Tube closures: it’s time for some lateral thinking

Published: 18 February 2010

• COME on Transport for London, can’t you show some lateral thinking? 

When you close a tube line, instead of providing replacement buses that just run (well, let’s be frank, crawl) along the roads following the tube line, why on earth don’t you run shuttle buses that can speed us sideways to the nearest tube line that is still up and running?!
MIKE LEIBLING
Greencroft Gardens, NW6

ACT NOW

• HOW can Tube Lines think it is acceptable under an upgrade programme that all of Camden’s tube stations will be closed for more than 35 weekends? 

I understand some closures may be required to upgrade the line, but this many? 

The only good thing to come out of the announcement, as the Editor’s Comment (February 11) pointed out, is that the closures won’t kick in until October, giving us more than half a year to campaign against them. 

We need to act now to ensure local residents and businesses are hit much less hard than they would be if Tube Lines had their way. 

Thirty-five weekends of closures is simply far too much for us to accept without a fight. We need to ensure that the all-party alliance that is forming is as long lasting as possible.
WARWICK SHARP
Prince of Wales Road, NW5

All change?

• SO there’s going to be a bus replacement service when the Northern line closes at the weekends – really?

Let’s look at the figures: each Northern line train has six carriages. Each carriage has 42 seats so that’s 252 passengers on a train. A train comes approximately every three minutes, on average. So that’s 20 trains an hour which adds up to 5,040 passengers an hour. Camden Town station has two lines going south and two north, so we are looking at providing bus capacity to shift 10,000 passengers an hour heading north, and another 10,000 an hour going south.

The bus I got on coming back from Tottenham Court Road on Sunday afternoon had its capacity displayed as 64 persons. Divide 10,000 by 64 and we have the number of buses needed to replace the tube service. 

This works out to 157 buses an hour or 2.61 buses a minute, in each direction. Were this proposition, which is already looking suspect, becomes really ridiculous is when we get to the bit in the story where we ask where all these buses are going to stop to let people get on and off. 

Camden Council has just reduced the width of the road outside Camden Town tube station to one lane and removed the bus stop so there is nowhere for the north-bound train replacement service to stop without bringing all the traffic to a halt. So much for our Town Hall’s ability to carry out risk assessments.

As one of your leaders recently pointed out the real blame lies with the government who forced Ken Livingstone to accept a contract which took away any control from Transport for London over how the renewal work for our tube lines should be carried out.  

Come election time an ever increasing number of travellers will be asking “Isn’t it time for a change?
PETER LYONS
Hartland Road, NW1

Party lines

• YOU report on party political unity in opposition to tube closures (Parties united against Northern line closures, February 11).

Those of us who have to use the tube at weekends to get to work, are only too aware that line closures have been a feature of London life for several years.

In 2005 there was a three-day refusal by drivers to work on the Northern line because of safety fears. 

The general secretary of drivers’ union Aslef expressed his belief that the problem lay in what he called the “mad” and “murky” world of privatisation. 

Here, enter private contractor Tube Lines, one of two private sector companies that signed 30-year Public-Private Partnership (PPP) agreements to maintain and replace the tube’s infrastructure. 

The other company, Metronet, went bust in 2007, leaving Transport for London and the tube with a financial headache.

Gordon Brown, when chancellor, insisted on these London Underground PPP contracts. New Labour’s obsession with the private sector saw the deals signed off before the then mayor, Ken Livingstone, who opposed this part-privatisation, became the chair of TfL.

Camden’s deputy leader, Tory Andrew Marshall, has twigged that the planned closures are “about what is most convenient to Tube Lines”. Let’s hope that the unified opposition keeps the trains running.
ERIC KRIEGER
Bacton, NW5

Why silent?

• IT’S great that the three party leaders have got together to pressure Tube Lines over the proposed tube closures. 

The upgrade work has been widely known about for months but the council have remained silent on it. Surely the ruling Tory/Lib Dems had a responsibility to lobby TfL and the Tory London mayor if necessary to ensure that the closures had the minimum impact on Camden residents and tourists coming to Camden’s markets and other attractions that sustain so many local jobs.

Come on Camden you should be working with TfL not steamrolled by them.
SARAH HAYWARD
Leighton Road, NW5