Which station is named after the longest road?

[sprunt]

(I wasn't sure where to put this thread, plumped for here because it's about station names - obviously feel free to move it if it's more appropriate elsewhere.)

So, taken from the thread about the potential renaming of White Hart Lane station:

Which is a terrible way to name stations (though there are worse examples than this). Where on White Hart Lane is it at? The middle? The High Road (A1010) end? or the High Road (A105) end? I don't want to go "7 White Hart Lane, that must be near the station" and take the train to White Hart Lane station, when the place I want to go to turns out to be a 40 minute/just shy of 2 mile walk away in Wood Green.

Are there worse examples? I can't think of any, so as it says in the title, which street that has a station named after it is the longest, thus making the station name the least useful?

 

[telstarbox]

(Harringay) Green Lanes is 6.3 miles long.

Nearby, the north corner of Finsbury Park is about 1 mile from the station of the same name and I suppose for Hyde Park Corner you could ask "which one?"

To play devil's advocate on any of these, the longer streets are likely to be more well-known as places than the shorter unique streets - Williamson Road or Wells Terrace are quite obscure...

 

[si404]

Finchley Road/Finchley Road & Frognal - The road is 4.3 miles. St John's Wood, Swiss Cottage and Golders Green stations are also on the road, adding to the problem of naming a station after a road.

 

[Ianno87]

London Road as in London Road (Guildford) appears to stretch a very considerable distance north east from the station.

 

[krus_aragon]

If you'll allow subways, then Toronto's in with a good shout.

The station at the intersection of the Yonge-University line and the Bloor-Danforth line is known as "Bloor" on the Yonge line, and "Yonge" on the Bloor line. (The station as a whole is generally referred to as Bloor-Yonge on maps etc.)

Yonge Street itself sat in the record books as the "longest street in the world" (over a thousand miles) for most of the 20th Century, but these days the name's only used for the first 35 mile section to Bradford, before another 20 mile stretch north of Bradford.

 

[Wirewiper]

Tottenham Court Road - as well as its eponymous station it also has Northern Line stations at Goodge Street and Warren Street.

 

[si404]

To play devil's advocate on any of these, the longer streets are likely to be more well-known as places than the shorter unique streets - Williamson Road or Wells Terrace are quite obscure...

Yes, if I listed stations named after roads that were worse in my OP, I'd also have listed those that have the opposite problem of being short and obscure.

The problem is generally naming stations after roads. The road has to be famous enough to be a definer of the locale and also short enough that the station is the right one for all of it.

 

[Mikey C]

Finchley Road/Finchley Road & Frognal - The road is 4.3 miles. St John's Wood, Swiss Cottage and Golders Green stations are also on the road, adding to the problem of naming a station after a road.

It also causes confusion as the area around Finchley Road station is now generally named Finchley Road as well!

 

[bramling]

(I wasn't sure where to put this thread, plumped for here because it's about station names - obviously feel free to move it if it's more appropriate elsewhere.)

So, taken from the thread about the potential renaming of White Hart Lane station:



Are there worse examples? I can't think of any, so as it says in the title, which street that has a station named after it is the longest, thus making the station name the least useful?

This won’t take anywhere near top place, but Goldhawk Road is at one end of quite a long road.

Mauldeth Road is perhaps another.

Neither of these are much of an issue as most users will have local knowledge. Something like Tottenham Court Road or Holborn is perhaps more of an issue.

Surprised no one has mentioned Edgware Road yet. No obvious alternative name there. In London that might well be the worst.

 

[si404]

Surprised no one has mentioned Edgware Road yet. No obvious alternative name there. In London that might well be the worst.

The Edgware Road has various local names along bits of it - beginning with Maida Vale north of the Regent's Canal. The road, therefore is technically not that long - only about a mile.

The SSL station isn't on the actual road - it's on Chapel Street (so Marylebone Chapel as an alt name?). The Bakerloo line one could be named Paddington Green - that alternative name is pretty obvious.

 

[Ianno87]

Mauldeth Road is perhaps another.

*Pedant alert*

Relatively little is Mauldeth Road; by far the greater length (a good two thirds of it) is actually Mauldeth Road West.

 

[swt_passenger]

Darlington’s “North Road” station, although seemingly named for the adjacent “North Road” which is the present A167, this was formerly the A1 and the original London to Edinburgh route of the (Great) North Road?

 

[MadMac]

Darlington’s “North Road” station, although seemingly named for the adjacent “North Road” which is the present A167, this was formerly the A1 and the original London to Edinburgh route of the (Great) North Road?

Oddly, I was just thinking of "Old North Road" station.....

