London is the starting point for a number of motorway routes. The M25 is an orbital motorway which enables vehicles to avoid travelling through central London and is one of the busiest motorways in Europe.
The station was opened as Westminster Bridge in 1868 by the District Railway when the company opened the first section of its line from South Kensington.
As part of the Jubilee Line Extension the station was completely reconstructed to designs by Michael Hopkins & Partners. During the reconstruction, a 39 metres (128 ft) deep void was excavated underneath the old station to house the escalators, lifts and stairs to the deep-level Jubilee line platforms. This made it the deepest ever excavation in central London. One of the most difficult problems the engineers faced was to construct the station around the Circle and District line tracks, which continued in service throughout the construction. The tracks had to be lowered by 300 millimetres (0.98 ft), an operation achieved a few millimetres at a time during the few hours each night that the system was closed. Nothing of the old station remains.
Sir Charles Herbert BresseyCB, CBE (3 January 1874 – 14 April 1951) was a civil engineer and surveyor who specialised in road design. Bressey was Chief Engineer for Roads at the Ministry of Transport from 1921 to 1938. Between 1935 and 1938 he carried out research on road planning and motorway design in preparation for his Highway Development Survey, 1937 for Greater London published in 1938. He served as President of the Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1938-9.
During World War I, Bressey served in the Royal Engineers and spent time in France and Flanders constructing military roads attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel before he left the army in November 1919, when he joined the Ministry of Transport. His 1938 report proposed a series of high capacity motorways radiating outwards from the city and made recommendations for a series of circular routes around the capital and major road improvements in the central area, including tunnels under Kensington Gardens, Victoria Park and Islington High Street and a viaduct from Rotherhithe to Forest Hill. Although World War II delayed the implementation of any of the recommendations, they were subsequently featured in a number of post war reports such as Sir Patrick Abercrombie's County of London Plan and the Greater London Council's 1960s London Ringways scheme and were the origins of plans that were later combined to create London's orbital motorway, the M25.
27 February – Transport for London announces Santander will replace Barclays as the sponsor of its cycle hire scheme. The scheme will be renamed Santander Cycles and Santander will pay £6.25 million per year for seven years.[1]
4 February – Plans are approved to expand facilities at London City Airport to enable an increase from 70,000 flights to 111,000 flights per year.[2]
30 January – After being suspended for three days due to flooding in the tunnels near Farringdon, Thameslink services resume through-running between Farringdon and St Pancras.[3]
12 December – Computer failures at the National Air Traffic Services at Swanwick cause major disruptions to flights in the London area and across the country.[5]