Thales confirmed to take on London Underground sub-surface resignalling

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Transport for London (TfL) will be hoping it’s third time lucky after finally awarding Thales the troubled Sub-Surface Railway resignalling contract.

TfL confirmed today (August 2) that it has agreed a £760 million deal with Thales – more than double the value of the previous contract with Bombardier – to install a modern signalling system across the Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines.

Upgrading the SSR to CBTC will allow London Underground to operate 32 trains an hour through central London. The project is due to be completed by 2022.

The original PPP agreement with Metronet was cancelled and re-let to Bombardier in 2011. At the end of 2013, London Underground (LU) prematurely ended the contract with Bombardier saying it was “simply not progressing and there was no guarantee it would have worked”.

Nick Brown, managing director of London Underground, said: “Having successfully modernised three of the most heavily used lines on our network, we are ready to begin work to bring the next four lines into the modern era.  This will transform the journeys of millions of our customers, significantly increasing service reliability and frequency.

“We have a very clear delivery plan and timetable for the work and, as we have done with the modernisation of the Northern line, we will keep London moving and growing as we do it.  In parallel, we will continue to deliver a better, more reliable service every day which builds on the work over recent years to reduce delays to their lowest ever level.”

The overlay of automatic train control will begin in 2021 with the Circle line and finish with the Metropolitan line in 2023.

The overall cost of the modernisation programme, which includes new trains, has been set at £5.41 billion – more than the original £4.26 billion quoted but less than the revised figure given in March.

3 COMMENTS

  1. If thats the case then the London Underground-Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan and District Lines with their new S7 & S8 stocks will be driverless just like the Docklands Light Railway which is driverless once the signalling is completed and the 4 Sub Surface lines will be operated automatically without a driver.

    • No that’s not right, the drivers will be retained. Just like on the Victoria, Central, Jubilee (and soon Northern) lines.

      This type of signalling is known as ATO.

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