The upgrade of five more tube stations completed early

Five years on and Tube Lines is over half way through its station upgrade programme

Tube Lines has announced practical completion of the upgrade of a further five stations ahead of schedule, taking the total completed to 52.  Tube Lines is now over half way through its £500 million station upgrade programme which will see 97 out of the 100 stations across the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines upgraded by 2010. The latest stations to receive an overhaul are Brent Cross, Holloway Road, Old Street, Willesden Green and Woodside Park.

 

Dedicated engineers carried out the bulk of the station upgrades in the few hours between midnight and the first Tube train in the morning. Working overnight on the Tube always puts pressure on how much work can be achieved in any one shift with time taken up at the beginning to move the equipment into the station, and set up safely and quickly. More time is then taken a few hours later to clean the site and exit before the first train carrying passengers to work comes into service.

 

The use of a small number of weekend closures enabled the teams at each station to speed up the engineering work to complete the works ahead of the planned completion date. The weekend closures allow the equivalent of up to ten normal engineering shifts to be carried out in one weekend. This reduced the disruption to local residents during the night.   

 

Tube Lines’ work is bringing many benefits to passengers. Each station now boasts a new public address system along with improved customer information systems. The refurbishment of the stations and platforms included structural repairs and the re-decoration and re-tiling of walls and floors to improve the look and feel of the stations. With an emphasis on security, there are now more CCTV cameras and help points inside the stations. 

There has been a big change in the way Tube Lines carries out station upgrades. Through better man-management, improved logistics and by bringing key outsourced construction work in-house Tube Lines has been able to cut the cost of a station upgrade by as much as 40% and reduce the time it takes to overhaul a station.

 

Tooraj Shadnia, Tube Lines’ Senior Project Manger for the station upgrade programme said:

“These five stations were all more than 85 years old and clearly in need of work to improve the travelling experience for the millions of passengers using the stations each day. Not only are they brighter and cleaner but passenger information and security systems are now up to 21^st Century standards. Getting the stations finished earlier than scheduled is a bonus and was achieved through very careful planning by the teams who then working tirelessly to those plans.”

 

52 stations have now been upgraded, with a further six due to be completed in May this year and upgrade works due to start on another nine stations throughout 2008.

 

 

ENDS

For further information, please contact:
Press office, Tube Lines: 020 7088 4848 / 07843 551 589

Notes to Editors

1. Tube Lines is responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the infrastructure on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. London Underground is responsible for operating the Underground, for employing drivers and station staff, for ticketing and fares, and for the Tube’s safety regime.
2. The Tube Lines consortium consists of two shareholders – Amey and Bechtel. They bring together some of the most experienced providers of business services with specialist skills in the rail industry, including track and signal renewals, plus project and operational management. They are providing some of the best project and operational managers from around the world to work on the modernisation of the Tube system. Amey owns two-thirds of Tube Lines’ business and Bechtel one third.

3. Practical completion means all substantial works have been finished although some outstanding works, such as snags, may still need resolution. These must be completed within a 16-week contractual period.

 

If you would prefer not to receive future news from Tube Lines, please send an email to sarah.baranowski@tubelines.com with the subject heading “Unsubscribe”.