London Underground

File:London Underground Victoria Line 2009 Stock Observations
The **London Underground** is a metro system serving a large part of Greater London and neighbouring areas of Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire in England. It is both the world's oldest underground railway and the oldest rapid transit system. It was also the first underground railway to operate electric trains. It is usually referred to as *the Underground* or *the Tube* - the latter deriving from the shape of the system's deep-bore tunnels - although about 55% of the network is above ground.

The earlier lines of the present London Underground network, which were built by various private companies, became part of an integrated transport system (which excluded the main line railways) in 1933 with the creation of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB), more commonly known by its shortened name: "London Transport". The underground network became a single entity when London Underground Limited (LUL) was formed by the UK government in 1985. Since 2003 LUL has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL), the statutory corporation responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London, which is run by a board and a commissioner appointed by the Mayor of London.

The Underground has 275 stations and approximately 400 km (250 miles) of track, making it the longest metro system in the world by route length, and one of the most served in terms of stations. In 2007, over one billion passenger journeys were recorded.

## Transport for London

Main article: Transport for London

Transport for London (TfL) was created in 2000 as the integrated body responsible for London's transport system. It replaced London Regional Transport. It assumed control of London Underground Limited in July 2003.

TfL is part of the Greater London Authority and is constituted as a statutory corporation regulated under local government finance rules.[20] It has three subsidiaries: London Transport Insurance (Guernsey) Ltd., the TfL Pension Fund Trustee Co. Ltd. and Transport Trading Ltd (TTL). TTL has six wholly-owned subsidiaries, one of which is London Underground Limited.

The TfL Board is appointed by the Mayor of London. The Mayor also sets the structure and level of public transport fares in London. However the day-to-day running of the corporation is left to the Commissioner of Transport for London. The current Commissioner is Peter Hendy.

The Mayor is responsible for producing an integrated transport strategy for London and for consulting the GLA, TfL, local councils and others on the strategy. The Mayor is also responsible for setting TfL's budget. The GLA is consulted on the Mayor's transport strategy, and inspects and approves the Mayor's budget. It is able to summon the Mayor and senior staff to account for TfL's performance. London TravelWatch, a body appointed by and reporting to the Assembly, deals with complaints about transport in London.

## Infrastructure

 File:London Underground Battery locos 25 54 on Engineers Train 674 @ Rayners Lane 30 12 13
1. The total length of railway on London Underground is 250 miles (402 km).
2. It is made up of the sub-surface network and the deep-tube lines.In 1971/72 it was remeasured in kilometres using Ongar as the zero point.
3. The Underground serves 270 stations. 14 Underground stations are outside Greater London, of which 5 (Amersham, Chalfont & Latimer, Chesham, and Chorleywood on the Metropolitan line and is Epping on the Central line) are beyond the M25 London orbital motorway.
4. There are 426 escalators on the London Underground system and the longest, at 60 metres (200 ft), is at Angel. The shortest, at Stratford, gives a vertical rise of 4.1 metres (13 ft).
5. There are 164 lifts, and numbers have increased in recent years following a programme to increase accessibility.

### Stations and lines

 File:London Underground Overground DLR Crossrail map.svg
The London Underground's 11 lines are the Bakerloo Line, Central Line, Circle line, District Line, Hammersmith & City Line, Jubilee Line, Metropolitan Line, Northern Line, Piccadilly Line, Victoria Line, and Waterloo & City Line.  Until 2007 there was a twelfth line, the East London Line, but this closed for conversion work and was transferred to the London Overground when it reopened in 2010.

Prior to its transfer to the London Underground in 1994, the Waterloo and City line was operated by British Rail and its mainline predecessors. The line fist began appearing on most tube maps, from the mid-1930s.

Lines on the Underground can be classified into two types: subsurface and deep-level. The subsurface lines were dug by the cut-and-cover method, with the tracks running about 5 m (16 ft 5 in) below the surface. The deep-level or tube lines, bored using a tunnelling shield, run about 20 m (65 ft 7 in) below the surface (although this varies considerably), with each track in a separate tunnel. These tunnels can have a diameter as small as 3.56 m (11 ft 8 in) and the loading gauge is thus considerably smaller than on the subsurface lines. Lines of both types usually emerge onto the surface outside the central area.

