20.12.16
Khan: New Piccadilly rolling stock will be delivered by 2023
London mayor Sadiq Khan has promised to deliver new rolling stock for the Piccadilly Line by 2023, and hinted that it would need to be capable of driverless operation.
Khan appeared in a Mayor’s Question Time session before the London Assembly last week, following widespread disruptions on the Piccadilly Line after about half of the fleet were withdrawn because of safety concerns.
The mayor told London Assembly Members that TfL would issue invitations to tender for both resignalling and new rolling stock on the Piccadilly Line in 2017, and award the contracts in late 2018.
In a dig at his predecessor, Boris Johnson, Khan said his new TfL business plan contained a commitment to deliver the upgrades on time.
“That’s as fast as I can go,” Khan said. “Unlike the previous mayor, I’m not going to delay this any further. I’ m going to stick to the timelines that we’ve got.”
The mayor agreed that “better signalling and better rolling stock”, replacing the current fleet of trains from 1973, was needed to improve services on the line.
However, he protested that he couldn’t deliver the trains ahead of schedule, because the new rolling stock would have to be built, beginning in 2019. The signalling upgrades will begin in 2021 and the rolling stock is due to enter service from 2023.
Keith Prince AM, the GLA Conservatives’ spokesperson on transport and one the most persistent critics of Khan’s transport policies, quizzed him as to whether the new trains would be driverless.
Khan indicated that they would need to be built to have the capacity, saying: “It will be unwise for us to not buy stuff that’s future-proof.”
The disruptions on the Piccadilly Line occurred because the Piccadilly fleet, unlike the newer trains on the Hammersmith & City, Circle, District and Metropolitan lines, doesn’t have wheel-slide protection. This meant that the wheels locked on the tracks when they became slippery due to wet leaves on the tracks during autumn, creating ‘flat spots’ which risk damaging the tracks.
Khan said that he’d told TfL to make repairing the trains a “top priority” and to carry out a full review of its preparations and response to problems during the past year. He’d then instructed TfL commissioner Mike Brown to make sure London Underground is better prepared next year.
The mayor also indicated that passengers affected by the disruption would be eligible for backdated compensation.
Night Tube services were introduced on the Piccadilly Line on Friday night, despite the safety concerns.
(Image c. Yui Mok from PA Wire)
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