This morning commuters welcomed the re-opening of the District and Circle line between Edgware Road and High Street Kensington. The short section had been closed for a four-week engineering stretch, to prepare the line for the eventual introduction of those new trains that Metropolitan line travellers are slowly getting used to. By closing it for a month, during the slow summer period, TfL say they were able to avoid six months of weekend works.
Jubilee line travellers don't have it so lucky, though: there will be three more weekend closures in September and October. Around a third of stations will close, which might not seem so troubling, but is on a line that has been beset by engineering works for years (see this chart for an indication of how bad things were in 2010), and comes after Boris Johnson promised just three months ago that all work would be completed by May 2011.
London Assembly member Val Shawcross has given Boris both barrels, accusing him of breaking his promise to commuters. The mayor's office has said the closure is due to necessary work on the Metropolitan line, which intersects with the Jubilee at key sites on the route out toward Metroland, but this is unlikely to give stressed-out of Stratford or dyspeptic of Dollis Hill much solace.
The weekends in question are:
17th & 18th September
1st and 2nd October
15th and 16th October
Photo: Tsingtao
