The London Underground - An Appreciation

Living

Creaking London Tube remains a daily miracle

Alan Freeman

Globe And Mail, Jan 14 99

The Underground is 136 years old now but the Londoners who love to complain about it can't do without it.

the northbound train is delayed because of a passenger alarm at London Bridge station.
They call it the Misery Line. And no wonder.
It's the peak of the afternoon rush hour at Bank Underground station in the heart of London's financial district, and the narrow subway platform for the Northern Line is crammed with passengers filling every available square centimetre of floor space.
An announcement comes blaring over the loudspeaker system, advising the patient but cranky crowd that the northbound train is delayed because of a passenger alarm at London Bridge station.
"Service is terrible and it's getting worse," says John Jones, who works as an accountant at the London Stock Exchange and has been travelling the Misery Line for four years. "There are more defective trains, more delays and more overcrowding."
It should take Mr. Jones about 30 minutes to get from Belsize to Bank station. "This morning, it took me 50 minutes to get in because of a defective train. Everyone had to get off at Euston and we had to wait for another train."
The train that pulls into the station looks as though it belongs in a railway museum, if not a scrapyard. Its unpainted aluminum shell is dented and covered in grime. Tar has been smeared on the roof, presumably to keep water from dripping in. Inside, the floors are slatted wood, making any effort at cleaning pointless.
Yet the Northern Line carries 184 million passengers a year, making it the busiest of the 11 lines that make up the London Underground. And on most days, it gets people where they want to go, even if they may be a bit late.
With its rusting rolling stock, collapsing trackbed and an electrical system seemingly kept together by duct tape and chewing gum, the London Underground, which marked its 136th birthday this week, remains a daily miracle.
While transit systems round the world struggle to keep passengers from leaving for the car, the London Underground is carrying more passengers than ever: 832 million journeys in 1997-98, up 13 per cent in just four years.

With its rusting rolling stock, collapsing trackbed and an electrical system seemingly kept together by duct tape and chewing gum, the London Underground remains a daily miracle. And while most subways depend heavily on subsidies to keep running, the London Underground earns a tidy operating profit every year, which it uses to pay a substantial chunk of its capital investments, with its owner, the British government paying the rest.
All this doesn't come cheaply. Fares went up by an average of 4.5 per cent on Jan. 1 and an adult one-way fare through two zones of the system, a typical commute, now will set you back £1.70, a staggering $4.40. Weekly passes aren't any bargain either, with an unlimited travel card for the same two zones going for $45.
"There is a kind of love-hate relationship between Londoners and the Tube," says Tony Travers, who directs the Greater London Group, which studies urban issues at the London School of Economics. "The Tube has achieved a perverse iconic status here. People love to complain about it, but they can't do without it."
On some days, the whole system seems near collapse. On Tuesday (11th), for example, a series of breakdowns caused huge delays. It started in the morning rush hour when a signal failure on the Metropolitan Line led to overcrowding on the Jubilee Line, which in turn resulted in the closing of stations for safety reasons. In some cases, panicked passengers weren't able to get off packed cars because trains were sent through stations without stopping.
At one point during the evening rush hour, Oxford Circus, the busiest station, was closed because of the crush of crowds, leaving commuters backed up onto the sidewalk. At Wembley Park station, part of a roof caved in, soaking passengers, while hundreds more were delayed by a flood at Camden Town. The District Line was disrupted by a person on the track and there was a power failure at Waterloo.
Said an Undeground spokesman: "We apologize to passengers."
Mr. Travers blames the Underground's poor performance on chronic under-investment in the system for the four decades between the time it was nationalized in 1948 until the end of the 1980s. A surge of investment on improving safety on the Tube began in the late 1980s after a 1987 fire at King's Cross station killed 31 people. The fire was caused by a cigarette dropped under one of the system's ancient escalators. Investments in new escalators and automatic sprinklers have been a priority.

