London underground

Old_Git

just wondering why the underground dosent run all night .
There are lots off people about especially at the weekend

djbd1973

I personally would have thought that it would cost too much in wages to run and the demand wouldn't be high enough throughout the twilight hours.

Only my opinion though.

liz545

I'd imagine it's because most of the maintenance on the tube takes place overnight; it's easier to close for 5 hours at night time and repair stuff than have to close whole lines for lengthy periods, although that does occasionally happen.

Viper_7

Yes, it's half and half, not enough custom, and they need the twilight hours to examine/maintain the infrastructure.

sod the millions of people who actually need to get to work/home at 4am.

djbd1973

I forgot about the engineering work at night. I just assumed that as I live in Essex and only use the tube occasionally when I go up town that they did all the engineering work as weekends when I go.
The best one was trying to get to the cricket at Lords a few Sundays ago when the whole circle line was shut, parts of the district line and tower hill station were shut, parts of the northern line were shut and when I eventually worked out a route that involved 20 mins walking and then a bus to get to the jubilee line, one of the trains ahead broke down so we walked another 20 minutes. I just hope its all ready for the Olympics.

badgerbread

yep you are right about the engineering works hubbys a driver he does work through the night to move trains into the right places ready for the next day but they need to keep sorting out the track etc every night and do safety checks cos the tracks so old

ryandj

I think security might be an issue.

There are night buses available though.

Incapuppy

Spam by goods4 u reported

happymum168

I prefer the night buses. It seem safer.

Bargain_Rzl

It is mainly because of maintenance/engineering works. I think lack of demand is a minor issue - there would certainly be the demand for a reduced service, say 1 train ever 10 minutes rather than 1 train every 3 minutes as you sometimes get during the day, and indeed, if the night-time transport was there it would create the demand, and London would become more of a 24-hour city.

The last trains of the day don't stop running until after 1am, and the first trains of the morning start up not long after 5am. For some types of engineering activities, that only leaves 4 hours a night to get tools in and set up, start and finish the work, clear up and get out before the trains start running again. (I work for one of LU's major engineering contractors, by the way.)

Some major cities have more than one platform/set of tracks per line, so you can close one to work on it and keep trains running on the other, but because on the London Underground there isn't any of this built-in redundancy of lines, it's essential for the tube to shut down at night (except in exceptional circumstances like New Year's Eve, when they do keep everything open all night).