Jubilee Line chaos: Commuters evacuated from North Greenwich station
Commuters blasted Tube bosses this morning after they were emergency evacuated from a busy station due to severe Jubilee Line delays.
An alarm warned people to evacuate North Greenwich station amid overcrowding and severe delays earlier today.
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A faulty train at Canary Wharf started the problems, causing severe delays along the entire length of the Jubilee Line.
Transport for London (TfL) was then forced to close North Greenwich station as commuters piled onto the delayed trains.
“It’s a crowd control measure,” a spokeswoman for TfL told City PM “It’s due to a high volume of people coming through so North Greenwich is closed.”
Passengers also had a hard time reaching London’s Canary Wharf financial district this morning.
That was because TfL restricted access to Canary Wharf station and Waterloo station to contend with delays.
Angry commuters vented their frustrations online.
Suzanne Wheatley tweeted: “Very poor crowd management at North Greenwich @jubileeline this morning. Evacuation alarm, no-one leaving trains, one poor staff member quietly trying to get people out. Felt very unsafe.”
Passengers living on the Greenwich Peninsula also pointed out that the Jubilee Line was their “lifeline” into London, and that tickets are not able to be used on Thames Clipper boats or the Emirates Air Line cable car when problems occur.
But commuters slammed TfL for telling commuters the evacuation was an emergency.
“Why was everyone emergency evacuated from the station? Sounds like a signal failure to me,” Sagar Patel said.
“Would declaring a state of emergency not increase the risk of people get injured? Panicked people do wreckless things.”
“We can’t allow our stations to get congested as the stations may become unsafe for our customers,” the Jubilee Line’s social media staff responded.
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Severe delays continued on the line until around 11am. Minor delays were still affecting the Jubilee Line at 2pm.
Main image credit: Maja Marszalek (@MAJA_iga)