"There is a kind of love-hate relationship between Londoners and the Tube" But even though investment has been as high as $1-billion annually in recent years, the legacy is so onerous that Mr. Travers admits "it's never enough to stop the system from getting worse."
Irving Yass, director of transport at London First, a business group aimed at promoting London as a corporate location, attributes the problem to short-sighted governments that have never invested long term. "It's always easier to cut back on capital spending rather than on current spending."
And costly improvements often don't seem to pay off. Mr. Yass cites the $1.8-billion upgrading of the Central Line. "Somehow the line's new signal system isn't working properly."
On the miserable Northern Line, which Mr. Yass has been using regularly for 30 years, "there are places [on the track] where they actually have to do shoring-up work on a more or less daily basis."
And because the system is so heavily used, essential maintenance must be done in overnight hours. "One contractor told me that simply working from 1 to 5 a.m. every night, it would take 45 years to renew the track on the Northern Line," Mr. Yass said.
"If we did all the work we had to all at once, we'd have to close the whole system," Underground spokeswoman Ann Laker said. "We have 2.7-million people using the Underground every day."
That's why so much hope has been pinned on the Jubilee Line Extension, the biggest new addition to the Underground in three decades. The 16-kilometre line will link central London with Canary Wharf, the huge office development in East London and the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, the centrepiece of Britain's celebration of the year 2000.
But the line is now expected to cost a mind-boggling $7.5-billion -- $2.5-billion over budget -- and it's so far behind schedule that there are fears it may not be complete before the opening of the Millennium Dome at the end of the year. The British government, which is financing most of the cost, was so upset by delays that it brought in Bechtel, the U.S. engineering firm, to supervise construction last fall, ousting London Underground officials.

simply working from 1 to 5 a.m. every night, it would take 45 years to renew the track on the Northern Line Ms. Laker blames the delays and cost overruns on a variety of problems, including difficult soil conditions, problems with the tunnelling technology used during construction and changes imposed on the original design including a requirement by MPs that the line's Westminster station be buried 40 metres below the existing District and Circle Lines.
"That was a helluva job," she said.
There have been other problems as well. The 500 electricians on the project, who are earning about $2,500 a week, staged a series of unofficial strikes in the fall, citing unsafe working conditions. They are reportedly seeking bonuses as high as $10,000 just to finish the job.
At those sites where construction is almost complete, the result is impressive.
With its stainless-steel escalators, blue glass walls and soaring columns covered in mosaic tile, Greenwich North station, which will service the Millennium Dome, looks more like an airline terminal than a Tube station.
While the existing Underground stations feature narrow corridors, lots of steps and dingy lighting, the new stations are definitely passenger friendly, with a total of 118 escalators, compared with 200 in the rest of the existing system.
The new Jubilee Line also boasts London's first use of platform-edge doors, which will open simultaneously with the doors of the subway trains, improving ventilation and adding to safety by preventing people from jumping in front of trains or pushing others on to the tracks.
Mr. Travers thinks it's all exaggerated, comparing the Jubilee Line Extension to "a state-of-the-art wing added to a crumbling country house."
He calls the new line "Canada's gift to London," a reference to the successful lobbying effort by Canada's Reichmann family to get former prime minister Margaret Thatcher to back the project as a link to the Canary Wharf development, even though transit planners did not see it as a priority.

Average fare per passenger kilometre: 13.9 pence (35 cents) "It's a bizarre use of public money," he says. "The same money used on the core Tube would have brought it just about up to scratch . . . or it could have renewed the entire London bus fleet six times over."
Ms. Laker maintains that the line will be of huge help to the whole system by alleviating congestion on other lines and providing improved service to the south bank of the Thames as well as to the fast-developing Canary Wharf and Docklands areas.
She is also confident that the line will be open on time. Trains are already being tested on completed portions of the line and the first four stations are due to be put in service in the spring, with the third and final phase due to open by late fall, in time to welcome 2000.
GOING UNDERGROUND
London's long-awaited Jubilee Line extension is due for completion by spring of 1999. The 1.9 billion Pound project will create 22,000 jobs in Britain.
59 new trains will service the Jubilee Line extension. Each will seat 250 with a standing capacity of 1,115. Safety features include crash resistant monocoque aluminium body shells.
London Underground facts:
The first line, operated by the Metropolitan Railway Co., opened in January of 1863, with steam trains running on the six kilometres of track between Paddington Station and Farringdon Street.
The current network:
269 stations over 391 kilometres
Manual ticket collection stations: 154
Number of journeys in 1997-98: 832 million
The busiest station: Oxford Circus with 87.8 million passengers a year.
Revenue in 1997-98: 935 million Pounds ($2.3-billion)
Cost of operations: 675 million Pounds
Operating margin: 277 million Pounds
Average fare per passenger kilometre: 13.9 pence (35 cents)

