All in all the Tube system has had quite a journey

Next year it will be 30 years since penalty fares were first introduced on the London Underground. This is an anniversary few will care to celebrate, writes Yann Tear.

But we have a far better landmark this month as the Tube network has just turned 160. Now that is surely something to get behind.

The launch of the first and arguably most famous of the world’s underground networks in 1863 recalls an old joke by comedian Paul Merton who remarked, on hearing that Baker Street was the first station to open: “Well, what was the point of that?”

Luckily many more stations were opened and the remarkable and iconic maps we have bear testimony to the vastness of the complex, expanded transport system we have today.

It is not just part of the story of London, it is the story of London – having borne witness to tragedies like the King’s Cross Fire of 1987, and the Moorgate disaster of 1975 and the terrorism of the 2005 7/7 attacks when 52 people lost their lives. It provided shelter from bombs during the Blitz.

Some stations were used to house British Museum treasures during the war, too, so it was not just people using them as air raid shelters.

All in all, it has been quite the journey.

The Tube was launched on January 10, 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway, with a service running from Paddington (then called Bishop’s Road) to Farringdon Street.

It was five years before the expansion to what we now know as the District and Circle lines from Kensington to Westminster.

The first Tube tunnel opened in 1880, linking the Tower of London to Bermondsey.

The Central line followed in 1900 from Shepherd’s Bush to Bank and we were really up and running in the capital, although it was not until 1908 that the name ‘Underground’ made its first appearance in stations and that electric ticket-issuing machines were introduced.

But contactless payments have been operating since 2014 and the increasingly paperless access to the trains seems to be an irreversible trend.

Some lines that we think have been around forever are anything but.

The Victoria line was opened by Queen Elizabeth as recently as 1969, while Brixton did not get its connection to the pale blue line until 1971.

The Piccadilly line out to Heathrow was not with us until 1977 and it would be 1979 before we had the Jubilee Line.

As for the administration – Transport for London did not assume control of the network until 2003, having only formed at the turn of the millennium to co-ordinate the capital’s infrastructure.

These days, it is quite the monster.

In 2007, it registered a billion passengers in the year for the first time. On November 29, 2019, the most passenger journeys in a single day were recorded – 5.1million.

And it keeps evolving.

So much so, that it is hard to imagine what it might be like in another 50 years.

In 2021, the Northern line was extended to Battersea Power Station, and last year, finally, we had the new Elizabeth Line.

A range of further improvements to the London Underground network are on their way, including new trains to replace the ageing Piccadilly line fleet and new signalling on the District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines as part of a modernisation programme.

The project to upgrade and expand Bank station is also nearing completion.

Where will it all end? Hopefully it never will.

It’s time, once again, to raise a glass to this most London of institutions.

 

Picture: A test train at Edgware Road in 1862. Pictures: TfL/ London Transport Museum