Please could you provide a breakdown of the number of delayed and cancelled trains on the metropolitan line service since September 2019 this year. Ever since the new signalling system upgrade the service levels have been appalling and continue to cause misery almost everyday for commuters.

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TfL Ref: FOI-2388-1920

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 2019.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.  I can confirm we do hold the information you require. You asked:

Details of the total number of delayed trains on metropolitan line since September 2019

Please could you provide a breakdown of the number of delayed and cancelled trains on the metropolitan line service since September 2019 this year. Ever since the new signalling system upgrade the service levels have been appalling and continue to cause misery almost everyday for commuters.

There have been a total of 658 delays recorded between 2 September and 10 November 2019. Please find the details attached. I have also attached ‘Disruption area definitions’ for details of the delay reasons.

Please note there were a number of train cancellations due to Four Line Modernisation (4LM) training for about a week after go live which have been tallied as one incident per day.

The incidents include any delay that has been recorded as 2 minutes or over in overall duration. It does not include delays as a result of lifts and escalators being out of service at stations. It also does not include consequential delays or delays as a result of incidents on other lines.

The attached kilometres results shows scheduled kilometres for each day excluding any kilometres cancelled for planned engineering. The kilometres do not equate to number of trains operated or which were running. Kilometres provide the best comparison in terms of the level of service provided as it also captures where trains are cancelled or short-tripped and therefore impacting the service provided. 

The Metropolitan, District, Hammersmith & City and Circle lines carry 1.3 million passengers per day, accounting for 40 per cent of the Tube network and 25 per cent of the overall London Underground ridership. Because these lines share a lot of track and infrastructure, we are modernising them under a single combined and integrated project, Four Lines Modernisation (4LM). Our £5.4 billion programme to modernise the signalling on those lines will result in greater capacity and frequency, as well as improved journey times, reliability and customer information. This is the largest single upgrade in the history of the Tube.

Customers have already seen the benefits of the brand new walk-through air conditioned trains. Now we are into the critical stage of introducing the new signalling, including replacing signalling equipment built in 1926. The programme is currently on track to deliver an initial 30 trains per hour service over the south side of the central area in May 2021. Further increases to 32 trains per hour are then planned to be in service across all lines by May 2023.

On 2 September 2019, a section of new digital signalling was introduced from Latimer Road to Finchley Road and Euston Square, with trains operating automatically on those sections of the route. We extensively tested the new signalling during engineering hours and on weekends prior to going live, and this went well. But, while running the new software with the trains in a live environment we have experienced some software reliability issues and there have been a number of incidents of disruption for our customers. These have largely centred around communications issues between software systems on and off the trains.

We have been working with our signalling supplier to identify how to address these issues, and fixes are now being developed. Two software updates are scheduled for late this month and for mid-January next year, which we are confident will improve the situation for our customers.

If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.

Yours sincerely

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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