Regular visitors to this site will be aware of the long standing problems for Oyster and contactless users at Finsbury Park. Initially the Underground station was partly gated and partly open with validators, while the National Rail station was completely open with validators. In recent years London Underground sought to secure their station with gates at all entrances while Network Rail installed gates on the platform islands for 3/4 and 7/8. This seemed to be something of a half-hearted approach given that trains do serve the other platforms, especially 1/2. The confusion reached it’s peak in 2019 when the new gated Underground entrance to Goodwin Street opened with a link inside the paid area to the National Rail subway (which is outside the paid area). Covid brought temporary relief as a one-way system blocked all internal links between the two stations, but things are now back to pre-covid confusion.
However, work is about to start which will resolve these issues once and for all. Starting next week (18th October) hoardings will be going up at the Station Place entrance with most of the work taking place overnights. Early in November the waiting area on platforms 3/4 will be removed. Week commencing 29th November will see the refurbished ticket gates commissioned at the Station Place entrance and work will start excavating lift shafts for platforms 3/4 and 7/8. The majority of this work is part of the access for all project which is due to be completed in November 2022.
Reading between the lines I hope I’m right in saying that both stations will thus be fully gated by the beginning of December. The validators in the subway will no longer be required meaning that interchange between Underground and National Rail will be completely within the gated dual station.
Validators will still be needed, as many passengers need to switch from Oyster / Contactless to paper tickets or rail smart cards (or vice versa). The last we heard, the locations of these were under discussion but not yet finalised.
Thanks Mary,
That’s good to know. I had wondered whether the contactless extensions to WGC and Hertford North would render their usage too low to be worth maintaining.
The gateline at the National Rail entrance is now operational and the gateline on Platforms 7/8 has been removed.