Not for the first, and probably not the last time, either, Croydon Council, unable to perform its basic tasks to a reasonable level, has opted to shut down a piece of public amenity.
Legacy issues: Croydon Council appears to want to abandon its duties to clean and maintain pedestrian subways, such as this one near East Croydon Station
The council has blocked off all access to a pedestrian subway near East Croydon Station, forcing the public to take their chances with the traffic by crossing the busy junction at surface level.
The council says it made the decision to permanently close the subway under Altyre Road because it “attracted repeated antisocial behaviour”. Which suggests a failure of local policing, and a failure of the council to house the homeless people who had been bedding down there.
“A fire in the subway under Altyre Road led to the entrances being closed and fenced to prevent entry to the disused and unsafe site,” the council’s propaganda department said in a statement issued last night.
“However, people still gained illegal access to set up an unauthorised encampment in the subway, leading to further antisocial behaviour.”
According to Jason Perry, Croydon’s £82,000 per year Mayor, “Our community outreach teams sensitively supported all those involved.” Which is nice. Though whatever that sensitive support entailed, it did not appear to extend to finding homes for those involved.
Council hype: how the Mayor’s propaganda department decided to illustrate this latest abandonment of a public amenity
The council says that “the subway closure is part of the work of the council’s new town centre taskforce – a group of key statutory, community and voluntary sector organisations, working together to share intelligence to clean up hotspot areas and deal with antisocial behaviour”. So dealing with symptoms, rather than causes.
“The subway is now temporarily secured with steel gates and fencing, preventing further access and reducing the risk of more serious incidents taking place there. It will be filled and no longer used.”
And according to the council, “Pedestrians wanting to cross the road will not be impacted by the closure and will be able to do so using the designated crossings.” So that’s alright then.
Croydon’s pedestrian subways, dotted around the town centre and through to Old Town and Waddon, are a legacy of the massive 1960s road building programme, which destroyed many residential streets and replaced them with six-lane urban motorways, including the Croydon Flyover, the roads all hostile environments for pedestrians.
After 60 years, Croydon’s subways had become neglected by the local authority, and avoided by the public, who had good cause to seek other routes to get to where they needed to go.
Many of the urine-tainted subways had become rubbish-strewn and prone to flooding, as well as being used by muggers and other violent attackers. Even before Croydon Council went bust, it rarely maintained the subways as clean, safe environments for the public to use for their intended purpose.
There have been discussions before about blocking off some of the subways, most notably along Roman Way by Croydon Minster, though those plans were abandoned when Transport for London withdrew funding as it sought to rebalance its books following lockdown.
Croydon Council failed to mention how it would be paying for the work on the Altyre Road subway.
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Does anyone know if the at street level crossing is accessible? By that I mean does it have controls with either beeps, tactile cones or both? If not the council needs to explain how blind/deaf blind individuals are meant to cross safely? To be fair it sounds like the underpass was probably not the easiest to walk through if you were blind/deaf blind. Totally agree with the piece when it says that the symptoms rather than the causes are being dealt with.
Subways are disgusting and need to be maintained. No wonder Whitgift centre is so run down. Who would use the subway to get there?
A wasted opportunity. They should have filled the void with “Croypost” and put some trees and shrubs in the resulting giant plant pot
Take their chances with street level traffic? Has the writer even been to East Croydon station?
So the 6th largest world economy has shut down a fairly basic underpass to a mainline station for lack of funding / understanding or even ideas on how to maintain it. Let alone keeping it safe, clean and clear.
Time to reconsider leadership of this place. Being involved in the last 10 years of running it rules you out of being involved in it going forward….
God, it’s so fucking Croydon.
The Altyre ‘fairly basic’ underpass wasn’t shut down by the ‘6th largest world economy’ .. it was closed by the ‘World’s Worst Local Authority.’
I twitted/Xed lol about this ages ago, and got blocked by all the Croydon MPs and organisations. Whoever wrote this article has it spot on.
The subway hasn’t connected to anywhere for years. If you descended on Altyre Road, all you could do was turn an immediate right and ascend outside the City Link building. The routes to East Croydon station and No1 were filled in yonks ago.
In fact the photo in the article clearly shows the sign saying ‘NO ACCESS TO EAST CROYDON STATION.’ This subway doesn’t actually cross anything worthwhile.
I thought it became a dead end years ago that only took you to the NLA tower car park? I think with the bus stop, one way system and crossings to the tram platforms it’s had its day and was a redundant white elephant..?
Yep, a very dead dodo since the changes needed for the tram platforms meant the removal of the section that went to the station. Didn’t really have much purpose after that. You can see the original layout here:
https://maps.nls.uk/view/144882016