Northern line upgrade
Merton Public Transport Liaison Committee Meeting
26 October 2010
April 13, 2015
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Context – London Underground network
•
Tube is key to London’s economic
recovery
•
Long term trend towards rising demand:
- Nearly 1.1 billion journeys in 08/09 – the
highest number ever and over a billion for
third year running
•
- 3.5m journeys a day and over 4m on the
busiest days
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Transformation programme: key elements
• Most comprehensive investment in decades
• Line upgrades – overall network capacity increase
around 30%
• Station modernisations and refurbishments bringing
improvements to safety and security, accessibility,
passenger information and decor
• Major congestion relief at critical stations like King’s
Cross St. Pancras, Tottenham Court Road, Bond
Street and Victoria
• Improving access – step-free access programme eg
Morden
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Northern line – overview
• Busiest line on the Tube network - around 850,000 journeys per
day and one sixth of all journeys on network
• 6 branches - most complex and challenging manually operated
railway in Europe
• Most Northern line stations have been modernised (except where
major station upgrade like Tottenham Court Road)
• Timetable change at the beginning of 2008 transformed
performance – Northern line now one of our best performing lines
• Won a number of awards as a result - including National Rail
Award for Commuter line of the year for London and the South
East in 2009
• Signalling upgrade is the next big improvement planned
• Prepares the way for further 17% peak capacity increase at end
of decade – through partial-separation
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Northern line upgrade
• New state-of-the-art signalling and control system,
meaning trains can be driven automatically
• As a result customers have a faster, more frequent and
reliable train service:
-20% additional capacity
- Significant boost to reliability
- 18% reduction in journey time
• Without the upgrade, performance will deteriorate due
to life-expired assets and increasing demand meaning
greater late running and delay
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Where we were in March 2010
• The Northern line upgrade was originally being carried out under the
PPP by Tube Lines - contractual completion date of January 2012
• The programme for the Northern line followed Tube Lines’ delayed
upgrade of the Jubilee line
• The PPP Arbiter said earlier this year that Tube Lines’ programme for
the Northern line was already significantly delayed
• Tube Lines originally proposed an extremely intensive programme to
deliver the Northern line upgrade with:
- 65 weekend closures (50 of which would have affected the south of the
line between Kennington and Morden) and;
- 14 months of early weekday closing on the rest of the line north of
Stockwell
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Where we are now
• In June 2010 TfL bought Amey’s (Ferrovial) and Bechtel’s shares in
Tube Lines making it a wholly owned subsidiary of TfL
• Our overriding priority since then has been to ascertain the progress of
all Tube Lines’ upgrades
• On the Northern line, we immediately took the decision to cancel the
early weekday closures on the line north of Stockwell
• We then also cancelled the closures on the south of the line
• We are currently working to come up with a programme that
minimises disruption and delivers the work in a way that provides
value for money
April 13, 2015
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Customer and stakeholder communications
• We seek to give as much notice as possible to stakeholders and
customers about closures
• We will update stakeholders and notify customers as soon as new the
programme is confirmed
• Customer information includes high profile ‘check before you travel’
campaign, information available through, for example:
- Train and station announcements and station posters
- Emails to customers
- ‘Travel Tools’ section on website: www.tfl.gov.uk/traveltools and Journey
Planner at: www.tfl.gov.uk/journeyplanner
- Articles and items in London media (eg Metro)
- Travel information telephone line 0843 222 1234 (24 hours) or customer
services 0845 330 9880 (8am-8pm, 7 days)
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Commitment to making the Tube more accessible
• London Underground is committed to making the Tube more
accessible for everyone
• Accessibility improvements include:
- Step-free access at as many stations as possible for mobility impaired
customers - or those with pushchairs and carrying heavy luggage
- New trains comply with RVAR (eg District line trains due from 2013)
with lower floor height of the trains to reduce the step height between
the platform and train to make them easier to board
- Localised platforms works will be undertaken at some stations to
facilitate boarding/alighting new trains
- Tactile strips, visually contrasting handrails, enhanced station PA and
on-train announcement for customers with visual impairments; and
enhanced visual information for those with hearing impairments
April 13,- 2015
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Accessibility improvements delivered & planned
• All stations on the Northern line been modernised and refurbished,
meaning improvements for visually and hearing impaired customers
• Over 150 stations have been refurbished/modernised across the network
- in Merton includes: Colliers Wood, South Wimbledon and Morden
• 62 stations have been made step-free – around 15 since 2007 including
Morden
• Seven more stations will become step-free over the next eight years:
Tottenham Court Road
Victoria
Blackfriars
Farringdon
Paddington (Hammersmith & City)
Bond Street
Green Park
• We are working to increase the number of step-free stations over time as
funding allows.
• New District line trains will be RVAR compliant (on network from 2013)
April 13, 2015
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Q&A
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