 

[Milkboy]

Duke Street and Argyle Street in Glasgow are both far too short to win any prize but may be worth a mention, at least in a Scottish context. Both have laid claim to being "the longest street [i.e. thoroughfare with Street in the name] in Britain", though neither now runs for its full original length.

Duke Street station is not much use for either extremity of the street itself - indeed, the western end is just a few steps away from High Street station, while the eastern end is at Parkhead Cross (nearest station Carntyne, a fair trek away).

Argyle Street station is at the eastern end of its namesake - the western end, if you ignore the gap in the middle left by the building of the M8 motorway in the 1960s, reaches all the way across the River Kelvin, where Partick is the closest station (or Kelvinhall on the Subway).

Mind you, neither station has much competition in Scotland, where the only other Street stations still in existence, I think, are Glasgow Queen, Paisley Gilmour and Golf (and the only other even bearing the name of a thoroughfare is Alexandra Parade). Clearly someone realised that naming stations after roads probably wasn't a great idea!

 

[vlad]

Darlington’s “North Road” station, although seemingly named for the adjacent “North Road” which is the present A167, this was formerly the A1 and the original London to Edinburgh route of the (Great) North Road?

You've beaten me. I was thinking of Manchester Piccadilly, which is named after (part of) the A6.

Having said that, Oxford Road and Deansgate are both longer than you'd expect, with the eponymous stations right at one end of the roads.

 

[matt_world2004]

Uxbridge Road Station and that road stretched from shepherd's Bush to Uxbridge (about 11 miles)

 

[swt_passenger]

Oddly, I was just thinking of "Old North Road" station.....

Oddly, I don’t really know why it came to mind, I’ve never been there by train...

 

[adrock1976]

Bond Street on London Underground, as there is no such street of that name (Old Bond Street and New Bond Street are the actual names of the streets on a north-south axis)

Also Bristol Parkway, which is named after the road (M32) that runs north from Bristol (Somerset, or Avon post 1974) to the M4 at Hambrook, not far north of where Parkway station is in Stoke Gifford (both in Gloucestershire).

 

[girothedog]

Bond Street on London Underground, as there is no such street of that name (Great Bond Street and Little Bond Street are the actual names of the streets on a north-south axis.

New Bond Street and Old Bond Street.

 

[adrock1976]

New Bond Street and Old Bond Street.

I thought it might have been New and Old respectively, I got myself muddled somewhere.

I have fixed it in my previous post.

 

[Dr Day]

M3 Parkway, in Ireland?

 

[xotGD]

Queen Street must be very long, as it has stations serving both Glasgow and Cardiff situated on it....

 

[GLC]

Argyle Steeet in Glasgow is (apparently) 2.1 miles in length, although to make matters worse, it isn’t even contiguous!

 

[adrock1976]

Argyle Steeet in Glasgow is (apparently) 2.1 miles in length, although to make matters worse, it isn’t even contiguous!

That is because the M8 at Anderston Cross severs it into two bits.

 

[K.o.R]

I suppose for Hyde Park Corner you could ask "which one?"

Isn't it specifically referring to the road junction, rather than one of the "corners" of Hyde Park?

 

[Marvin]

The Chester Road in north Birmingham is a shade over 13 miles long, including a brief stint as Brownhills High Street and two (!) different stints as Chester Road North. Chester Road station is about 2 1/2 miles from the southern end.

 

[Big Chris]

Queen Street must be very long, as it has stations serving both Glasgow and Cardiff situated on it....

This post made me very happy.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Oxford Street is about a mile and a quarter long so it's not in the running but it's served by no fewer than four stations none of which carry it's name. Marble Arch, Bond Street, Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road all have entrances which lead directly onto Oxford Street. Once upon a time the road went all the way to Fishguard in Wales, some 260 miles away but I think you'd be hard pressed to trace it's route directly these days.

 

[transmanche]

Once upon a time the road went all the way to Fishguard in Wales, some 260 miles away but I think you'd be hard pressed to trace it's route directly these days.

Oxford Street was, and still is, part of the A40 London-Fishguard road. (Although I believe it never carried that name any further west than Marble Arch.)

The A40 becomes the Uxbridge Road (as mentioned by @matt_world2004 above) at Shepherd's Bush.

 

[transmanche]

(Harringay) Green Lanes is 6.3 miles long.

Of course the road itself runs from Newington Green to Winchmore Hill, but is non-contiguous as the 1.3-mile section north of Turnpike Lane is called (Wood Green) High Road.

The station's name is Harringay Green Lanes. If it didn't include 'Harringay' as part of the name it would be confusing. But really Green Lanes is merely the suffix to distinguish it from Harringay station on the ECML.

Harringay station was formerly known as Harringay West. Harringay Green Lanes was formerly known as Harringay Stadium, then for a brief period as Harringay East.