Sadiq Khan under fire over Wimbledon travel chaos

Telegraph

a day ago

Sir Sadiq Khan has come under fire after Wimbledon was beset by travel chaos.
The Labour Mayor of London, who is the chairman of Transport for London (TfL), was criticised for failing to ensure the Tube had enough capacity for those attending the Championships.
TfL issued a public apology on Wednesday after attendees faced overcrowded trains, gridlocked stations and long delays on the District Line. It said a track fault at Tower Hill, in east London, was disrupting service along the line.
More than 84,000 people have attended the first two days of the tennis championships in south-west London.
But the Tube has struggled to cope, with issues including signal failures and a fire alert at Southfields – the station closest to the All England Club.
Simon Wright, 68, told The Telegraph the issues were the 'worst that I have seen'.
' Wimbledon are telling people to not arrive by car and TfL are saying they can not run any more trains,' the Save Wimbledon Park campaigner said. 'They cannot manage the number of people they have got at the moment.
'I think it's crazy. It's the worst that I have seen, especially because the District Line has been falling over.'
Helen Kaufmann, who had tickets for court two, said she and her husband Alex missed the start of the first match because they were left stuck in the 'really crowded' Southfields station.
'We had to wait for nine minutes at West Brompton and got onto an exceedingly busy District Line,' Mr Kaufmann said.
Mrs Kaufmann added: 'The [Southfields] platform was super busy, really crowded, really hard to get off. We probably waited as long to get off as we did on the train.'
Anas Ramsey, a traffic marshal outside Southfields, said the transport network near the All England Club had been beset by issues this year.
'There have been a lot of problems,' he said. 'There was a fire on the tracks, there were signal delays.'
Keith Prince, the Conservative transport spokesman in the London Assembly, said: 'TfL operating problems are becoming an increasingly regular issue that plague Londoners and are now ruining people's day as they try to enjoy the great events available in our city.
'It's not good enough - Khan as TfL Chair needs to get a grip of this and demand better. What are we paying for?'
Tory City Hall leader Susan Hall said: 'This is a disgrace to London and so many people who come to this country to watch our wonderful Wimbledon event will be put off by scenes like this.
'That's even if they get to Wimbledon without having their phone or wallet stolen.
'The amount of fare dodging we see on a daily basis is compounding this.
'Sadiq Khan must urgently act now to establish why this has happened or he risks tourists simply deciding never to come back.'
Paul Kohler, the Liberal Democrat MP for Wimbledon, said in a letter to Andy Lord, the commissioner of TfL, that the issues had 'severely affected' passengers.
'Our world-renowned tennis tournament has begun this week, yet attendees are now being caught up in cancellations and delays,' he said.
A spokesman for TfL said: 'We apologise to customers affected by the disruption on the District line, which is due to a track fault at Tower Hill.
'Our engineers are working hard to rectify the fault as soon as possible and restore a good service. District line customers are advised to allow extra time for their journeys and to check before they travel using TfL Journey Planner or the TfL Go app.'
The spokesman added: 'The issues earlier in the week were caused by Network Rail signalling issues – they own the track on the Wimbledon branch so will be able to give more details. The issues yesterday and today are related to the track fault at Tower Hill that we are urgently working to fix.'