Earlier this year Lambeth & Southwark London Assembly member Florence Eshalomi tabled this question to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan: “Many of my constituents are concerned about the daily overcrowding at Canada Water station and their safety when waiting for a train. What are you doing to address this?”
Mr Khan’s response has now been published by City Hall:
“The safety of customers and staff is always Transport for London’s (TfL) top priority, and TfL does all it can to ensure that customers travel safely at all times.
“Canada Water can get very busy, but staff are trained to carefully manage passenger flows at the station to ensure a safe travel environment and minimum inconvenience for customers. An additional Customer Service Supervisor is also available at the station just to concentrate on passenger flows during the AM peak.
“The London Overground currently provides a 16 trains per hour service in each direction and platform crowding is cleared as quickly as possible. TfL is also looking at a number of possible mitigation measures to help ease the crowding on escalators to the Jubilee line at Canada Water which we know can get particularly busy.
“Improvements are already addressing crowding along the Jubilee line. A timetable change in 2018 increased evening peak services between West Hampstead and North Greenwich. Jubilee line trains are now running a peak service for an extra two hours per day, easing congestion at key stations like Canary Wharf, Waterloo and Canada Water.
“TfL’s investment programme is playing a vital role in supporting London’s growth. Providing Londoners with a range of high-quality alternative travel options will also help ease crowding at key locations like Canada Water.
“For example, when the Elizabeth line opens, it will serve more than half a million customers a day and add 10 per cent more capacity in central London. It may also help ease crowding at Canada Water if passengers change at Whitechapel to get to onward destinations such as Canary Wharf, Stratford and the West End. TfL’s modernisation of signalling on vast parts of the Tube network, new and more frequent trains, and the upgrade of stations like Victoria, Bank and Elephant & Castle are also critical, to relieve pressure on the Tube, and enable London to meet growing demand. TfL is also investing record amounts in walking and cycling, to support efficient and healthy ways to get around the city and realise my vision of Healthy Streets for London.”
Why did the question not raise the additional concern of the problem of overcrowding being further compounded when the proposed Canada Water / Print Works redevelopment projects come on line? And why did the Mayor / TFL not address that scenario within its beige bland non answer? 4/10. Redo. AB. PS Can someone also tell the Mayor the Elizabeth line solution is ….delayed. Now provide a solution for the overcrowding. We all know the reasons but don’t work at or are in charge of TFL.
This situation not only affects the terrible Canada Water Masterplan project, within about a mile there are another two “Canada Waters”: They are “Convoy Wharf” and “Timber Yard” on top of all the development which is coming on line and has been approved on the side and already is blocking the only tube station available to them all as well.
We are looking at not just 3000 more housing units but more than 10,000.
The only possible way of addressing the inmense flows of people would be to increase the entrances and exits to Canada Water, to separate the flows of people changing at the station from those trying to get on, however the Jubilee line is already congested before it arrives at Canada Water (in North Greenwich).
The Elizabeth line is subject of more delays, a possible pedestrian bridge or tunnel to cross the river on foot or on bike could aleviate the situation and produce new links of communication which are naturally blocked by the river.
Southwark is also trying to reduce leisure services by replacing the expandable stand alone leisure centre of Seven Islands in the sport’s hub of Rotherhithe, which stands on donated land for that purpose, with an inferior leisure centre with shorter and shallower pool and only two floors in a shared use building in the middel of nowhere to “look good”, to “sell flats” and to grab the donated land for more development.
There are no plans at all to address all the other shortage of all services such as surgerie’s, schools, police station this was closed and instead of giving us a new police presence they want to give us an unwanted inferior leisure centre where it only suits the developer! These services are needed now and when the new residents arrive and are not an “after thought”, something that can be patched latter after swamping the area with residents.
To compound the transport problem and to build and to fit yet more flats, the Canada Water development is coming with flats “without parking spaces”! Not that the roads are not already congested either. During the early life of this development cars will be electric or hybrids, so parking should be contemplated.
While the rich people’s flats are slap bang in the future “town centre” on top of the transport hub “with their own leisure centre”!, the poor are being segregated as far away as possible from the transport and the town centre creating two worlds for the children of the poor to grow up in and for a different one for the children of the rich.
The mentality behind these developments is very selfish and negative and we are seeing very different future growing up in front of us and which we are not going to like. The gerous people who gave us what we enjoy now, to the point of donating their own land for to be public baths are very different to the ones preparing our future for the next generations.