Camden Disability Action (CDA) led a protest on 23rd June against Transport for All’s (TFL) refusal to install a lift at Kentish Town Tube during a year of refurbishment works at the station.
Activists and employees from Winvisible, Crossroads Women’s Centre and Inclusion London joined staff and service users from CDA as well as members of the public at the peaceful demonstration outside Kentish Town Tube.
The station will be closed for 12 months starting from last Monday (26th June) while its faltering escalators are replaced and the ticket office is given a facelift. But the Mayor and TFL have said that no lift will be installed during the station’s down-time, meaning it will be as inaccessible at the end of the works as it was before.
CDA’s CEO Colin Brummage said: “This is an appalling and shocking decision. There is so much to say about this. Any infrastructure that discriminates against a section of our community should not be rewarded with a facelift. When it dies, it should be left to die, along with the attitudes of that time.”
He added: “Kentish Town should be rebuilt and only opened again when everyone can use it. By not taking this opportunity to put a lift into Kentish town our leaders are telling us that disability discrimination does not matter. Disable people will always be disadvantaged in all areas of contemporary life if there is not an accessible transport system.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for TFL said: “Kentish Town tube station is a difficult station at which to introduce step-free access.”
They added that linking the platforms to an existing disused lift shaft at the station would be technically difficult and expensive because the platforms and the bottom of the lift shaft are at different levels.
Out of 20 tube station in Camden, just one is accessible.
In the last week, more than 464 Disabled and non-disabled people have signed CDA’s petition calling on Mayor Sadiq Khan to re-think plans to leave the station inaccessible to many Disabled and older people as well as parents with buggies.
One signee said: “This is surely ILLEGAL, Ableist, Prejudiced, Damaging, Demeaning, forcing people with mobility difficulties and wheelchair users to continue to struggle to travel within TfL and The Tube. Pathetic and insultingly outrageous.”
And one further signee explained why it’s not only Disabled people who need a lift at Kentish Town station.
She said: “There are several disabled people in my life, and their lives and the lives of their carers are made infinitely more difficult by not having step-free access to transport. I myself have almost been pulled backwards down the steps to Kentish Town main line station by the weight of a suitcase, as those steps are SO steep and SO many, and I have to rely on helpful members of the public to carry my case up and down for me.”
She added: “And I’m not even disabled .. just elderly. You really HAVE to take this once-in-a-century opportunity to comply with government guidelines and make access for EVERYBODY to the tube and station.”
The TFL network now has more than 200 step-free stations (out of 272) These include 92 Tube stations, 62 London Overground stations, all DLR stations and all Tram stops. TFL has said it has put funding aside to enable it to continue delivering Step Free Access schemes, with Leyton and Colindale stations set to be the next ones to be made accessible.
The situation in Camden, however, is less positive. Of the borough’s 20 tube stations, only Kings Cross St Pancras is fully step-free.
Camden Disability Action plans to continue challenging the missed opportunity to make Kentish Tube accessible throughout the upcoming year.
