The chaos on the Central line caused by a shortage of trains is likely to continue “for a few weeks more”, London’s transport commissioner said on Wednesday.
Andy Lord apologised for the long delays and overcrowding suffered by passengers as a result of dozens of trains having to be taken out of service to have their motors replaced.
Mr Lord told the Transport for London board: “We are working round the clock to improve the situation as quickly as possible but disruption is likely to continue for a few weeks more.”
He said an emergency timetable would be introduced within the next four weeks in a bid to regulate the gaps between trains.
In addition, more buses have been introduced on route 150 between Hainault and Ilford, and on route 20 between Debden and Walthamstow Central, to provide an alternative route into central London for passengers living at the eastern end of the line.
A shuttle bus from Epping to Chingford via Loughton will start running today, enabling passengers to switch onto the London Overground route into Liverpool Street.
Mr Lord said: “We are taking this matter extremely seriously. We are putting our best people on to it, to ensure we minimise the impact on customers.”
It came as passengers on the Central line were revealed to have suffered delays and overcrowding due to train shortages virtually every day since the start of December.
Transport for London said it had warned of delays on the line due to “shortage of trains” on almost 50 days since November.
This causes “train cancellations and extended gaps in service” on a line used by 200 million passengers a year, TfL has admitted.
The problem has been caused by the need to replace clapped-out motors on the line’s 30-year-old trains. At times, fewer than 50 trains have been available – but 78 are needed to run the peak-hours timetable on the Underground’s longest line.
TfL has previously warned the problem could continue for months but now suggests it could be eased by the end of February.
TfL’s response to a freedom request revealed that the “shortage of trains” alert was only issued four times last year between January and October.
But in November there were 10 days when the warning was issued, followed by 26 days in December – with only the period over Christmas, when fewer trains run, unaffected.
The warning continued to be issued on a daily basis last month. Today “minor delays” were reported on the line.
TfL said the alerts may only relate to part of the line – most commonly the section east of Leytonstone, with a “good service” on the rest of the line.
City Hall Conservatives transport spokesman Keith Prince said: "The Central line is slowly grinding to a halt, causing misery for thousands of passengers every day since Christmas.
"Sadiq Khan is chairman of TfL. The buck stops with him. Sadiq Khan has been focused on election gimmicks when he should be focused on needs of Tube passengers.
"In recent weeks, Sadiq Khan has found £177m for desperate pre-election giveaways - £30m to stave off Tube strikes, £123m to freeze some TfL fares for one year and £24m to fund a temporary three-day weekend on the Tube by pausing peak fares on Fridays. This money could be spent speeding up the refurbishment of Central Line trains.”
The problem with faulty train motors has been exacerbated by the loss of five trains at a time from service to enable them to be fully refurbished under the £500m Clip (Central line improvement programme) initiative that will take until 2029 to complete.
The Clip programme should have been completed by last year but was unable to start as hoped in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Tube engineers have struggled to find replacement motors for the failing trains.
Mr Lord, in his written report to the TfL board, said: “We are experiencing an abnormally high number of motor failures that has required us to take a high number of trains out of service.
“Our engineers are urgently working to repair and overhaul the damaged motors, but this is a complex process undertaken by highly skilled, specialist technicians and the removal and refitting of every motor requires the 30-year-old train to be split into separate sections and the affected cars lifted.
“We have put in place additional arrangements to increase our supply of spare motors. This will enable us to start to rebuild some resilience and improve services over the coming weeks, reducing the number of trains out of service and meaning we can return trains to service more quickly.
“While this should help improve services for customers, the motor failures are still occurring at a higher rate than we have seen before so some disruption to normal service levels is likely to continue. We are continuing to work urgently to identify further solutions.”
