The Olympics Are Coming - Let’s Change Everything!
In the now just beginning saga of using the 2012 Olympics as an excuse for every sort of silly plan to reorganize East London comes the plan of one Cllr Abdal Ullah, Labour councillor.
It seem that Ullah would like to rename the Aldgate East tube station to the “Brick Lane Tube Station”, in order to “boost both the morale of the area and be a boon for tourism“. Admitting that doing so would be ridiculously expensive, he proposed waiting until TFL were ready to replace signs and maps in 2011, a year before the Olympics.
What I don’t understand is how renaming a tube station is going to have an appreciable impact on tourism in the face of the Olympics coming to town? Are more people going to come see the Olympic park via Brick Lane station than would have via Aldgate East?
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9 responses so far ↓
1 John Disbrow // Feb 12, 2007 at 6:04 am
Seems like a pretty good idea actually. Speaking as a frequent tourist Brick Lane immediately brings something to mind that Aldgate East does not. What I don’t know is if there are other names that might be appropriate or about the real costs if done when the man suggested.
2 Jon Tillman // Feb 12, 2007 at 8:47 am
Perhaps yes, what I don’t understand is how it is supposed to ‘boost tourism’ on top of the Games already being all over east London. It seemed kind of comical to me is all.
3 Gene Martin // Feb 12, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Being a frequent tourist also, I have to second the idea. By now, I know how to get to Brick Lane, but earlier, I had to figure out how to get there. Since all guide books seem to suggest Brick Lane for a good curry meal, it would be easier for tourists to find it if there was a tube stop by that name. People know to go to Leicester Sq. for theatre tickets, and the tube stop is named that. If the cost to change is so high, it might be OK to delay, but I think it would be in the long term interest to officially state that it will be changed when the next big round of changes come about before the Olympics.
4 Jon Tillman // Feb 12, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Those are really good points, and I think I have to concede at this point. If TFL is going to go changing everything anyway, maybe it would be a good idea to rename the station…
5 diamond geezer // Feb 13, 2007 at 12:06 am
But Aldgate East station isn’t actually in Brick Lane. It would be misleading to rename the station just for the benefit of tourists at the expense of local people.
What next? Harrods station instead of Knightsbridge, maybe, or Portobello Road instead of Notting Hill?
Of course there used to be a station in Brick Lane. It was called Shoreditch, and they closed it last year. That’s the one they should have renamed. Bit late now though.
6 Jon Tillman // Feb 13, 2007 at 9:36 am
…and Shoreditch was one of the least-used stations on the tube - less than 1,500 people a day if I remember correctly. Which makes it kind of odd to replace it with Shoreditch High Street, though perhaps that should be the Brick Lane station…but with Shoreditch closed, I suppose that Aldgate East is the closest station, though it only beats out Liverpool Street by a nose - perhaps we should rename it to the Brick Lane Rail / Tube Station. It would definately boost tourism to gain a stop on the Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines…
7 diamond geezer // Feb 13, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I suspect that tourists find it much more useful that Liverpool Street is named after the mainline railway terminus nextdoor than they would if it were named after Brick Lane (which is ten minutes walk away).
In this case I’m all for keeping the status quo. Other tourist attractions (Buckingham Palace, Carnaby Street, the Natural History Museum, etc) survive perfectly well without stations named after them. Where would it all end?
8 Jon Tillman // Feb 13, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I agree with you, geezer. I was trying (and it seems failing) to poke some fun at the whole mess by pointing out that Aldgate East is not that much more convenient to most of the interesting bits of Brick Lane than Liverpool St. was, so we might as well rename it to while we’re at it.
I now have it in my head to publish a “revised” tube map with all of the stations renamed for guide-book sights nearest them…
p.s. - Having ended a sentence with “geezer” referring to another person, do I now have to date an Essex girl? These things are so confusing to us transplants
9 John Disbrow // Feb 14, 2007 at 8:19 am
One reason I like the original politician’s proposal for a name change is that it was easy in my early tourist years to get confused by the reuse of the name I was looking for as in Waterloo East, Aldgate East and the three flavors of Kensington. Distinct names help a stranger. I still remember the panic I felt when I first saw Waterloo East and was afraid, with no time to contemplate a map, that if I guessed wrong about this being or not being the real Waterloo, I would miss my real train.
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