Kentish Town tube station closing next week for a year

Kentish Town tube station on the Northern line will close from next Monday (26th June) for about a year as they will be replacing both of the old escalators in the station.

During the closure, customers are being advised to use the neighbouring Kentish Town Thameslink station or the nearby Tufnell Park tube station for Northern line services, or local bus routes.

The closure is to replace the station’s 26-year-old escalators, which are the most unreliable on the network, and their breakdowns lead to regular station closures.

There were 39 faults on the escalators in 2020/21, and the station had to be closed for five days last year after more serious faults were found. It was only the regular maintenance inspections that prevented a breakdown while passengers were on them.

The existing escalators were installed in 1997 and are bespoke to the station, making it difficult to source parts for maintenance and repairs. The closure last year used up a third of their spare stock of replacement steps for this escalator design, so repairs will become harder in the future.

The new escalators will be the same model as those used on the Elizabeth line and increasingly used throughout the London Underground network making sourcing parts much easier and this will lead to a reduction in unplanned station closures, improving reliability for customers.

The new escalators are expected to last for around 40 years.

TfL says that it will also use the temporary closure of Kentish Town station to carry out a raft of other station improvements. These include removing the redundant ticket office and realigning the ticket barriers to provide more space for customers and additional ticket gates. The station will also be painted and deep cleaned, with new floor and wall tiling and improved signage installed.

The works will be complicated by the lack of space to work in, particularly in the small ticket hall and at the platform level, but so long as there are no delays, then the station will reopen in June 2024.

The tasks to be completed will be:

Esther Sharples, TfL’s Director of Asset Performance Delivery, said: “I’d like to apologise to our customers for the disruption and thank them in advance for their patience while we replace the escalators at Kentish Town station. They are the most unreliable on the Tube network and this essential work will improve journeys through Kentish Town station for many years to come. We explored all possible options to keep the Tube station open during this work but safety considerations and space constraints meant it wasn’t feasible.

“We are using the opportunity while the station is closed to make many other improvements which will make the station more spacious, easier to use and more welcoming for our customers.”

Access to and from the Thameslink station platforms will be via the out-of-hours entrance, approximately 20 metres along Kentish Town Road from the Tube station entrance. Tickets and Oyster top-ups will not be available at the station, as the main concourse will be closed, so Thameslink passengers will need to buy tickets or top up in advance online or at a nearby Oyster ticket outlet. All customers will need to remember to touch their Key card, Contactless or Oyster card on the validators at the temporary entrance / exit to avoid an incomplete journey charge.

Kentish Town Thameslink station is expected to be busier than usual, especially during peak hours, when passengers are advised to allow extra time to reach or leave their platform. Thameslink trains and stations in central London may also be busier, as Tube customers use alternative routes.