While the tube lines are for the most part self-contained, the subsurface lines are part of an interconnected network: each shares track with at least two other lines. The subsurface arrangement is similar to the New York City Subway, which also runs separate "lines" over shared tracks.

### Rolling stock and electrification

 File:CP & R at Upminster.jpg
The Underground uses rolling stock built between 1960 and 2005. Stock on subsurface lines is identified by a letter (such as A Stock, used on the Metropolitan line), while tube stock is identified by the year in which it was designed (for example, 1996 Stock, used on the Jubilee line). All lines are worked by a single type of stock except the District line, which uses both C and D Stock. Two types of stock are currently being developed — 2009 Stock for the Victoria line and S stock for the subsurface lines, with the Metropolitan line A Stock being replaced first. Rollout of both is expected to begin about 2009. In addition to the Electric Multiple Units described above, there is engineering stock, such as ballast trains and brake vans, identified by a 1-3 letter prefix then a number.

The Underground is one of the few networks in the world that uses a four-rail system. The additional rail carries the electrical return that on third-rail and overhead networks is provided by the running rails. On the Underground a top-contact third rail is beside the track, energised at +420 V DC, and a top-contact fourth rail is centrally between the running rails, at -210 V DC, which combine to provide a traction voltage of 630 V DC.

The *Deep Tube Programme,* is investigating into replacing the trains for the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines. It is also looking for trains with better energy conservation and regenerative braking.

Of all the stations on the network, 135 of them are below street/ground level, this equates to 50% of the 270 stations.

* 114 are located completely underground (not open to the sky).

* 21 are open cut stations that are partially open to the sky (All of these stations apart from White City and North Acton have platforms serving subsurface lines).

* 135 are either elevated or at ground level.

The number of below ground stations will rise from 135 to 138 once new stations are built at Nine Elms, Battersea Park and Watford High Street (which is already on the London Overground).

The number of overground stations will rise from 135 to 137 with the opening of the Cassiobridge, Watford JCN and Watford Vicarage Road stations along with the closure of the little used current Watford tube station.

By line these are the sections below ground that contain stations, small tunnels/cuttings that contain no stations are not included.

Bakerloo Line: Between Queens Park and the terminus at Elephant and Castle.

Central Line: Between East Acton and Stratford and another section containing the Wanstead, Redbridge and Gants Hill stations. North Acton station is in a cutting.

Circle Line: All of the line apart from the Hammersmith Branch beyond Paddington.

District Line: Between Ravenscourt Park and Bromley By Bow, with Fulham Broadway in it's own tunnelled section.

Hammersmith and City Line: Between Royal Oak and Bromley By Bow.

Jubilee Line: Between West Hampstead and Canning Town.

Metropolitan Line: Between Wembley Park and the Terminus at Aldgate, Harrow on the Hill is in a cutting.

Northern Line: Morden (which is in a cutting) to East Finchley/Golders Green.

Piccadilly Line: Between Turnham Green and Arnos Grove with another tunnelled section between Hounslow West and the Terminus at Heathrow Terminal 5. Southgate station is in it's own short tunnelled section.

Victoria Line: Entirely Underground.

Waterloo and City Line: Entirely Underground

### Cooling

In summer, temperatures on parts of the London Underground can become very uncomfortable due to its deep and poorly ventilated tube tunnels: temperatures as high as 47 °C (117 °F) were reported in the 2006 European heat wave. Posters may be observed on the Underground network advising that passengers carry a bottle of water to help keep cool.

### Planned improvements and expansions

There are many planned improvements to the London Underground. A new station opened on the Piccadilly line at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 on 27 March 2008 and is the first extension of the London Underground since 1999. Each line is being upgraded to improve capacity and reliability, with new computerised signalling, automatic train operation (ATO), track replacement and station refurbishment, and, where needed, new rolling stock. A trial programme for a groundwater cooling system in Victoria station took place in 2006 and 2007; it aimed to determine whether such a system would be feasible and effective if in widespread use. A trial of mobile phone coverage on the Waterloo & City line aims to determine whether coverage can be extended across the rest of the Underground network. Although not part of London Underground, the Crossrail scheme will provide a new route across central London integrated with the tube network.

