on Wells Terrace, but these were changed to flip the entrance around onto a new side road being built by the housing development. For people getting to where the old entrance was, the walking distance is not noticeably longer, but now along wider outdoors pavements than a narrow indoor corridor.

(c) Planning documents

The old entrance closed in July 2016, so it’s been a long wait for the replacement, and a lot of overcrowding at the two remaining entrances. It’s been a longer wait than hoped for as the entrance had been due to open in April 2019 but finally opened on 17 December 2019. The delay was put down to problems with the developers completing works on their side of the site.

Also, at the moment, the new side street leading towards the old entrance is itself still closed for a few more months while the developers complete their works.

(c) TfL