Closure of a London Underground line?

Closing the H and C is possible as it just means no direct link from Liverpool street to Aldgate east and onwards (and vice versa), and every station is served by another line

The Bakerloo I am guessing is due to the age of the trains and the fact its also largely duplicated by Watford DC line. It would just be the section between queens park and Marylebone which is impacted.

Closing the Jubilee or Met just seems like utter madness (unless the latter means a return to all off peak traffic terminating at Baker street). The jubilee is the 3rd busiest line so I cant see how this is even an option. Closing the met would effectively take out most of North West London, especially the outer suburbs.

And when the new points at the east end of Tower Hill are commissioned soon, the eastbound services could run via the wide island platform, allowing easy cross-platform interchange for travel between those two stations!

(A.) Those of you who drive it will have a better idea if passenger volumes always demand the current five-minute frequency between Hammersmith and Praed Street Junction. (B.) With a bit of luck by this time next year this board will have many (hopefully favourable) Elizabeth Line comments. That line will inevitably carry a chunk of the current Paddington to Liverpool Street load, probably leading to a noticeable reduction of demand along the northern segment of the Circle. Looking at WTT 36, if the interval for (A.) above were stretched to say 7.5 mins, and Met. frequencies likewise stretched, then could not the H&C be rescinded in its full extent, and the Circle O/R run from Hammersmith via Embankment, Liverpool Street to one of the turn-back points between Whitechapel and Barking (and v.v. the I/R)? This would maintain service between Aldgate Junction and Aldgate East Junction and restore trains from Baker Street to PAD. Praed Street and beyond. We know that keeping the old continuous Cirlce to time was a beast due to no real place to slot in recovery time. Simply put. Circle Line from Hammersmith to West Ham / Plaistow / Barking via Embankment & v.v.

I think what would be more likely is a reduction/recast of services on the Met, for example nothing beyond Baker Street except in the peaks, 4 tph to Watford, etc, as well as a thinning out of the Bakerloo service beyond Queen's Park, to, say 3tph Bakerloo, 3tph Overground.

Certainly pre-pandemic, there was a real need for the combined Circle and H&C service at Paddington - the frequency was only about every 5 minutes and trains were often full in the morning peak.

As a child I can remember the majority of Central line trains from West Ruislip reversing at Loughton with only a 3tph service between there and Epping, bringing that back would result in a lower demand for trains (it's just shy of 18 minutes running time there and back, excluding dwell time at Epping). Likewise I understand there were a lot fewer District line services beyond Barking back then - somewhere I have a 1990 District Working Timetable which would make for an interesting comparison.

My money would be on the Circle line - closing any other line (except W&C) would result in very limited cost savings until driver redundancies and the resulting industrial relations breakdown had be solved, whereas I suspect circle line drivers could be redeployed on the SSR and some efficiency savings and maintenance savings on using less rolling stock.

I could see "We'll close the Bakerloo line" being made as a threat but realistically it would take a year or two to do, unless the money really does run out.

Anyway, a less facetious comment. "one entire line" could mean any line - agreed ?

Isn't the obvious one Waterloo & City ?

By obvious I mean obvious to headline grabbing attention sabre rattling politicians. it is a big headline with the least impact with respect to the entire network.

Don't get me wrong here, I am neither supporting or proposing closing anything of the sort. Merely how politicians manoevure.

W&C does fit the "entire line" bill, and, it was recently closed for months anyway.

Release the 92TS to the Central line, put the cars through CLIP or CLOP or whatever it is they do at Acton to unify them [which means exactly that, make them equal to the main fleet]; Central gets two additional 8-cars, plus some spares, or 5 4-cars if you think like that.

Then, after having closed W&C, they can rebuild re-open at some day hence, new stock, and, dare I say it, driverless _ without industrial relations issues since the existing crews have long gone.

Win. Win.

