Hundreds of thousands of commuters suffer delays on Tube... as space on London's roads is squeezed by 'Zil' lanes

 
Dick Murray25 July 2012

Hundreds of thousands of Tube commuters suffered major disruption today with services on four lines affected.

At one stage virtually the entire Northern line was suspended.

Then, at the height of the morning peak, a signal failure hit services on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines.

Northern line commuters told to travel early to avoid the Olympic crowds through central London found themselves without trains.

Delays on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines lasted through the peak and continued into mid-morning, according to Transport for London's (TfL's) own website.

Furious commuters took to Twitter to vent the anger.

Andrew Agyare Tweeted: "Gotta be at work at 7 and there's no Northern line."

Nicky Schroder wrote: "Waking up early to find the stupid Northern line is suspended."

The line, one of the busiest on the network, is used by more than 650,000 people a day.

It was initially suspended between Morden to Golders Green and East Finchley via Bank and Charing Cross due to a fire alert at Tooting Bec.

Services through central London later reopened but the line remained suspended between Morden on Stockwell.

A full service then resumed but delays continued into the morning peak.

A TfL spokesperson said: “The Northern line had a short suspension from Morden and Stockwell for about 20 minutes until just before 8am because of a power issue. It is now fully running with just a few minor delays.”

"The entire line is running but Tooting Bec Underground station is closed on the advice of the Fire Brigade following an earlier fire alert.

“The Metropolitan line had a brief failure of a signal at Baker Street around 8am but is now running to all stations, with some delays (also affecting the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines).”

All Circle line services suffered severe delays due to a signal failure at Baker Street which happened shortly after 8 am.

This also caused major delays to both H&C and Metropolitan line trains.

Southern, Virgin Trains and London Midland services to and from London were delayed by over-running night engineering works at Bletchley.

A broken down train at Horley caused delays to Southern and Gatwick Express services.

The were long delays last night for Olympic visitors trying to use the special Olympic Javelin service between St Pancras International and the Olympic Park at Stratford.

Disruption started when the signals failed on the high speed line just outside St Pancras around 5.30 pm.

Passengers complained of two hour delays, Network Rail admitted delays of an hour though a spokesman for HS1, the designated high speed line, insisted the longest delay was 45 minutes.

Jon Holmes Tweeted: "High speed Javelin trains are delayed for two hours this evening out of St Pancras. This bodes well for the next two weeks."

John Cushing wrote: "High speed train is on a go-slow, points failure outside St Pancras - delays and packed trains."

The “Javelin” service aims to move around 25,000 people an hour at peak times to the Olympic Park at Stratford in the east of the city. The service is set to run 24 hours a day and has planned 200 extra trains every day during the Olympics, offering a total of 6.2 million extra seats.

A spokesman for HS1, which operates the route, last night said: “A points failure on HS1 was resolved by 5.20pm. Up to 100 passengers were delayed for up to 45 minutes. Normal service has been resumed. HS1 stations at St Pancras and Stratford continue to welcome Games visitors and regular travellers.

“Our advice remains that while we continue to upscale information provision at our stations and across the network, people should keep checking getaheadofthegames.com for the most up to date information on travel.”

The delays followed serious problems on Monday night when two other train links serving the Olympic Park — one tube line and another for an overground train — temporarily went down as thousands of volunteers rehearsed for Friday’s opening ceremony.

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