Tube work rethink is good, but it doesn’t signal trouble-free weekends
London Underground's change of philosophy on Tube closures reflects a months-long reassessment following the final collapse of the Public Private Partnership earlier this year.
Transport for London bought out the remaining private maintenance consortium, Tube Lines, last June. London Underground managing director Mike Brown recounts how, on getting that news while at a weekend barbecue, his first call was to cancel closures Tube Lines had planned for the Jubilee line the next day.
Now London Underground has promised that it will not make any more closures for signalling work.
New signalling can be put in over the top of existing systems without interrupting services, as is happening on the Victoria line. It was not done on the Jubilee line because shutting the line down for whole weekends was more convenient for Tube Lines and cost it nothing, whatever the chaos for passengers.
Track work is another matter. Replacing miles of track and the drains beneath it in the four-hour train-free slot each night is simply not feasible. And the progress that LU made during a three-week closure of the Edgware Road-Hammersmith section of the Hammersmith and City line last summer convinced it that shutting some sections for weeks at a time is less painful — as well as cheaper — than dozens of weekend closures.
It will not mean the end of weekend disruption: LU admits that busy sections could never be shut for weeks at a time. Passengers are going to have to be patient for years yet. But at last LU is thinking imaginatively about how to get upgrade work done while minimising inconvenience to Londoners.