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	the northbound train is delayed because of a passenger alarm at London Bridge station.	They call it the Misery Line. And no wonder. It's the peak of the afternoon rush hour at Bank Underground station in the heart of London's financial district, and the narrow subway platform for the Northern Line is crammed with passengers filling every available square centimetre of floor space. An announcement comes blaring over the loudspeaker system, advising the patient but cranky crowd that the northbound train is delayed because of a passenger alarm at London Bridge station. "Service is terrible and it's getting worse," says John Jones, who works as an accountant at the London Stock Exchange and has been travelling the Misery Line for four years. "There are more defective trains, more delays and more overcrowding." It should take Mr. Jones about 30 minutes to get from Belsize to Bank station. "This morning, it took me 50 minutes to get in because of a defective train. Everyone had to get off at Euston and we had to wait for another train." The train that pulls into the station looks as though it belongs in a railway museum, if not a scrapyard. Its unpainted aluminum shell is dented and covered in grime. Tar has been smeared on the roof, presumably to keep water from dripping in. Inside, the floors are slatted wood, making any effort at cleaning pointless. Yet the Northern Line carries 184 million passengers a year, making it the busiest of the 11 lines that make up the London Underground. And on most days, it gets people where they want to go, even if they may be a bit late. With its rusting rolling stock, collapsing trackbed and an electrical system seemingly kept together by duct tape and chewing gum, the London Underground, which marked its 136th birthday this week, remains a daily miracle. While transit systems round the world struggle to keep passengers from leaving for the car, the London Underground is carrying more passengers than ever: 832 million journeys in 1997-98, up 13 per cent in just four years.
	With its rusting rolling stock, collapsing trackbed and an electrical system seemingly kept together by duct tape and chewing gum, the London Underground remains a daily miracle.	And while most subways depend heavily on subsidies to keep running, the London Underground earns a tidy operating profit every year, which it uses to pay a substantial chunk of its capital investments, with its owner, the British government paying the rest. All this doesn't come cheaply. Fares went up by an average of 4.5 per cent on Jan. 1 and an adult one-way fare through two zones of the system, a typical commute, now will set you back £1.70, a staggering $4.40. Weekly passes aren't any bargain either, with an unlimited travel card for the same two zones going for $45. "There is a kind of love-hate relationship between Londoners and the Tube," says Tony Travers, who directs the Greater London Group, which studies urban issues at the London School of Economics. "The Tube has achieved a perverse iconic status here. People love to complain about it, but they can't do without it." On some days, the whole system seems near collapse. On Tuesday (11th), for example, a series of breakdowns caused huge delays. It started in the morning rush hour when a signal failure on the Metropolitan Line led to overcrowding on the Jubilee Line, which in turn resulted in the closing of stations for safety reasons. In some cases, panicked passengers weren't able to get off packed cars because trains were sent through stations without stopping. At one point during the evening rush hour, Oxford Circus, the busiest station, was closed because of the crush of crowds, leaving commuters backed up onto the sidewalk. At Wembley Park station, part of a roof caved in, soaking passengers, while hundreds more were delayed by a flood at Camden Town. The District Line was disrupted by a person on the track and there was a power failure at Waterloo. Said an Undeground spokesman: "We apologize to passengers." Mr. Travers blames the Underground's poor performance on chronic under-investment in the system for the four decades between the time it was nationalized in 1948 until the end of the 1980s. A surge of investment on improving safety on the Tube began in the late 1980s after a 1987 fire at King's Cross station killed 31 people. The fire was caused by a cigarette dropped under one of the system's ancient escalators. Investments in new escalators and automatic sprinklers have been a priority.
