London Underground

The London Underground is usually called the Tube by Londoners, ever since the first deep-level electric railway line was constructed in 1890. It is a system of electrified railways that run under ground in central London but above ground in the suburbs.

The Tube is owned by London Transport, a government agency, who also run the famous, red doubledecker buses.

The first underground railway line in the world was laid in London on the 10th January 1863. Today there are 275 stations and over 408 km of active lines, with 3 million passenger journeys made each day (927 million journeys made 1999-2000).

Lines on the Underground can be separated into two types: Sub-surface and deep-level "tube" lines running about 20m below the surface (although this varies). The table below describes each of the lines, giving the colour used to represent the line on the maps, the date of opening and the type of tunnelling used.

Line Name	Colour	Date of Opening	Type	Notes
Bakerloo	brown	1906	Deep level
Central	red	1900	Deep level
Circle	yellow	1884	Sub-surface	1
District	green	1868	Sub-surface	2
East London	orange	1869	Sub-surface
Hammersmith & City	pink	1864	Sub-surface	3
Jubilee	grey	1979	Deep level
Metropolitan	purple	1863	Sub-surface
Northern	black	1907 (part)	Deep level	4
Piccadilly	dark blue	1906	Deep level
Victoria	light blue	1969	Sub-surface
Waterloo & City	teal		Deep level	5

¹The Circle line became known as such in 1949

²Originally called the Metropolitan District Railway

³Originally part of the Metropolitan Line, the line became known as the Hammersmith & City in 1990

⁴The busiest line on the system, with two branches in central London

⁵Came under control of London Transport in 1994

Interchange is possible with the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) at several stations, including Bank, Canary Wharf and Stratford, while access to the Croydon tramlink system is also possible on the southern reaches of some lines.

For fares LT use a zone system where zone 1 is the most central, with a boundary just outside the Circle Line. Travel through zone 1 is more expensive than in other zones. The zone system works well because most of the stations where lines cross are in zone 1, which means that journeys where multiple routes are possible almost all go through this zone, hence all the routes cost the same, which might not be true otherwise. There are ticket machines that will accept coins and fresh paper money. They also give change. LT have recently introduced credit card ticket machines across the network. LT also sell weekly, monthly, and annual farecards, allowing unlimited rides in one or more zones; these are a good deal for commuters and anyone else who rides the trains daily. The more zones you need to travel through, the higher the fare (whether a single ticket or a daily, weekly, or longer farecard).

Note that not all Underground stations are accessible by people with mobility problems. Many have some of the 408 escalators and 112 lifts (elevators), but not all of them.

The escalators in London Underground stations are both an asset and a liability. They are among the longest escalators in Europe and all are bespoke (custom-built). Because of the enormous amount of use that they see, they tend to break down, causing long delays at stations. Older escalators with wooden treads are being phased out after a fire at King's Cross station in 1987. Thirty-one people died in the King's Cross fire, which also caused the prohibition of smoking throughout the system.

• The official site of the Tube
• Clive Feather's amazingly detailed Clive's UndergrounD Line Guides
• nycsubway.org's Photographs of London Underground
• Richard's LUL rolling stock page
• Disused Stations on London's Underground

/Talk