London Bridge: 'Life threatening chaos' at railway station - BBC News

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

People jumped over or clambered beneath ticket barriers to try to avoid the crush at London Bridge

Overcrowding at London Bridge railway station resulted in "life threatening chaos" at rush hour, the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers)) has said.

Passengers jumped over and crawled under ticket barriers on Tuesday night in an effort to avoid the crush on the concourse and platform in south London.

Network Rail said services were delayed by someone being hit by a train near Streatham Common.

It has apologised for the disruption to thousands of passengers.

'We're sorry'

Network Rail switched off the power supply to the trains between about 16:20 and 17:05 GMT to prevent further harm to a person who jumped on to the tracks near Streatham Common.

It said turning off the power had a knock-on effect on other services and added: "We're sorry this incident has caused the disruption it has."

It said a queuing system was put in place for safety reasons but demand was so high it closed the station doors on the advice of the transport police and only reopened them once the crowds inside had begun to disperse.

Commuters experienced severe delays and disruption in January because of the station upgrade work

Network Rail and the train operator Southern said they would review the situation to see if any lessons could be learned.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash blamed cuts and a general lack of capacity on the trains for the "horrendous meltdown".

'Chaos must end'

He said: "The fragmentation and privatisation of our railways leaves train companies and Network Rail blaming each other while passengers and staff are left caught in the kind of life threatening chaos we have seen in pictures from one of London's major rail terminals last night.

"RMT is demanding action before this chaos becomes a tragedy."

London Mayor Boris Johnson said: "This chaos must end now. The scenes at London Bridge last night were completely unacceptable."

He said all sides had to stop bickering and called on Network Rail and the train operators "to get a grip" of the situation at London Bridge.

London Assembly Labour group transport spokeswoman Val Shawcross said it was a return to the "disastrous days of chaos" experienced earlier in the year because of the upgrade work to the station.

[ChrisB]

All they need to do is be quicker of the mark when incidents like this happen, and close the doors to the station as soon as incidents happen, rather than after the station is over-full of passengers.

[Red Squirrel]

RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) general secretary Mick Cash blamed cuts...

Can't deny he's right on this occasion, assuming he meant power cuts...

[Electric train]

This is easy to say for the politicos, the rebuild of London Bridge station makes to rebuild of Reading look like rebuilding Reading West in the terms of scale and access.  The option to totally close London Bridge was ruled out by the politicians so it has to be done in chunks painfully expensive chunks 

There has been and is a huge amount of publicity trying to get people to alter their journeys over the next few years; however there are lot of people who just solder on against the adversity rather than walk or bus to another station.


There has been a lot of planning in this stage of the work, there is a team of senior people from NR^» (Network Rail - home page) the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) and LUL^▸ (London Underground Ltd) reviewing constantly what is going on, I am sure changes will be made to parts of the station that can be done while it is a construction site.

There is an awful lot of other works going on constantly on the Thameslink route including work to open up access to new destinations Peterborough and Cambridge, the re-signalling and or re-control of the signalling from London Bridge, Victoria and West Hampstead to Three Bridges.  A massive amount of new trackwork, new electrification equipment the rebuild of Blackfriars and Farringdon stations all of this done over the last 6 or 7 years without any real publicity

Not sure that handing over all rail services to the Mayor for London's office would make any difference to the way this work is being done, but Boris does like to grab headlines 

[ellendune]

Politicians called on others to stop bickering. 

What phrase comes to mind.....

[a-driver]

From the pictures I've seen it really looks like it was a 'life threatening' situation, people crushed on the concourse yet still able to use their mobile phones and take photos.

[ChrisB]

Quite. NO one gesticulating either....there was no panic at the time those photos were taken, and I suspect the photo re the barrier was taken just to show that one guy crawling under it....overblown - it's election time.

Simply closing the station & implementing crowd control sooner would solve this problem

[Tim]

If it was really a crush, I assume that the barriers would open - either because staff are alerted to the shouts and screams and open them, or because someone presses the big red emergency opening button or because the pressure of the people cause the barriers to fail and spring open.  Looks to me more like an unpleasant crowd not a life threatening crush.  It might be chaos.  It might even be someone's fault, but bringing an erroneous safety argument into it doesn't help. 

[JayMac]

Ah, but we all know that the RMT^▸ (National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers) only ever do calm and measured responses.