The soul-melting purgatory that is Bank station is now halfway to being made a hell of a lot more tolerable.
Major renovation works — including a new southbound Northern line tunnel, a new station building in Cannon Street, and 40% more overall station capacity — are now halfway completed.
Around 120,000 customers use the station every weekday morning, of which over 50,000 switch to another line — meaning that the complex has degenerated into an unholy funk of confused, sweaty commuters.
One of the major boons of TfL's overhaul — due for completion in 2022 — is a brand new southbound Northern line platform. That means the current southbound platform can be turned into a corridor (linking to the new platform via a travelator). The extra space will be as refreshingly welcome as a Calippo during a particularly fearsome hangover.
However, although TfL says that most of the construction works have been completed in isolation from the existing station to keep disruption to customers to a minimum, you may have noticed that parts of the station are not looking their best right now.
Recently, denuded platform walls and unnerving sightings of large congregations of greywyrms are among the clues that things may get worse before they get better.
Mysterious doors have also begun to materialise.
