Improving the Flow of People: the Victoria Station Redesign

Operations Management

Case Analysis: Improving the Flow of People: The Victoria Station Redesign

The Victoria Underground train station requires a complete redesign of its physical space in order to reduce current overcrowding conditions. The following analysis outlines the station’s operating system and inherent capacities and offers evidence to support this conclusion. The evidence is based on the supposition that the primary bottleneck of the system – limited platform space – cannot be effectively modified absent major reconstruction.

Improving the Flow of People: The Victoria Station Redesign examines the severe overcrowding problem present within London’s Victoria Underground Station in 1996. Most obtrusive during the morning rush hour, the conditions have required the station’s operator, Transport for London (TfL), to close station entrances in order to allow enough space for exiting riders. With ridership expected to increase approximately 12% during the following ten years (case, page 1), TfL sought to determine whether relatively inexpensive modifications were feasible to relieve the congestion without spending £100s of millions to completely redesign the station.

The station’s processes entail two distinct but interrelated systems: customers entering the train station and those exiting the station. The entering customer process entails several steps as illustrated in figure 1. The multiple entry points permit ample access to the system via the ticket hall. Although the secondary flow is a viable means of customer movement, it is not utilized (case, Table 2). Customers utilizing the primary flow are required to pass through one of six access gates and descend one available escalator before arriving at their platform to await train arrival. Expectedly, exiting customers following the primary flow essentially use a reverse process as illustrated in figure 2. Exiting customers however, are afforded two ascending escalators to the gate area and may exit through one of ten gates.

The case focuses on entering customer flow (15, 898 people) and highlights the 82% capacity utilization rate at the gate-line and similar sub-capacity conditions at other stages during the 15 minute peak-of-peak period spanning 8:30-8:45 (case, page 3). Indeed, analysis of the entering customer flow during this period indicates only two stages operating above capacity: the descending escalator and the northbound platform at 123% and 103% capacity utilization, respectively (given 0.8 sq. meters/person). Although the escalator capacity is problematic, the seemingly innocuous overutilization of platform space is further compounded by exiting customers.

Analysis of the problem must take into account capacities of stages whereat both entering and exiting customer flows converge. Furthermore, although customers entering the system may be measured “per minute,” those exiting the system do so at fixed intervals as trains arrive causing a “surge”