The long proposed Chelsea-Hackney line, which is planned to begin operation in 2025, may be part of the London Underground, which would mean it would give the network a new Northeast to South cross London line to provide more interchanges with other lines and relieve overcrowding on other lines. However it is still on the drawing board. It was first proposed in 1901 and has been in planning since then. In 2007 the line was passed over to Cross London Rail Ltd, the current developers of Crossrail. Therefore, the line may be either part of the London Underground network or the National Rail network. There are advantages and disadvantages for both.

The Croxley Rail Link proposal envisages diverting the Metropolitan line Watford branch to Watford Junction station along a disused railway track. The project awaits funding from Hertfordshire County Council and the Department for Transport, and remains at the proposal stage.

## Travelling

### Ticketing

The Underground uses TfL's Travelcard zones to calculate fares. Greater London is divided into 6 zones; Zone 1 is the most central, with a boundary just beyond the Circle line, and Zone 6 is the outermost and includes London Heathrow Airport. Stations on the Metropolitan line outside Greater London are in Zones 7-9.

Travelcard zones 7-9 also apply on the Euston-Watford Junction line (part of the London Overground) as far as Watford High Street. Watford Junction is outside these zones and special fares apply.

There are staffed ticket offices, some open for limited periods only, and ticket machines usable at any time. Some machines that sell a limited range of tickets accept coins only, other touch-screen machines accept coins and banknotes, and usually give change. These machines also accept major credit and debit cards: some newer machines accept cards only.

More recently, TfL has introduced the Oyster card, a smartcard with an embedded contactless RFID chip, that travellers can obtain, charge with credit, and use to pay for travel. Like Travelcards they can be used on the Underground, buses, trams and the Docklands Light Railway. The Oyster card is cheaper to operate than cash ticketing or the older-style magnetic-strip-based Travelcards, and the Underground is encouraging passengers to use Oyster cards instead of Travelcards and cash (on buses) by implementing significant price differences. Oyster-based Travelcards can be used on National Rail throughout London. Pay as you go is available on a restricted, but increasing, number of routes.

For tourists or other non-residents, not needing to travel in the morning peak period, the all day travelcard is the best ticketing option available. These are available from any underground station. These cost around £5.50 and allow unlimited travel on the network from 9:30am onward for the rest of the day. This provides excellent value for money and a huge saving considering one single journey on the network can cost close to £5. Travel cards for multiple days are also available.

#### Penalty fares and fare evasion

In addition to automatic and staffed ticket gates, the Underground is patrolled by both uniformed and plain-clothes ticket inspectors with hand-held Oyster card readers. Passengers travelling without a ticket valid for their entire journey are required to pay at least a £20 penalty fare and can be prosecuted for fare evasion under the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 under which they are subject to a fine of up to £1,000, or three months' imprisonment. Oyster pre-pay users who have failed to touch in at the start of their journey are charged the maximum cash fare (£4, or £5 at some National Rail stations) upon touching out. In addition, an Oyster card user who has failed to touch in at the start of their journey and who is detected mid-journey (i.e. on a train) by an Inspector is now liable to a penalty fare of £20. No £4 maximum charge will be applied at their destination as the inspector will apply an 'exit token' to their card.

While the Conditions of Carriage require period Travelcard holders to touch in and touch out at the start and end of their journey, any Oystercard user who has a valid period Travelcard covering their entire journey is not liable to pay a Penalty fare where they have not touched in. Neither the Conditions of Carriage or Schedule 17 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, which shows how and when Penalty fares can be issued, would allow the issuing of a Penalty fare to a traveler who had already paid the correct fare for their journey.

### Delays

According to statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the average commuter on the Metropolitan line wasted three days, 10 hours and 25 minutes in 2006 due to delays (not including missed connections). Between 17 September 2006 and 14 October 2006, figures show that 211 train services were delayed by more than 15 minutes. Passengers are entitled to a refund if their journey is delayed by 15 minutes or more due to circumstances within the control of TfL.

### Hours of operation

The Underground does not run 24 hours a day (except at New Year and major public events - such as the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002 and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the London Olympics in 2012) because most lines have only two tracks (one in each direction) and therefore need to close at night for planned maintenance work. First trains start operating around 04:30, running until around 01:30. Unlike systems such as the New York City Subway, few parts of the Underground have express tracks that allow trains to be routed around maintenance sites. Recently, greater use has been made of weekend closures of parts of the system for scheduled engineering work.

