Friday 20 February 2015

All-night services extended to Overground, DLR and most Tube lines


George Osborne and Mayor of London Boris Johnson

George Osborne and Boris Johnson visited Victoria Underground station to see the overnight engineering works

All-night services are to run at weekends on most Tube lines, the London Overground and Docklands Light Railway.
Weekend services are due to start running 24-hours on the Piccadilly, Victoria, Central, Jubilee and Northern lines by the end of the year.
Night-time services will be extended to the Metropolitan, Circle, District, and Hammersmith & City lines by 2021.
Services will be extended on the London Overground in 2017 and the Docklands Light Railway by 2021.
The plans are part of a six-point long term economic plan Chancellor George Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson said would add £6.4bn to the London economy by 2030 and create half a million new jobs.
The so called "night tube" was announced in November 2013, with all-night services expected to run on Fridays and Saturdays on the Piccadilly, Victoria, Central, Jubilee and Northern lines from September.
'Jobs boost'
Tube services from central London currently finish at around 00:30 on Friday and Saturday nights.
Steve Hedley, senior assistant general secretary of the RMT, said the union were not opposed to the changes, but they did not want to compromise passenger safety.
"We are not opposed to this at all, we understand it is going to create jobs and it is going to help the economy, but we can't do that at the expense of the safety and comfort of our passengers and indeed our staff," he said.
"We are all for the night tube and we understand it's going to help the city but we do need adequate staffing and they need to stop this crazy proposal to close all the ticket offices. "
Mike Brown, managing director of London Underground, has previously said: "The new service will boost jobs and will benefit the economy by hundreds of millions of pounds."
Transport for London (TfL) also confirmed it will extend wi-fi to all below ground sections of the Tube by the end of the next Parliament.
TfL announced it is ordering 200 more new Routemaster buses this year and committing to 800 new vehicles each year from 2016 onwards.