Northern Line upgrade 'will see fewer delays'

Date: 14/6/2011

The Northern Line will begin to undergo upgrades in 2011, however, the current schedule will mean that fewer journeys will be disrupted than on similar schemes that have gone before.

According to Transport for London (TfL), 'lessons have been learned' following a project to improve the Jubilee Line, meaning that a lot of the preparatory work has already been done for this latest initiative.

Furthermore, while it had been proposed under the original Public Private Partnership (PPP) plans that the upgrade would require 65 full weekend closures on the Northern Line, this has now been reduced to eight - with five in 2013 and three in 2014.

In order to achieve the new schedule, much off-site testing will take place, while more work will also be conducted during the usual night-time engineering hours.

Set to be completed in 2014, it is hoped that following the project the Northern Line - which is the busiest Underground service - will be faster, more frequent and reliable, with 20 per cent more capacity.

In addition, it is expected that journey times will be reduced by 18 per cent.

London Underground Managing Director Mike Brown said: 'We know how disruptive weekend engineering works can be and we're determined to learn lessons from the Jubilee Line upgrade - the last of the PPP upgrades."

TfL recently reported that in the last eight years, delays experienced on the Tube have fallen by one-third.

Posted by Mary Treen