Because sometimes, what you really need to see is a London Underground 1989 training video about traction current!
Monthly Archives: November 2014
Secrets DVD
What do you mean you haven’t bought the Secrets of the Underground DVD yet? Here’s Geoff to tell you all about it …
Jubilee reopens at Bond Street
Flagged as being back open by ‘mid-December’, it was a pleasant surprise to find Jubilee line trains stopping again today at Bond Street station as the works finished early. However, due to the nature of the works you’re not able to enter or exit at the station, you’re only able to change between the two lines at the station if that’s what you want to do!
The station entrance/exit should re-open by mid-December, as planned though.
Bond Street open again
Secrets of the Underground DVD
Geoff’s popular series of videos for Londonist featuring all the lines of the Tube is being released on DVD just in time for Christmas! It features re-edited versions of all the videos, 20 minutes of out-takes and extras and an all new ‘Abandoned Stations‘ video.
You can order your copy here from the Londonist website.
Secrets of the Underground
Abandoned Update
We’ve updated our Abandoned Stations map again, tweaking a couple of things and adding in some new surface buildings at Knightsbridge and Chancery Lane.
As always, click on the image here to get a larger version!
Abandoned Stations (Version 6)
Labyrinth Book
The Labyrinth book is finally out! Available on the Art/Books publishing website, the blurb that goes with it, states:
Designed by the award-winning studio Rose, Labyrinth: A Journey Through London’s Underground by Mark Wallinger is a compelling record of this extraordinary project. But more than that, it is also a vivid celebration of the London Underground and of London itself. Striking photographs of all the labyrinths in situ reveal the diverse face and fabric of the network and its users, while fascinating ‘I-never-knew-that’ facts about each station and their surrounds bring surprising perspectives to the daily commute.
TfL Rail
Great new piece over on the London Reconnection website, explaining how the pre-Crossrail that will be Crossrail service between Shenfield and Liverpool Street will be branded as ‘TFL Rail’. We couldn’t resist…
TfL Rail
Battersea goes ahead
A TfL press release this week confirmed that the Northern Line extension to Battersea is definitely going ahead.
Battersea extension
They’re already calling it the ‘NLE‘, the Northern Line Extension, even though it’s just for two stations! We would expect them to be as large, and architecturally as brilliant as the new Jubilee (JLE) stations were back in 1999.
And they’re optimistically saying that they could be be finished as soon as 2020.
So what will be first to open? The new Metropolitan Line extension, Crossrail, or the NLE?
New fares for 2015
TfL have today announced their new fares for 2015, and there’s something very interesting that we weren’t expecting.
The peak all-day cap for Oyster or contactless payments is actually being reduced – so much so that there’s now no ‘peak’ and ‘off peak’ cap – there is just one capped price, and it’s cheaper than it used to be – approximately one fifth of the price of the equivalent 7 Day Travel Card to Zone 1.
So if you’re someone that only travels a few days a week e.g. a flexible or a part-time worker who never buys a 7 Day Travelcard this could mean that you will be saving a fair bit of money on your journey.
New Fares for 2015
And with the new all-day caps being so much lower than the old peak caps you can travel before 9:30am without being penalised for it as you used to. e.g. travelling in zones 1 to 3 at peak now will cost you £10.60 (vs £7.70 after 9:30am). In 2015 this will reduce to £7.50 even if you travel before 9:30am. The TfL press release states that it estimates that ‘Over 600,000 passengers’ will benefit from paying lower fares.
There’ll also be a 5p increase on the single fare for buses – up from £1.45 to £1.50, with the daily bus cap however remaining at £4.40 – but a One Day Bus & Tram Pass (last available in 2009 when it was discontinued) will be re-introduced – it costs £5 a day and is for those who wish to travel but aren’t in possession of an Oyster card or contactless card. Tfl says the pass will be “a lightweight single use Oyster card that will not require a deposit” – we’re not quite sure if “single use Oyster card” means “use the card for one day and throw it away” (seems wasteful) or “will only be for a bus pass” though (would be more sensible).
There are though, some losers amongst the winners and those are people who travel into London off-peak from the zones further out. Download the full PDF from the website here to look at the new fares, which start on Monday 5th January 2015.
Update:
- London Reconnections has a thoroughly comprehensive report on the new fares.
- The excellent Diamond Geezer has also written his usual detailed analysis of it all too.
Covent Garden Re-opens
We were lucky enough in the last few days to get a ride in one of the two new shiny lifts at Covent Garden. The station has been exit only since February of this year whilst two of the lifts have been replaced, and we can now report on the new lifts!
New Covent Garden Lift
We timed it, and on average the lift is about 8 seconds faster than the old ones. Their capacity is also 56 people – six more than the 50 of the old lifts. All this will help get more people moving. But perhaps the smartest thing is that the doors now have intelligent software installed, meaning that they can sense if no one is getting in or out at a certain leve, and rather than lingering around for wasted time, it’ll shut the doors and whizz back up or down to collect people who may be waiting at the other level.
All in all – people should be shunted up and down more quickly than before!
The respite is only for a couple of months over the Christmas period though – come February of 2015, Covent Garden will become exit only again whilst the other two lifts are replaced, and you’ll have to wait until November of next year for the station to be fully open again.