Kentish Town reopening 23 December

[AndroidBango]

Provisional date for reopening given. Church bells ring, children sing etc: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/kentish-town-tube-station-reopen-tfl-b1199218.html

A busy Tube stations on the Northern line is set to finally reopen later this month – before closing again for Christmas.
Kentish Town station is scheduled to reopen on Monday December 23, about six months later than first planned and 18 months after work began.

 

[SteveHFC]

But still no interchange with Thameslink until 30th December - as Thameslink isn't running between Harpenden and London from 21st to 29th December.

 

[Edvid]

From yesterday's TfL press release

When the station re-opens, some hoardings will still be in place while Transport for London (TfL) finishes installing the ticket machines ready for use from early next year. Customers using Oyster or Contactless payment cards will be able to tap in and out at the ticket barriers as usual. However, customers wanting to top up their Oyster card or purchase a paper ticket will need to do this before arriving at the station. The pedestrian route within the Tube station for access to Kentish Town Thameslink station will also not be available for customers to use until early next year. Access to and from the Thameslink station platforms will remain via the out-of-hours entrance, approximately 20 metres along Kentish Town Road from the main Tube station entrance, as has been the case during the station closure.

 

[mad_rich]

Excellent news. It's taken long enough!

Has the connection from TfL ticket hall to the Thameslink bridge been permanently removed?

 

[Blindtraveler]

The impression I get is that it's not being removed but is still temporarily out of use and will come back into use soon. Has anyone had a ride on the shiny new escalators yet?

 

[pelli]

I've just been through Kentish Town, interchanging between Thameslink and Northern Line, which due to the works in the ticket hall requires tapping out and then back in again. (Normally the Thameslink footbridge goes into the "paid side" of the station building from where you access the escalators down to the Northern Line directly, but now that part of the station building remains closed off behind hoardings and instead you have to take the out-of-hours side gate from the footbridge out onto the street with validators to tap out, after which you enter the station building from the front and tap in at the barriers to access the escalators.)

The journey is shown as two separate ones in my Oyster app journey history, which didn't matter for me because both cost £0.00, but I wonder if the lack of a temporary out-of-station interchange between the Northern Line barriers and the Thameslink standalone validators is an oversight, and people using uncapped Oyster/contactless Pay-As-You-Go are getting overcharged?

For example, tapping in at West Hampstead Thameslink (one stop west on Thameslink) and out at Tufnell Park (one stop north on the Northern Line) should cost £1.90 peak according to the TfL Single Fare Finder but if tapping out and in again at Kentish Town causes two separate journeys to be charged then it'll cost double.

 

[Blindtraveler]

I suspect had they realised that this would be the situation for so long. They would have created one but I should imagine that doing so is quite complicated technically. And they did not anticipate the level of delay on this. I assume the new escalators work efficiently

 

[rebmcr]

It's possible that TfL will use the same sort of backend auto-correction that gets implemented when barriers are opened during crowding. That would end up charging the correct fare even in the absence of an OSI, if programmed correctly.

 

[Chriso]

I wouldn’t count on that . Why the hell is the connection to the tube ticket hall still closed it’s about a 3m length. They have literally had over a year to sort it

Oh well compared with Thameslink’s dire revenue protection a win win for the fare evaders using Thameslink at the station.

 

[Sonic1234]

Why the hell is the connection to the tube ticket hall still closed it’s about a 3m length. They have literally had over a year to sort it

Lets hope it never reopens.

You can break your journey now at Kentish Town without having an argument with the poorly trained TfL staff

 

[Edvid]

Current target for reopening the paid-side LU-NR link is early May, per MikeWh update.

 

[pelli]

Just been through Kentish Town and things are back to normal now with the internal link open and the side gate closed. Some passengers leaving Thameslink are tapping their cards on the remaining standalone reader in the passageway and then getting confused that they're still/already inside the gateline.

 

[Sonic1234]

Just been through Kentish Town and things are back to normal now

Back to the fun of trying to tell LU staff what break of journey means

 

[Class15]

Just been through Kentish Town and things are back to normal now with the internal link open and the side gate closed. Some passengers leaving Thameslink are tapping their cards on the remaining standalone reader in the passageway and then getting confused that they're still/already inside the gateline.

It was reopened on Tuesday. It caught me out by suprise and I made the mistake you described!