Crowding closes Tube by Westfield

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A Tube station near the newly opened Westfield shopping centre was closed for two hours due to overcrowding, Transport for London (TfL) has said.

A TfL spokeswoman said Shepherds Bush Station on the Central Line was closed on police advice due to congestion.

Shoppers heading for the mall on the first weekend since its opening "might have contributed" to it, she added.

A Westfield spokesman said about 100,000 people were expected to visit the west London centre on Saturday.

The TfL spokeswoman said the station was closed at 1530 GMT and reopened just after 1715 GMT. She added the closure was a standard "safety measure" in case of overcrowding.

Queues reported

On Saturday at 1730 there were queues on the roads in the Shepherds Bush area and the slip road leading to Wood Lane from the A40 Northen roundabout had been closed to ease congestion.

BBC London Travel reporters said there were queues on Wood Lane from the A40 to Westfield; from the roundabout to Gypsy Corner and on the northbound West Cross route.

Traffic was also moving slowly on Uxbridge Road and Holland Road and there were queues in Shepherds Bush Green and Shepherds Bush Common.

The £1.7bn Westfield Shopping Centre is spread over 1.6m sq ft (150,000 sq m), the size of 30 football pitches, and houses 265 shops, including 40 luxury brands, and 50 restaurants.

The centre has 4,500 parking spaces and said it has contributed £170m towards overhauling public transport so that 60% of its visitors use it.

On Friday Hammersmith and Fulham council said it is looking to bring new parking controls on streets near Westfield shopping mall to prevent them from becoming a "Westfield car park".

Linsey Wooldridge, marketing manager for Westfield said: "By midday we'd had 20,000 people through the doors. We always thought Saturday will probably be a bigger day than the first day.

"The feedback from the retailers in the first couple of days on sales have been that a lot of them have either met or exceeded their targets."