London’s $2 Billion Plan to Ease Congestion on the Tube

There’s no denying that London’s Tube system is pretty efficient. Hosting 5 million journeys a day, its busiest lines manage 36 trains an hour at peak times. That’s a train every 100 seconds.

Some lines, however, are currently running a service that, by London standards, is a little threadbare. The busy Piccadilly Line, for example, manages just 24 trains an hour, a rate that no doubt seems irreproachable when viewed from the beleaguered public transit systems of New York or Washington, but actually risks creating serious congestion. This week, London finalized a remedy to this relative slow down: a batch of 250 new trains added to its rolling stock. When coupled with an upgrade to the signaling system, this should enable London’s four “Deep Tube” lines—which run through more deeply excavated tunnels—to increase their capacity by 10 trains an hour. The cost: a not insignificant £1.5 billion ($2 billion).