Tube boss 'incandescent' as commuters suffer more Monday morning disruption

Tough talker: Bob Crow said the Tube management makes London an international laughing stock
Dick Murray12 April 2012

Tube bosses have demanded crisis meetings with a contractor over late-running works that led to major disruption this morning.

London Underground (LU) managing director, Mike Brown was today "incandescent" after failings by contractor Balfour Beatty over the delays and "read the Riot Act" to to senior management, telling them their performance was "simply not good enough."

Hundreds of thousands of commuters suffered another Black Monday - largely caused by Balfour Beatty failing to complete night engineering work on time in the East Ham area.

The District line - used by more than 600,000 passengers a day and the Hammersmith & City line - were both part suspended until the start of the morning peak at 7.25am.

Services on the District were suspended between Plaistow and Dagenham East and on the H&C between Moorgate and Barking.

When trains did start running again it was only with severe delays throughout the morning. The problems also caused knock-on delays to the Circle line.

Mr Brown said: "LU is engaged in a massive upgrade programme to replace track, signals and trains to provide more capacity and smoother journeys.

"Works to improve the railway between East Ham and Barking over the weekend were not completed on time by our contractor Balfour Beatty, which meant unnecessary disruption to District and Hammersmith and City line services.

"This is simply not good enough and we are meeting with Balfour Beatty now to demand a full review of the works and that they ensure there is no repeat in future.

"I apologise to our customers for the disruption to their journeys this morning, and assure them we are working flat-out to improve reliability across the Tube."

Central line services were suspended between Ruislip and Ruislip Gardens because of two signal failutes, one at West Ruislip and the other at Queensway, which added to the mayhem.

This caused delays throughout the remainder of the line through central London.

There were delays to Jubilee line services because of a broken down train at Waterloo.

Bob Crow, the RMT leader, said: "Hundreds of thousands of commuters faceed yet another Monday of chaos as the poisonous cocktail of failing infrastructure and maintenance cuts hits home yet again.

"This crisis management of the tube is now out of control and leaves us on course to become an international laughing stock in the run up to the London Olympics."

Last Monday commuters suffered with four busy lines - the Circle, H&C, Metropolitan and Piccadilly - crippled or part suspended during the morning peak.

A Balfour Beatty spokeswoman said: "Balfour Beatty sincerely apologies for the inconvenience caused by the delay to our overnight track renewal work on the District line (Barking to East Ham) and the Central line.

"We are currently working closely with our supplier partners and London Underground to mitigate the risk of future delay."

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