In its tribute, the prestigious Lisson Gallery, in Lisson Grove, described Sarah Cunningham as ‘an incredibly talented, intelligent and original artist’ and with an ‘indomitable character’ [George Darrell courtesy of Lisson Gallery]

CALLS have been made for platform barriers to be put up in tube stations – despite the huge cost – following the death of a talented artist on the London Underground.

Transport for London is being urged to “take swift and strong action” following the death of Sarah Cunningham, 31, who had recently had her first London solo exhibition at The Lisson Gallery.

London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, re-elected last year, has the stated aim of eliminating deaths on the transport network by 2041.

The inquest at Poplar Coroner’s Court heard she was discovered in Chalk Farm tube three days after she was reported missing on November 1 last year.

CCTV showed footage of Ms Cunningham lowering herself onto the tracks on the northbound platform and walking into a tunnel. Coroner Mary Hassell ruled the case as an accidental death.

On the steps of the court, Ms Cunningham’s family nevertheless called for TfL to take “swift and strong action to ensure what happened to Sarah could not happen to anyone else,” and that “passengers, vulnerable or not, should be able to expect their safety as a bare minimum when travelling on the TfL network.”

The family is calling for the kind of infrastructure already in place on the Elizabeth line and parts of the Jubilee line. But there appears to be little appetite to retrofit the city’s aging stations, an idea which would come with huge costs.

Alex Barron, associate director of the Transport Strategy Centre (TSC) at Imperial College London told the Extra: “Platform doors are a clear and proven solution that significantly improve safety, but to implement would be extremely costly, complicated, and disruptive on an old network like London Underground, with 100 year-old platforms that were never designed to have heavy infrastructure right at the edge. Platforms would need to be reinforced or possibly even fully reconstructed, and the existing vertical and horizontal gaps and platform curves are much more challenging to address than for newer systems.”

He added: “Because of these factors, there are very few examples globally of legacy systems similar to London retrofitting platform doors. Infrastructure-heavy systems like metros, particularly older ones that have suffered from previous periods of underinvestment, have very large reinvestment needs to maintain overall system safety and reliability, so there is a significant challenge to balance expenditures across these many needs. If a large chunk of investment were to be invested in one area – such as platform doors – it may well take away from other critical needs, such as the 50-plus-year-old trains operating on the Bakerloo line.”

TfL has been trailing various modes of technology on the network, including the use of AI at stations.

“Smart stations” have been trialled at Willesden Green between November 2022 and September 2023 and used existing CCTV, AI algorithms and numerous detection models to detect patterns.

Mr Barron is also director of a group for metro systems, COMET, which includes London Underground and 44 other metro systems. It shares data about performance, practice and safety.

He said: “In terms of a metro system doing it right, I think it all relates to the context, generally speaking, as you might imagine newer systems, in places like Asia, tend to be much safer than older systems in Europe and North America… to a large extent it is because of the infrastructure, the technologies deployed at the time of construction and, obviously, then there are a wide range of other supporting factors such as the culture and the level of staffing and what those entail.”

Ms Cunningham’s family’s statement, read by their solicitor Thomas Jervis, said: “We are hearing more and more stories in the news of people being hurt or killed on TfL’s transport network. Sarah’s family wants to know what is being done to address this? The coroner in Sarah’s case wrote to TfL back in 2013 about a similar case. This case raised concerns about the risk of future deaths. It is clear not enough was done to minimise this risk.

“TfL’s own figures had shown an alarming rise in deaths and serious injuries on the London Transport network and those impacted wanted reassurances that there would be no more avoidable deaths or serious injuries. In response, TfL’s chief safety, health, and environment officer appeared on TV and said she felt the TfL network was safe, and that TfL takes safety seriously. Less than one month later, Sarah died.”

A TfL spokesperson said: “We will take the time to properly consider any recommendations made by the coroner and will respond to them in due course, However we have already put in place actions following our own internal investigation.”

They said trials of new technology were under way in London, but that the Willesden Green scheme was mapping fare evasion at barriers.