Kentish Town tube station on the Northern line will close from 26 June.
Transport for London (TfL) has announced a year-long closure of Kentish Town tube station for essential repairs. The closure will begin on 26 June 2023 and last until an unspecified date "up to one year" in the future.
The closure is chiefly to make repairs to the escalators. The machinery has broken down on a number of occasions, and the ad hoc repairs have proven unreliable. Indeed, it was at Kentish Town that we snapped this photo a couple of years ago:
The year-long closure will not only be an inconvenience for the good people of NW5, but will also disrupt the journeys of some passengers of Thameslink, which shares the station. It's a popular interchange for people living in places like Hendon, Mill Hill, Borehamwood and St Albans. The Thameslink station will remain open, but the handy interchange with the Northern line will obviously not be possible (an alternative would be to change at St Pancras, but it's not as convenient).
TfL provides some interesting details about the glitchy escalators, which are 26 years old:
The existing escalators, which are the most unreliable on the Underground network, were installed in 1997 and are bespoke to the station, making it difficult to source parts for maintenance and repairs. The new escalators will be the same model as those used on the Elizabeth line and 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. They are expected to last for around 40 years.
The year long closure will be used to make a few other alterations to the station, including the removal of the ticket office (no longer used), realignment of the ticket gates and a deep clean.
All images by Matt Brown