### Accessibility

Accessibility by people with mobility issues was not considered when most of the system was built, and most older stations are inaccessible to disabled people. More recent stations were designed for accessibility, but retrofitting accessibility features to old stations is at best prohibitively expensive and technically extremely difficult, and often impossible. Even when there are already escalators or lifts, there are often steps between the lift or escalator landings and the platforms.

Most stations on the surface have at least a short flight of stairs to gain access from street level, and the great majority of below-ground stations require use of stairs or some of the system's 410 escalators (each going at a speed of 145 ft (44 m) per minute, approximately 1.65 mph (3 km/h)). There are also some lengthy walks and further flights of steps required to gain access to platforms. The emergency stairs at Covent Garden station have 193 steps (the equivalent climbing a 15-storey building) to reach the exit, so passengers are advised to use the lifts as climbing the steps can be dangerous.

The escalators in Underground stations include some of the longest in Europe, and all are custom-built. The longest escalator is at Angel station, 60 m (197 ft) long, with a vertical rise of 27.5 m (90 ft). They run 20 hours a day, 364 days a year, with 95% of them operational at any one time, and can cope with 13,000 passengers per hour. Convention and signage stipulate that people using escalators on the Underground stand on the right-hand side so as not to obstruct those who walk past them on the left.

TfL produces a map indicating which stations are accessible, and since 2004 line maps indicate with a wheelchair symbol those stations that provide step-free access from street level. Step height from platform to train is up to 300 mm (11.8 in), and there can be a large gap between the train and curved platforms. Only the Jubilee Line Extension is completely accessible.

TfL plans that by 2020 there should be a network of over 100 fully accessible stations, consists of those recently built or rebuilt, and a handful of suburban stations that happen to have level access, along with selected 'key stations', which will be rebuilt. These key stations have been chosen due to high usage, interchange potential, and geographic spread, so that up to 75% of journeys will be achievable step-free.

### Overcrowding

Overcrowding on the Underground has been of concern for years and is very much the norm for most commuters especially during the morning and evening rush hours. Stations which particularly have a problem include Camden Town station and Covent Garden, which have access restrictions at certain times. Restrictions are introduced at other stations when necessary. Several stations have been rebuilt to deal with overcrowding issues, with Clapham Common and Clapham North on the Northern line being the last remaining stations with a single narrow platform with tracks on both sides. At particularly busy occasions, such as football matches, British Transport Police may be present to help with overcrowding. On 24 September 2007 King's Cross underground station was totally closed due to "overcrowding". According to a 2003 House of Commons report, commuters face a "daily trauma" and are forced to travel in "intolerable conditions".

### Safety

 File:39-tonne train out of control dangerously through central London-0
 File:Seconds From Disaster King's Cross Fire
 File:Going up wooden escalator at Greenford 16-06-06.jpg
Accidents on the Underground network, which carries around a billion passengers a year, are rare. There is one fatal accident for every 300 million journeys. There are several safety warnings given to passengers, such as the 'mind the gap' announcement and the regular announcements for passengers to keep behind the yellow line. Relatively few accidents are caused by overcrowding on the platforms, and staff monitor platforms and passageways at busy times prevent people entering the system if they become overcrowded.

Most fatalities on the network are suicides. Most platforms at deep tube stations have pits beneath the track, originally constructed to aid drainage of water from the platforms, but they also help prevent death or serious injury when a passenger falls or jumps in front of a train.

The King's Cross fire broke out on November 18th, 1987, at approximately 19:30 at King's Cross St. On an escalator serving the Piccadilly line at King's Cross/Pancras tube station, a major interchange on the London Underground.

The subsequent public inquiry determined that the fire had started due to a lit match being dropped onto the escalator a 48 year old wooden escalator serving the Piccadilly line and 15 minutes after being reported, as the first members of the London Fire Brigade were investigating, the fire flashed over, filling the underground ticket office with heat and smoke. It had suddenly increased in intensity over those 15 minuets due to a previously unknown trench effect.

All wooden escalators were replaced in the years following the King's Cross fire in 1987 and smoking was banned by 2006.

Sadly, the fire killed 31 people and injured 100 people.

