The ‘useless’ stop on the Victoria line driving Londoners nuts

If commuters had beef with one tube stop, it’d be this one (Picture: Getty)

I ride the Victoria line almost every day. In the seven months I’ve lived in Brixton I’ve spent countless hours on the London Underground watching the world pass by through Stockwell, Green Park and Euston.

And on every single journey I take, I feel the same wave of frustration at exactly the same point: the second the Tube pulls into Pimlico station.

The train stops, the doors open, no one gets off, no one gets on, the doors close, and we move on.

Despite having an approximate population of 21,000 residents, the platforms at Pimlico are never full.

You’ll never seen crowds of commuters clawing their way onto the Tube, gripping their bag to make sure it doesn’t get caught in the doors, or groups of girls piling into the last carriage scouting for seats so they can eat their Morleys in peace.

It’s quiet, too quiet. And in some people’s opinion, ‘useless’ and ‘irrelevant’.

Pimlico station was first opened back in 1972 (Picture: Getty)

Is Pimlico even real?

On TikTok there are dozens of videos that describe Pimlico as a ‘concept’, with users debating back and forth in the comment section if the destination is even real.

To be clear, it’s not a simulation, Pimlico does actually exist (the name first appeared in records sometime in the early 17th century). However, it is interesting that so many Londoners don’t know much about the affluent area.

And what they do know, they do not like.

‘Scrap it. It’s the only Victoria line station that doesn’t interchange with another line or rail service,’ @simonjbr writes.

@ultimategrandsupreme adds: ‘Literally a silly area, I can’t take anyone seriously who says they live there’.

Ibrahim Diallo, 28, has lived in South London his entire life and, in a video shared to his social media last year, claimed there’s ‘never been a time where [he’s] met someone who’s said they’re from Pimlico’.

‘No-one really lives there,’ he adds.

Recently Ibrahim even posted a video of himself on the Victoria line, filming the train’s stop at Pimlico to prove to his followers that no one got on or off.

The content creator tells Metro: ‘I’ve been using the Victoria Line my whole life so I’m down there every week.

‘If I’m honest with you’, he continues ‘I’ve never known anyone that’s got off at that station and said “yeah, this is where I live”. And if I have ever seen someone get on, it’ll be one or two people maximum. It’s a massive waste of a tube stop’.

Ibrahim feels very strongly about this topic, even going as far as to say that he’s ‘always known that there was something off about Pimlico’.

‘It was only when I started talking about how no one lives in Pimlico that a whole bunch of people began saying they did,’ he shares. ‘But we know they’re probably just joking, because no one really lives there’.

Except, people do actually live in Pimlico. Just a few years ago, Trade Marketing Manager Anna Prudden, 29, was one of them.

Is Pimlico nothing more than a social construct? (Picture: Getty Images)

Anna was a Pimlico resident for just under a year in 2022.

‘I lived right next to the station and so it was very convenient for me to be able to hop on the Victoria Line so easily. But I definitely understand why people get frustrated by it’.

She tells Metro: ‘It’s only about a 12 minute walk to Victoria, so to be honest, you might as well just walk and get on there? Whenever I would get off at Pimlico I never saw anymore than three or four other people get off at the same time’.

So, as much as Anna found her breezy commute to Kings Cross an ‘absolute delight’, she also ‘totally understands’ why others find the stop totally irrelevant.

It’s worth pointing out that data from TFL paints a very different picture of of the area.

In 2025, Pimlico station recorded an average of 163,790 taps in and out each day, which amounts to 7,641,420 annual entries and exits.

Compare this to Bermondsey (7,038,981) and Clapham Common (7,452,584), and the station gets a comparable level of foot traffic.

So, perhaps it isn’t as useless as we might think?

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