	"There is a kind of love-hate relationship between Londoners and the Tube"	But even though investment has been as high as $1-billion annually in recent years, the legacy is so onerous that Mr. Travers admits "it's never enough to stop the system from getting worse." Irving Yass, director of transport at London First, a business group aimed at promoting London as a corporate location, attributes the problem to short-sighted governments that have never invested long term. "It's always easier to cut back on capital spending rather than on current spending." And costly improvements often don't seem to pay off. Mr. Yass cites the $1.8-billion upgrading of the Central Line. "Somehow the line's new signal system isn't working properly." On the miserable Northern Line, which Mr. Yass has been using regularly for 30 years, "there are places [on the track] where they actually have to do shoring-up work on a more or less daily basis." And because the system is so heavily used, essential maintenance must be done in overnight hours. "One contractor told me that simply working from 1 to 5 a.m. every night, it would take 45 years to renew the track on the Northern Line," Mr. Yass said. "If we did all the work we had to all at once, we'd have to close the whole system," Underground spokeswoman Ann Laker said. "We have 2.7-million people using the Underground every day." That's why so much hope has been pinned on the Jubilee Line Extension, the biggest new addition to the Underground in three decades. The 16-kilometre line will link central London with Canary Wharf, the huge office development in East London and the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, the centrepiece of Britain's celebration of the year 2000. But the line is now expected to cost a mind-boggling $7.5-billion -- $2.5-billion over budget -- and it's so far behind schedule that there are fears it may not be complete before the opening of the Millennium Dome at the end of the year. The British government, which is financing most of the cost, was so upset by delays that it brought in Bechtel, the U.S. engineering firm, to supervise construction last fall, ousting London Underground officials.
	simply working from 1 to 5 a.m. every night, it would take 45 years to renew the track on the Northern Line	Ms. Laker blames the delays and cost overruns on a variety of problems, including difficult soil conditions, problems with the tunnelling technology used during construction and changes imposed on the original design including a requirement by MPs that the line's Westminster station be buried 40 metres below the existing District and Circle Lines. "That was a helluva job," she said. There have been other problems as well. The 500 electricians on the project, who are earning about $2,500 a week, staged a series of unofficial strikes in the fall, citing unsafe working conditions. They are reportedly seeking bonuses as high as $10,000 just to finish the job. At those sites where construction is almost complete, the result is impressive. With its stainless-steel escalators, blue glass walls and soaring columns covered in mosaic tile, Greenwich North station, which will service the Millennium Dome, looks more like an airline terminal than a Tube station. While the existing Underground stations feature narrow corridors, lots of steps and dingy lighting, the new stations are definitely passenger friendly, with a total of 118 escalators, compared with 200 in the rest of the existing system. The new Jubilee Line also boasts London's first use of platform-edge doors, which will open simultaneously with the doors of the subway trains, improving ventilation and adding to safety by preventing people from jumping in front of trains or pushing others on to the tracks. Mr. Travers thinks it's all exaggerated, comparing the Jubilee Line Extension to "a state-of-the-art wing added to a crumbling country house." He calls the new line "Canada's gift to London," a reference to the successful lobbying effort by Canada's Reichmann family to get former prime minister Margaret Thatcher to back the project as a link to the Canary Wharf development, even though transit planners did not see it as a priority.
	Average fare per passenger kilometre: 13.9 pence (35 cents)	"It's a bizarre use of public money," he says. "The same money used on the core Tube would have brought it just about up to scratch . . . or it could have renewed the entire London bus fleet six times over." Ms. Laker maintains that the line will be of huge help to the whole system by alleviating congestion on other lines and providing improved service to the south bank of the Thames as well as to the fast-developing Canary Wharf and Docklands areas. She is also confident that the line will be open on time. Trains are already being tested on completed portions of the line and the first four stations are due to be put in service in the spring, with the third and final phase due to open by late fall, in time to welcome 2000. GOING UNDERGROUND London's long-awaited Jubilee Line extension is due for completion by spring of 1999. The 1.9 billion Pound project will create 22,000 jobs in Britain. 59 new trains will service the Jubilee Line extension. Each will seat 250 with a standing capacity of 1,115. Safety features include crash resistant monocoque aluminium body shells. London Underground facts: The first line, operated by the Metropolitan Railway Co., opened in January of 1863, with steam trains running on the six kilometres of track between Paddington Station and Farringdon Street. The current network: 269 stations over 391 kilometres Manual ticket collection stations: 154 Number of journeys in 1997-98: 832 million The busiest station: Oxford Circus with 87.8 million passengers a year. Revenue in 1997-98: 935 million Pounds ($2.3-billion) Cost of operations: 675 million Pounds Operating margin: 277 million Pounds Average fare per passenger kilometre: 13.9 pence (35 cents)