Bonuses key to Tube work

Published: 11 February 2010

• AT the same time as the pioneering Metropolitan Underground Railway was being built in the 1860s, someone was  linking America’s east and west coasts by rail. 

With mountains and rivers in the way people said it couldn’t be done. When the project started, progress was barely a few yards a day. Yet by the time the job neared completion, between dawn and dusk only, and to win a bet, they were laying 10 miles of track a day.

For today’s London Underground network we have to thank three enterprising young Americans: Sprague, Westinghouse, and Yerkes. They saw what was wrong with the early metropolitan, and gave us an efficient, safe, deep Tube. Admittedly they were probably not alcoholics.

When Tube work has to be shoe-horned into a few nightly shutdown hours, much of that time is spent getting into the tunnels, getting ready, setting up equipment, and running safety checks, before even commencing work, then allowing time to “deconstruct”, safety-check the site again, and scarper before the first train runs. 

I should know. I worked on the Victoria line construction in the 1960s. Today, the idea of a full closure for what is known as a “possession” by the contractor is not so stupid, if this occurs in August when road traffic levels are much, much lighter than usual. That’s a long month for a start. Add in a week or two at the end of July, and another before term starts in September, and you have seven to eight weeks of uninterrupted, round-the clock working.

Additional tricks to achieve the objective can include:

1. suspension of the congestion charge, charging the income loss to the job;

2. getting the Velo-Lib bike hire scheme up and running along the Northern line stations before the closure;

3. working with the bike and motorbike sales and hire industry to promote two-wheeler use during the closure;

4. deploying buses from seasonally quieter routes to the existing night bus routes tracking the Northern Line during the day as well; and

5. above all, using the bonus system to get the job done on time and to budget.

It can be done; it must be done; let’s do it. Come on, Boris, show us your mettle!
Roger Juer
Briary Close, NW3

Disruption hits us all

• What’s going on with the Tube? 

It feels like my weekends are spent entirely sitting in “rail replacement” buses because of all the Tube closures and now I hear that the Northern line is going to be closed for 82 weekends! 

I’ve always been adamant about not needing a car in London but it feels like environmentally friendly people like me are being severely penalised. 

Please, please, can Camden Council start to lobby Transport for London properly about these closures? It’s really starting to disrupt our lives and immediate action needs to be taken. 
Tulip Siddiq
Judd Street, WC1

Out of control

• RESIDENTS and traders in north west London have been unfairly hit over the planned Tube refurbishment. 

The planning has been poor, the co-ordination non-existent, the implementation has been shocking and over-run on every project to date; weekend closures at the same time as the Jubilee and Bakerloo are down at weekends at the same time as the North London Overground is closed from February 20

to May 31 eastbound from Hampstead Heath!

The reality is these works are now out of the control of Boris Johnson and he has become powerless to act. 

Last year the arbiter urged greater joint-working between Tube Lines and Transport for London and the mayor. It’s clear that hasn’t happened and it’s us who are carrying the can.

We are being forced to pay seven-day charge for a five-day service and that is unacceptable. 

The Tube Lines fine should be used to compensate passengers.
Ed Fordham
Hampstead and Kilburn Parliamentary campaigner for the Liberal Democrats