London Underground Ltd (LUL) announced in late September that its Waterloo & City line would be closed for five months from 1 April 2006 for engineering works to improve the reliability of services, increase capacity and improve journey times.
The improvements to the 107 year old line, which runs entirely in tunnel for 2.4km between Waterloo and Bank stations will be carried out by Metronet Rail BCV as part of Transport for London’s (TfL) upgrade plans. As part of the upgrade all the track will be replaced and installed equipment will be renewed.
Roughly 9.6M people use the line annually. Despite being physically isolated from other LUL lines, passengers will be able to use alternative LUL routes.
T&TI was told by a spokesman for TfL that despite an annual turnover of US$2.28bn for the line, the closure was expected to result in lost revenue of less than US$1.75M as passengers would still be able to use the Tube to approximate their journey. The financial impact was anticipated to be “virtually minimal” he said.
