Highgate tube summit!

This is the meeting (finally) for which I had to do some serious banging of heads together to make happen. Anyway – Tube Lines, London Underground and Transport for London grandees all in attendance. And in the yellow corner – representatives from the residents groups around the station where London Underground’s works to save Archway Road from falling down the embankment have turned the site into earthy hell – nothing but desecration, lost trees and vegetation and mud!

A hectic and quite emotional meeting (at least from the residents’ side) then ensues – the upshot of which is that the powers that be agree to return to the table in about a month with proposals that meet the residents’ concerns. Said concerns are about the re-vegetation, the fencing which needs to be aesthetic and stop noise and the placement of the bus stop and bins.

It may sound prosaic – but we in Highgate will have to live with all of this for the next century – and it is exactly the sort of rough ill-considered finishing that I am trying to protect residents from. London Underground are functional (which means they would simply put up a barbed wire topped chain link fence to stop kids climbing over) – they are not usually designers of attractive work which enhances the area. We will see what they come back with.