Tube bosses to close large part of Jubilee line on Sunday in 'Olympics reliability test'

 
Jubilee Line: Thousands of passengers were stranded after a control room failure
Dick Murray29 June 2012

Jubilee line passengers should be entitled to believe the line will work after its £721 million upgrade.

But Tube bosses are closing a huge section of the line through central London on Sunday to ensure it is as "reliable as possible" for the Olympics.

The line will be closed between London Bridge and Finchley Road all day.

Nigel Holness, London Underground (LU) operations director, said Sunday's closure is "not related to the completed Jubilee line upgrade but is to ensure that the line's infrastructure is as reliable as possible during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“Some of this work has already been taking place on the east of the line - mainly during engineering hours and also through slightly later starts on a number of Sundays.

“The new signalling system has been operating on the entire Jubilee line since July 2011 increasing capacity and reliability for our passengers.

“In March 2012 we increased the number of trains running to 30 per hour during our busiest times delivering a total increase in capacity of 33 per cent, providing space for an extra 12,500 passengers every hour.”

The Jubilee, used by more than 650,000 passengers a day is the principal Tube route for the Olympics linking central London direct with the Stratford Stadium and equestrian events at Greenwich.

Its unreliabity has caused serious concerns over whether it will be able to cope with the millions of extra passengers during the Games.

There was. however, good and bad news today for other Tube users.

Three days of strikes from Sunday evening and which threatened major disruption to five lines - the Piccadilly, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan - have been called off following a last ditch deal between the RMT union and London Underground.

The union had ordered the walkout among more than 100 key control room staff in a long running dispute over working conditions and pay.

Bob Crow, the RMT leader, said: "These are the same key service control staff who keep trains running when demand is at a peak. They are the same staff who manage the problems when thelines are hit by breakdowns and failures and it is only right they have now secured a fair and just settlement."

The bad news is Transport for London (TfL) travel information and call centre staff have been ordered out by the RMT on 24-hour from 9.30pm on Sunday.

This again is a row over Olympic bonus payments. The union says these staff particularly will be under "huge pressure" during the Games but demands for bonus payments have been refused.

The union refused to rule out more strikes.

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