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Who will take tackle this escalating Tube scandal?
CAMDEN Town Tube station is one of the busiest stations in the capital.
Yet there is little doubt that it is one of the worst.
Everything about it smacks of age, disuse and disrepair. It’s a broken station.
Faced with an extraordinary rise in passenger use, especially at weekends due to the Camden Market phenomenon, using the station can sometimes be hazardous, as crowds in their tens of thousands, throng the foyer, the one working escalator and century-old platforms.
Before the millennium a bright new future was promised. Plans were published, PR releases were poured out by London Transport.
But then the painful planning process took over – and hopes were dashed.
The council didn’t like the plans.
Nor did the government.
Ten years on we are back where we started with an impotent transport authority, powerless to do anything about the station except to keep it going – somehow, any old how – and aware, that faced with the coming big bang of public sector cuts, the future is the bleakest it has ever been.
As it is, the station is half-paralysed at weekends, used only as an exit point.
Now, to make matters worse, if that is possible, the down escalator will be out of action for three months from the end of July, barring the disabled and those with pushchairs from being able to use the station.
Incredibly, this means that until October – at the earliest – the station will limp along, out-of-bounds to many young mothers, the elderly and handicapped.
Six years ago the up escalator packed in.
A replacement was promised in weeks. But it took months.
The travelling public had better access to and use of the station 50, 60, 70 years ago than they will have in the next few months.
Politicians strut around with their policy statements and initiatives, talking up the Olympics, painting travel brochure-pictures of London in 2012, while nothing is planned to tackle the scandal of Camden Town Tube station.
The Camden Town Unlimited Group call for investment.
But where will the money required for the most elementary form of modernisation come from?
The London mayor could lead the charge but the silence in his office is deafening.
Both Camden MPs should stir themselves.
If neither Boris Johnson nor our MPs take up the cudgels, who will?
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