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New lift for Finsbury Park Station
But it only goes halfway!
http://www.thecnj.co.uk/islington/2009/080709/inews080709_11.html
Madness.
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While I'm at it, I find it so annoying there is no way of topping up your Oyster card on the FP Station entrance to the railway.
On another thread someone mentioned new routes from the rail station planned for 2010 - any idea where they will go to?
And if someone with a pram can't find a nice member of the public to help them up the stairs, hell in a handbasket must be fast approaching.
<a href="http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/corporate/finsbury-park-brochure.pdf">details</a>
and i'll only offer to help people with their pram up the stairs if it's a sensible sized one. i'm fed up of people with those immense SUV-size things with all-terrain tyres who (having taken up a crazy amount of space on the tube) stand at the bottom of staircases looking expectantly at everybody else (particularly at the guys of course). maybe you shouldn't have bought something so unnecessarily unwieldy, should you?
Maybe, having done their research, they know that A. those 'unwieldy' buggies are usually really lightweight, so, you know, knock yourself out... and B. the 'sensible sized ones' you deign to approve of are for older children and not suitable for newborns, babies etc.
Don't be a knob. Either help out or don't bother. But blame yourself for being selfish, not some random piece of equipment design. It's hard enough for those of us with young kids to get around London's liftless tubes without people blaming us for the problem in the first place!
and mattleys - it's selfish to take up that amount of space in the tube, surely, just to be a bit trendy with your armoured personnel carrier pushchair. it's also selfish to <i>expect</i> assistance wherever you go, and glare at people in a genuine rush etc as if they're not providing a service you've paid for or something. the same goes for the particular kind of woman who gets on a full tube carriage and then glares at all the men sitting down as if she has any more right to a seat than they do. i'll <b>always</b> offer my seat to the pregnant, the elderly, people on crutches and so on, but surely we've got past thinking that all females are weak and pathetic and must be waited on by any menfolk around them? it's the twenty first century, people!
A clue: There are lifts / step-free access at some other stations. Notably Heathrow, which is where a lot of the folk with big suitcases will have commenced their tube journeys.
My mother-in-law has just been over from Tx. The only steps she encounters between the front door of her house and ours are the steps in the station at FP. She calls me from Heathrow and we arrange to meet on the platform. The times of her flights are always such that she arrives in FP in the morning rush hour and rarely has offers of help with her (admittedly, gigantic) bags.
And someone almost always does, and with very good grace, and of course we're really grateful for that. For all its dreadful reputation, London is one of the friendliest cities I've ever been to. But we also know that other people are walking past us telling themselves we're some kind of social pariah/selfish bastard/weakling/insert contempt-figure here. Whereas, in fact, we're just trying to get from A to B, like you.
Travelling with kids is tiring, hard work, stressful, blah blah. We don't expect or demand your help; the truth is, we're forced to rely on it. We're only there because that's the choice we're left with. But to everyone else, you know, thanks.
I'm not against prams, and I'm certainly not against children. Would like to have some of my own one day. (Both prams and children.) But surely there's a way to bring up your offspring without being a massive inconvenience to everyone else.
There are rules prohibiting bikes on the Underground during rush hour. Why not massive prams? Or if you're going to take up enough space for three people, at a time when space is at a premium, buy a second ticket. I bet this would make parents reconsider the necessity of owning a 4x4 pram.
Are discounts available for multiple occupancy of said pram?
@Poxy - Of course! It's just like carpooling.
It goes without saying that if you have two babies, you need a bigger pram. Also, if your child is disabled and can't walk.