You should see Covent Garden and Goodge Street if you think this is bad!

Queensway was actually refurbished - and the lifts improved - in 2006. It's just something you have to put up with in a city that's been so densely settled for so long - there's very few places you can build, and even fewer where you can do so cost-effectively.

The only station I can think of that's managed to expand from lift-only in recent years is Angel. And that was a huge project - replacing the tiny (and quite terrifying) island platform was no mean feat.

The scariest station I know at rush hour is Holborn. There's just such a stream of people going through there at the same time in the morning peak that it takes ages just to get out - despite a large bank of escalators moving to the surface. You're crushed into enclosed stairwells to get off the platform, and they barely manage to clear the platform before the next train comes in. Fortunately, London Underground are (by necessity) rather good at crowd control, even if this means closing down stations in the middle of peak time (a regular occurrence at King's Cross St Pancras before the Northern Ticket Hall opened).