Tube incident response ‘Blue Light’ trial

The Tube’s Emergency Response Unit is carrying out a trial with the British Transport Police in an attempt to reach emergencies faster.

The trial aims to halve response times and means that Transport for London’s ERU vehicles will travel under the same ‘Blue Light’ conditions used by police, ambulance and fire services.

The ERU is a team operated by Tube Lines on behalf of TfL and ‘will respond to incidents where public safety is at risk such as obstructions blocking the track, broken down trains, ‘person under a train’ incidents and other emergency response and recovery situations’.

The trial involves a new fleet of three response vehicles with new British Transport Police livery driven by a BTP officer under blue light conditions when appropriate.

Mike Brown, Managing Director for London Underground and London Rail, said:

“Having the capability to travel with blue lights and sirens will mean that the specialist engineers of our Emergency Response Unit can cut through heavy traffic and respond to incidents more quickly and so restore services more swiftly for our customers.”