I believe the train stock for the W&C has now diverged so far from the Central, that especially combined with the access issues to retrieving it, that it couldn't be meaningfully helpful.  It could certainly be mothballed but the alternative routes are already the busiest - I have no data on current use/loading but I would imagine the cost / revenue basis for the line is fairly good.

The drivers could be deployed back to the Central, and the station staff are existing staff, so at least not many industrial relations issues to contend with.

I think I also remember reading (probably somewhere on this forum) that the units could be used as intermediate vehicles on the Central line with very little work. If so in the event the units are transferred the three options would seem to be -
* Do the minimal work and just use them as intermediate vehicles
* Do a full overhaul, but also do the minimal work so that the units can be used as intermediate vehicles while waiting their turn for overhaul.
* Do a full overhaul, leaving the units in sidings or a depot until it is their turn
Which is best will be dependent on a number of factors, likely including cost (time and money) of the minimal work (absolute and relative to the overhaul), rolling stock availability, and available space.

I would have thought that cutting the number of diagrams needed on most of the lines could be the simplest answer. We all want our train service and especially at the more rural ends of the system. One way to reduce diagrams is to shorten the number of trips where there is overlap with other services. With the Hammersmith and City, it is a shame they took out the turnback facility at Whitechapel. Running a Hammersmith to Whitechapel service would release at least two diagrams, so would using Plaistow manage to save some running? Some Circle line trains could be turned back at Tower Hill on arrival from the east. The Bakerloo line may not need to run the Stonebridge Park terminators beyond Queens Park. I could work through all the lines but I would have thought that at least 5% could be saved without losing any frequency on the outer reaches of the system.

I believe you are correct about intermediate cars is less mods; I read that once too somewhere, probably was here.

However 20 extra intermediate cars are not a lot of good they can't contribute to overall UNITs available for CL unless there are cabs to go with them. Running them with existing A cars means other existing intermediates then have no cabs; the other option is fully reinstate cabs on the additional A cars that run mid train, last I knew of those at least two were gutted of driving desks and had to permanently run mid train.

Either way it's not impossible.

Serious drift from line closure subject though

What practical alternative is there to Richmond and, more particularly, Kew Gardens? (Note that if you also close the Bakerloo north of Queens Park the nearest connection between the Overground and the Tube would be West Hampstead!). It might also come to the attention of the Lib Dem spokesperson on transport, as it's in her constituency!

I suggest that's the whole intent of it.

That's why it just says "line" and not specific, almost certainly no serious work can have gone into it.

As I mentioned on the control room staff shortages discussion, much of ‘medical London’ from the Royal London in Whitechapel to St Mary’s in Praed Street is stretched along the H&C. Many staff live in NW and the MET, H&C and Circle are their and their patients’ life lines. So, I’m very reluctant to suggest and more than a little perturbed that either MET trains via Baker Street junction or trains from Aldgate to Aldgate E. junctions might be under discussion for withdrawal, hence my suggestion up-thread of an inverted ‘executive-curl’ route-form for the Circle Line, OR: Hammersmith(H&C)-Embankment-West Ham etc. in place of the H&C. (Whitechapel is not a realistic turn-back point for normal ops.) I made this suggestion conscious of wheelchair and other mobility-impaired users. Just one example: An wheelchair outpatient at UCLH travelling east after an appointment uses the sole lift connections to the IR at Euston Square, travels W. on a MET train to Baker Street Platform 2 from which there is step-free easy-access to Circle Line platform 5 and then takes an eastbound train from there. Take away the through MET service east of Baker Street and you strand that patient. There are several other examples. The line is also used by staff on duty: The Royal London, Barts and UCLH are all part of the Barts Health NHS Trust and share valuable facilities like MRI, and staff and patients need to get efficiently from one hospital to another. Removing trains from Aldgate East to Aldgate Junction becomes an encumbrance. A little while ago, a colleague ran out of vital memory chips at UCLH for tests she was running. She called one of the associated hospitals and a colleague there grabbed the next H&C and the chips were in the clinic in less than 30 minutes.