On Sunday, Wood Lane station on the Hammersmith & City line opened. The first station built on an existing section of the Tube for over 70 years, Wood Lane sits between Latimer Road and Shepherd's Bush Market, and lies a Blue Peter badge's throw away from Television Centre.
The station is another piece in TfL's plan for ferrying the monied classes to Westfield, joining the all-new Shepherd's Bush Overground station, a refurbished Shepherd's Bush Central line ticket hall, newly-renamed Shepherd's Bush Market (it seems they didn't use any of our suggestions), alongside a new bus station and an impending transport hub. The £1.6bn shopping centre throws its doors open on October 30th, mere weeks after the IMF, normally a sober minded institution, warned that our economic system faces "systemic meltdown". Will the wealth-attracting designer boutiques moving in this month brave the impending storm, or could Westfield be less-than fondly remembered as the Noughties equivalent of Tobacco Dock? Time will tell.
