Wider Night Tube rollout draws a step closer with upgrade progress of Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines
The wider rollout of Night Tube services across the London Underground has drawn a step closer, as Transport for London (TfL) said today that upgrade work on the sub-surface Tube lines has progressed.
A crackdown on signalling problems across sections of the Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines is expected from next year, after TfL said today that multiple test trains have been running on a brand new signalling system for the first time.
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The introduction of the new signalling system from Thales will allow trains to run closer together, meaning a more frequent service, shorter waiting times and a big boost in capacity for the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan Lines altogether.
TfL said the modernisation of the lines will also mean that Night Tube services can be introduced on them in the future.
At present, the Night Tube spans the Northern, Piccadilly, Jubilee, Victoria and Central Lines, and is also being extended to the London Overground.
Passengers will start to reap the benefits from next year, when the first section of the network to use the new signalling system goes live, improving reliability by curbing those pesky signalling problems on the Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines.
Services will begin to increase in frequency from 2021 when more of the network is using it. All four lines will be using the fresh system by 2023.
Mark Wild, the managing director of London Underground, said:
This is a fantastic step forward in the vital programme to modernise nearly half of the Tube network.
The new signalling system will provide our customers with more frequent trains and quicker journeys, as well as improving reliability and improving customer information. We are making improvements for our customers all over the network and this programme represents a hugely significant part of that work.
Further testing weekends will take place over the next few months as the system is installed across more of the network. It will ultimately boost capacity by up to 33 per cent across all four lines.
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