Why busy London Underground stations have closed thousands of times
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London Underground stations have closed thousands of times since the start of 2022 with five stations accounting for a fifth of all closures.
Exclusive figures obtained by ITV News London reveal factors such as a lack of staff, trespass and fire alarms being set off maliciously are closing busy tube stations.
Those worst affected were:
Chancery Lane - shut 185 times
Goodge Street - shut 162 times
Holland Park - shut 101 times
Lancaster Gate - shut 111 times
Mornington Crescent - shut 155 times
Problems with lifts, escalators, lighting and internal power supplies also meant stations failed to open a total of 357 times.
The figures show a sharp rise from the period between January 2019 and April 2022 when stations were closed 1,045 times affecting 132 Tube stations.
Nick Dent, the Director of Customer Operations at London Underground said: "Where stations really to have to close we will have exhausted all of our options in terms of moving colleagues from other stations to help.
"But where they do have to close we will law sure that’s for the shortest time possible.
"While stations closures have still been higher than we would have expected the last year’s data has been better than the previous year.
"Covid did disrupt our recruitment process but we have caught up now and we have recruited 150 supervisors over the last month.
"So we’re confident the situation will be addressed.
"We have also worked closely with the trace unions over the past few months on a series of proposals that will further help the situation and allow us to deploy colleagues more flexibly and make sure they are in the places customers need them."
London Assembly transport spokesperson Elly Baker said access to public transport was "absolutely essential" for Londoners to get to work and live their social family lives, adding: "It is worrying to see the amount of times stations have been closed.
"The tube is not functioning to the level we would want it to be.
"But it’s not good enough if there’s a situation where there are not enough staff."
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