A look ahead at what's happening with London transport in 2025, including new trains, buses, ferries and tunnels.
23 December 2024: Never underestimate how long it takes to replace an escalator. Kentish Town Tube station was meant to reopen in summer 2024 following planned closure in June 2023. But as is often the case with these renos, once it got cracking, TfL found that "further complex and time-consuming repairs" were required. The latest is that the station will now reopen on 23 December 2024 — a whisker before the New Year.
Early 2025: Well, we finally got our tram-buses between Crystal Palace and Orpington. But there's already another fleet of eco buses to get excited about, namely 32 Alexander Dennis Enviro100EVs (compact, 21-seat buses, which are good for narrow roads), set to launch from Orpington Garage on the R1, R3, R4 and R8 routes, as well as on route 233 between Eltham and Swanley. Alas, they do not look like trams.
January-May: Various Piccadilly line closures continue through much of next year, but it's all with a thrilling end game (explained later on this article).
10 February: Londoners travelling back to St Pancras from Amsterdam on the Eurostar will no longer face the inconvenient prospect of a pit-stop in Brussels from 10 February, when that's finally axed. Don't get tooo excited though; from 30 March the direct trains will start stopping again (due to essential works at Amsterdam Centraal). From the end of April, the direct trains will start up once again — and with luck, that'll be the end of that little debacle.
March: Under construction at an Isle of Wight shipyard at time of writing, the UK's first fully electric cross-river passenger ferry, Orbit Clipper — operated by Uber Boat by Thames Clippers — will start plying its route between Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe in March. It hopes to ferry some 20,000 passengers every weekday.
Also March: That dreaded time of the year when we have to delve a little deeper into our pockets to pay the increased transport fares. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has been hellbent on 'freezing' fares for a while now, but in March 2025, Tube and rail fares will increase by 4.6%, in line with the rise in national rail fares. Bus and tram fares, however, will remain frozen till at least March 2026. In all honesty, we've always thought 'fare freezes' are a misnomer; they don't apply to travelcards or to National Rail services, so in real terms, many everyday Londoners have paid more for their travel year on year anyway.
9 March: Brockwell Miniature Railway reopens for the season. Choo choo!
18 March: Ahmet Öğüt's Saved by the Whale's Tail comes to Stratford Underground station, inspired by an incident in 2020 when a train on the Rotterdam Metro overran a station located on an elevated line and a carriage, was 'saved' from plummeting off the edge by Maarten Struijs' 10-metre-high sculpture of a whale’s tail, which prevented its fall.
7 April: The Silvertown Tunnel — a new under-Thames crossing linking North Greenwich with the western end of Silvertown in the Royal Docks — opens to motorists (and new bus routes, including a cyclist shuttle service) on 7 April. The toll fares — as well as those for the neighbouring Blackwall Tunnel — have now also been confirmed.
Also 7 April: With the arrival of the Silvertown Tunnel comes the final spoke in the Superloop bus route. The SL4 leg — from Canary Wharf to Grove Park — starts running on the very same day as the tunnel opens — and it'll be free to use for at least a year, alongside other new bus routes running through the tunnel. (Although, who knows, perhaps even more Superloop routes will be added in the future.)
May: GTS Rail Operations — a joint venture between Go Ahead Group, Tokyo Metro and Sumitomo Corporation — takes over operations on the Elizabeth line. We've written an article suggesting 6 things the Lizzy line could learn from the Tokyo Metro (they're not all entirely serious).
Also May: Monster Chetwynd's super fun Albertopolis and the Lily installation has graced a platform at Gloucester Road Tube station since May 2023, but two years later, the dinosaur-inspired installations are, well, going the way of the dinosaurs. If you haven't seen this yet, make a point of doing so — perhaps when you're visiting one of South Ken's cultural institutions.
Also May: Santander's sponsorship of TfL's cycle hire scheme is due to come to an end in May, meaning we could see new livery on the bikes if a new company picks up the sponsorship mantle.
30 June-13 July: An audio work by Rory Pilgrim will be played along the moving walkway connecting the Northern and Jubilee lines at Waterloo station from 30 June-13 July. There's not much detail on what the sound installation will entail at this stage, but you can listen to some of the artist's existing material on Spotify.
November: A mural by Rudy Loewe will be unveiled at Brixton Tube station, in the artist's trademark comic book-inspired style. It'll be the ninth artwork commissioned as part of the Brixton Mural Programme, which highlights the ways in which people gather and have gathered in the area.
2 November: OK, they're not exactly the biggest stations in London — in fact, technically they're not in London at all — but this day in 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of both Croxley and Watford stations. Someone remember to get them a cake, yeah?
25 December: Until now, drivers of zero emissions vehicles have only had to pay £10 to avoid paying the Congestion Charge for the entire year. From Christmas Day, however, they'll no longer be exempt — meaning it'll cost them £15 per day (that's one heck of a Christmas present, Sadiq!). Some will argue this doesn't exactly incentivise buying an environmentally friendly set of wheels.
By end of 2025: New Piccadilly line trains! Testing of the new Siemens Mobility trains has already begun on the Piccadilly line (see line closures towards the top of this piece), and by the end of 2025, TfL tells us, they'll begin to be rolled out for public use. There are 94 new trains in all, and they won't all be running until 2027. That's the plan, anyway. As we know, things like this don't always run smoothly. Speaking of which...
Delayed indefinitely: Fresh DLR trains were due to be on the tracks by April 2024, but their status right now is 'delayed indefinitely', due to difficulties integrating the braking system. Will passengers get to use the new trains sometime in 2025? The jury is out.
