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Some of the hundreds of commuters left stranded outside Camden Town station |
Fears for tube safety
Derailment raised question over Northern Line
FEARS over Tube safety on the Northern Line re-emerged this week following a derailment that caused chaos for thousands of travellers.
The Northern Line service between Camden Town and East Finchley was suspended on Friday for 24 hours after a carriage left the rails inside the tunnel at Archway at 11am.
There were no passengers on board during the incident, which Tube staff say happened as the train was being taken into sidings, and the driver was unhurt. But commuters were quickly evacuated from Archway station platform due to clouds of smoke caused by the derailment.
Tube chiefs are looking at a faulty line switching points mechanism – similar to the problem that resulted in a derailment at Camden Town in which seven people were injured – as a possible cause but had still not found the cause of the derailment at the time of going to press yesterday (Wednesday).
And now senior Union bosses are warning that the trouble facing Northern Line users will get worse until the government rethink the way they fund the networks upkeep.
Union spokesman Derek Kotz said his members wanted to see the public private partnership – which has seen private companies being given long term contracts to maintain rails, signalling and carriages – end and direct investment ploughed into the Tube. The privately run company Tubelines, responsible for track maintenance, currently rakes in profits of around £1m a week from their contract.
He said: “Until we know exactly what happened it would be foolish of us to comment directly on Archway, but we do know the private sector gets £2m a week for doing almost nothing in terms of improvements.
“The PPP deal is guaranteed risk free profits for the private sector but few benefits to those who use the system.
“We have said incidents like this are bound to happen and the only way to safeguard the system is to make sure it is maintained by those who are accountable and are in it to provide a service, not make a profit.”
The incident happened only days after 150 passengers were trapped underground for nearly three hours between Highbury and Islington and Finsbury Park until 3am.
In the Camden Town derailment, in October 2003, 200 had to be led to safety when a carriage careered off tracks and hit a wall. Union bosses had warned underground bosses sic times in the weeks before the accident that the stretch of track by Camden Town was dangerous.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the accidents had sparked grave concern over safety, while the leader of the biggest rail union RMT has called for strike action over private maintenance contracts.
Geoff Pope, chairman of the London Assembly Transport committee, said this week that it was “completely incomprehensible” that another Tube train had derailed and that he can “only thank God that it was empty”.
He added that there are no excuses and Tube Lines, the private company responsible for maintenance of the line, “had got to get a grip on the problem.” If necessary “heads should roll”, he said.
Tube managers believe that the carriage may have wrenched from the rest of the train because of the track fault.
The Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), has threatened to recommend a ballot of members unless maintenance contracts given to private companies are suspended.
Sources at the train drivers union Aslef say members have complained about track problems at Camden Town in recent years. Tube Lines was given responsibility for repairing and upgrading the Northern, Piccadilly and Jubilee Lines under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme.
George Hutchinson, spokesman for the company, said an investigation is continuing into the Archway incident.
He added: “Every incident is regrettable, but safety is always our highest priority. We are investing more money than ever on the Northern Line.
“There are weekend track closures to accelerate our maintenance programme. But a huge amount of work still needs to be done to improve the reliability of the line.
“Since we put in the investment we are starting to see improvements in terms of performance but we know as well as everyone else that frustrations remain and that the solution to the Northern Line is complex. We are talking of some 60 to 80 years of under investment to the track and infrastructure.” |
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