## Image

TfL's Tube map and "roundel" logo are instantly recognisable by any Londoner, almost any Briton, and many people around the world. The original maps were often street maps with the lines superimposed, and the stylised Tube map evolved from a design by electrical engineer Harry Beck in 1931. Virtually every major urban rail system in the world now has a map in a similar stylised layout and many bus companies have also adopted the concept. TfL licences the sale of clothing and other accessories featuring its graphic elements and it takes legal action against unauthorised use of its trademarks and of the Tube map. Nevertheless, unauthorised copies of the logo continue to crop up worldwide. The announcement "mind the gap", heard when trains stop at certain platforms, has also become a well known catchphrase.

### The roundel

The origins of the roundel, in earlier years known as the 'bulls-eye' or 'target', are obscure. While the first use of a roundel in a London transport context was the 19th-century symbol of the London General Omnibus Company — a wheel with a bar across the centre bearing the word GENERAL — its usage on the Underground stems from the decision in 1908 to find a more obvious way of highlighting station names on platforms. The red circle with blue name bar was quickly adopted, with the word "UNDERGROUND" across the bar, as an early corporate identity. The logo was modified by Edward Johnston in 1919.

Each station displays the Underground roundel, often containing the station's name in the central bar, at entrances and repeatedly along the platform, so that the name can easily be seen by passengers on arriving trains.

The roundel has been used for buses and the tube for many years, and since TfL took control it has been applied to other transport types (taxi, tram, DLR, etc.) in different colour pairs. The roundel has to some extent become a symbol for London itself.

### Typography

Edward Johnston designed TfL's distinctive sans-serif typeface, in 1916. "New Johnston", modified to include lower case, is still in use. It is noted for the curl at the bottom of the minuscule l, which other sans-serif typefaces have discarded, and for the diamond-shaped tittle on the minuscule i and j, whose shape also appears in the full stop, and is the origin of other punctuation marks in the face. TfL owns the copyright to and exercises control over the New Johnston typeface, but a close approximation of the face exists in the TrueType computer font Paddington, and the Gill Sans typeface also takes inspiration from Johnston.

### Contribution to arts

The Underground currently sponsors and contributes to the arts via its Platform for Art and Poems on the Underground projects. Poster and billboard space (and in the case of Gloucester Road tube station, an entire disused platform) is given over to artwork and poetry to "create an environment for positive impact and to enhance and enrich the journeys of ... passengers".

Its artistic legacy includes the employment since the 1920s of many well-known graphic designers, illustrators and artists for its own publicity posters. Designers who produced work for the Underground in the 1920s and 1930s include Man Ray, Edward McKnight Kauffer and Fougasse. In recent years the Underground has commissioned work from leading artists including R. B. Kitaj, John Bellany and Howard Hodgkin.

In architecture, Leslie Green established a house style for the new stations built in the first decade of the 20th century for the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Northern lines which included individual Edwardian tile patterns on platform walls. In the 1920s and 1930s, Charles Holden designed a series of modernist and art-deco stations for which the Underground remains famous. Holden's design for the Underground's headquarters building at 55 Broadway included avant-garde sculptures by Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Henry Moore (his first public commission). Misha Black was appointed design consultant for the 1960s Victoria Line, contributing to the line's uniform look, while the 1990s extension of the Jubilee line featured stations designed by leading architects such as Norman Foster, Michael Hopkins and Will Alsop.

Many stations also feature unique interior designs to help passenger identification. Often these have themes of local significance. Tiling at Baker Street incorporates repetitions of Sherlock Holmes's silhouette. Tottenham Court Road features semi-abstract mosaics by Eduardo Paolozzi representing the local music industry at Denmark Street. Northern line platforms at Charing Cross feature murals by David Gentleman of the construction of Charing Cross itself.

### In popular culture

The Underground has been featured in many movies and television shows, including Sliding Doors, Tube Tales and Neverwhere. The London Underground Film Office handles over 100 requests per month. The Underground has also featured in music such as The Jam's "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" and in literature such as the graphic novel V for Vendetta. Popular legends about the Underground being haunted persist to this day.

After placing a number of spoof announcements on her web page, the London Underground's voiceover artiste Emma Clarke had further contracts cancelled in 2007.

## See also

1. Tube Map
2. Transport for London
3. Tramlink
4. London Buses
5. London Overground
6. Docklands Light Railway
7. Emirates Air Line (cable car)

## External links

Official
* *Transport for London* Home page
* Example of webpage using tfl embedded tube map