‘To install a lift at Kentish Town station would probably take around two years… And then there’s a question of funding’

• IT is quite evident on reading the cries of moral outrage from the Camden Disability Action group that they have no sense of reality or costs, (‘12 months of work and we’ll still not be able to use the tube’, June 23).

To “install” a lift (just like that) while the escalator works are proceeding at Kentish Town station would probably take around two years by the time a lift shaft has been surveyed, authorised, contractors found, and actually dug, with more contractors installing the actual cage and machinery.

There is also the mere minor aspect of funding. The CDA group should be well aware of TfL’s funding crisis thanks to the late unlamented Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who summarily withdrew TfL’s subsidy for public transport in London leaving TfL with a financial crisis; and the present government refuse to acknowledge the need for such a subsidy, let alone funding for special projects such as Kentish Town.

There are many other pressing cases for station improvements, for example, West Hampstead where the community have been calling for lifts for some time, and Camden Town where at least two station improvement proposals to deal with dangerous overcrowding have been deferred numerous times (going back to Ken Livingstone’s time as mayor).

While the government acknowledges the need for improved infrastructure and crow about the success of the Elizabeth line, there is little sign of any more funding offers and Sadiq Khan as mayor is just left to get on with it with a crisis budget that the government try to blame him for, but which is of their own making.

JOHN STRATTON
Thurlow Road, NW3