St. John's Wood Underground Station

HC Deb 19 October 1998 vol 317 cc899-900W

Mr. Kaufman

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will ascertain from London Underground what the cost was of the most recent refurbishment of escalators at St. John's Wood Underground Station; what will be the cost of the newly announced refurbishment; and why the work has to be repeated. [55333]

Ms Glenda Jackson

In 1990–91 and in 1995, major essential maintenance work had to be carried out simply to keep the escalators running. At the time, London Underground did not have the investment funds available for the sort of work now planned for the St. John's Wood escalators.

Between 1 December 1990 and February 1991, £50,000 had to be invested in one of the escalators to replace life expiring wiring and systems connected to that wiring and also to fit replacement brakes. This enabled the escalator to continue operating to safety standards.

Between January 1995 and March 1995, £120,000 had to be invested on essential maintenance work on a second escalator. This work, to enable the escalator to continue running was, again, replacing life expired wiring and systems connected to that wiring as well as modifying the escalator controller. Had funds then been available for replacement, obviously London Underground's engineers would have preferred that route rather than the 'patch and mend' solutions which technical staff have been forced to implement over years of under-funding.

The work that is now planned is, rather than a repeat of this refurbishment, virtually a full replacement of the two machines. At a cost of £2.3 million each, every part of the escalators is being replaced, the step chain, the motors, the panelling, the DC to AC power supply conversion and the wooden steps which will now be replaced with metal steps. Only the metal frames that support the escalators themselves will not be replaced.

This is much more fundamental work than that carried out earlier in the decade and should keep the escalators running safely for another 40 years. The only closure necessary in the future should be for routine maintenance rather than the more fundamental work carried out in 1991–92 and 1995 or the almost replacement and rebuilding scheduled to be carried out now.