Transport news, like London buses, often seems to come in clumps. With the various recent announcements it would thus be easy to miss that TfL have published their draft Business Plan for the next decade. Due to the amount of information the Plan contains, several LR authors found themselves casting their eyes upon it, and thus we have decided to combine our efforts below. Setting the Scene Pedantic of Purley: Before we look at the details it probably makes sense … Continued

TfL have now made public the details of the public consultation for the extension of the Northern Line to Battersea via Nine Elms. As was indicated in the leaflet distributed last June, the chosen route is that which formed option 2 in the original Treasury Holdings Consultation. This will see a 3km tunnel constructed from Kennington to Battersea Power Station with a mid-station in south Nine Elms. The associated consultation documents confirm that cost and the high passenger levels already … Continued

In part 1 of this article we looked at the need to upgrade Bank station to provide sufficient capacity for the number of people using it. We now look at the proposals put forward to achieve this. Map showing route of proposed new tunnel and the original proposed new ticket hall. In November 2011, London Underground published their plans for the upgrade of Bank station and had the usual public consultation with an exhibition of the proposals. These did not … Continued

As the final quarter of 2011 drew to a close, the future seemed bright (or at least no longer entirely dark) with regards to extending the Underground. The release of the Mayor’s updated Transport Strategy earlier that year had brought both the extension of the Metropolitan Line to Watford Junction from Croxley and the extension of the Bakerloo line firmly into the public eye – with the Mayor promising to bring it to the eyes of Whitehall as well. There … Continued

For almost eight months now, for travellers on the Northern Line’s Charing Cross branch, the next station from Goodge Street has been Leicester Square and from Leicester Square, Goodge Street. Today the Northern line platforms at Tottenham Court Road, which have been closed since 2nd April 2011, reopen. Anyone who takes a quick glance at the platforms looking for changes will likely be thoroughly disappointed, as at first glance nothing much seems to have gone on – although half of … Continued

With Crossrail under construction and extensions to both the Bakerloo and Northern Line being mooted, it seems a pertinent time to provide a brief reminder into some of the whys and wherefores for those less familiar with subsurface engineering and London’s underground history. One lesson quickly learnt by the early entrepreneurs who built early tube lines (and by this, as for the duration of the article, we mean the deep level lines) was that the longer the line and the … Continued

The Northern line upgrade is at full pace now, with Automatic Train Operation (ATO) due for late 2012/early 2013. ATO is also in place on the Central, Jubilee and Victoria lines. Starting over two years late because of the delays to the Jubilee Line upgrade, the Northern Line is now great need of its own work. Some of the signalling on the Northern line dates from the 1950s and 1960s, for example. Tracks need to be replaced, tunnels strengthened and … Continued

Writing about public consultations on the proposed Northern Line extension to Battersea seems to be developing into somewhat of a May tradition. In May last year, TfL and Battersea Site owners Treasury Holdings undertook a public consultation aimed at establishing which of four Northern Line extension proposals should be taken forward by the developers (you can find all the proposed options here). Today, the two bodies have announced that a final likely route has been chosen and they are now … Continued