Preparing Hanover Square for Crossrail
Hanover Square is one of London’s finest Georgian garden squares, located in the heart of Mayfair and surrounded by mainly commercial properties and institutions, with key retail links to Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the east and Bond Street to the west. The Square and gardens normally attract large numbers of visitors, but over recent years have been part of the construction site for the Crossrail Bond Street station, with major redevelopment of several of the large buildings in the area to create new office and residential space.
The Crossrail works have provided the opportunity for a new vision to be developed for Hanover Square, to deliver an ‘exceptional arrival experience in Westminster from the Crossrail station and provide a high quality setting for its new and historic buildings. The public realm will be functional, beautiful and memorable, balancing use by pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles. The gardens will be restored to create a special oasis space for all those who live, visit and work in the area’ (Publica, 2015). The proposed scheme is due to be constructed before the opening of the new Bond Street Crossrail station in 2018.
NRP was commissioned by City of Westminster (through FM Conway as service provider) to provide services including traffic data collection, traffic engineering and road safety design, traffic modelling (LinSig and VISSIM) to the rigorous standards of the Transport for London Model Auditing Process, kerbside waiting and loading design, vehicle, cyclist movement, servicing and access strategy and design, pedestrian movement and detailed crossing strategy and design, and public consultation and business case development support.
