Jubilee Line Extension
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The Jubilee Line Extension is the extension of the London Underground Jubilee Line into southern and eastern London. First proposed in the 1970s, it was constructed in the 1990s and opened just before Christmas 1999.
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[edit] Stations on the Jubilee Line Extension
The extension begins just south of Green Park, eastward to:
- Westminster
- Waterloo
- Southwark (new station)
- London Bridge
- Bermondsey (new station)
- Canada Water (new station)
- Canary Wharf (new station)
- North Greenwich (new station)
- Canning Town (new station for LU; interchange with DLR)
- West Ham
- Stratford
Before the extension was built, the Jubilee Line terminated at Charing Cross. The section of Jubilee Line between Charing Cross and Green Park is now unused for passenger services but is still maintained for emergency use (and at least one misdirected passenger train has ended up there). The abandoned platforms are occasionally rented out by TfL for use as a film set.
[edit] Why the Jubilee Line Extension was built
[edit] Original 1970s plans
The construction of the Jubilee Line between Baker Street and Charing Cross had always been intended to be the first phase of the Fleet Line (as the Jubilee Line was originally called). In the first version of the Fleet Line Extension plan, the line would run from Charing Cross via Aldwych and Ludgate Circus to Fenchurch Street station, then via the Thames Tunnel to New Cross and Lewisham.
This plan was modified shortly before the Jubilee Line was opened in 1979. Under the new plan (and a new name, the River Line), it would instead run via the Isle of Dogs and Royal Docks to the "new town" at Thamesmead. (This route is not dissimilar to the proposed Crossrail route, which would go through the Docklands in a broadly similar direction.) A short extension was built eastwards from Charing Cross — the Jubilee Line tracks actually extend almost as far as Aldwych, but work soon ground to a halt, and was abandoned.
[edit] Extension
Plans to extend the Jubilee Line were revived in the late 1980s, prompted by the creation of the Canary Wharf development, which massively increased the predicted numbers of jobs in the Isle of Dogs and required a transport network with much greater capacity than could be provided by the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Initially, Olympia and York, the developers of Canary Wharf, proposed building a new line, the Waterloo and Greenwich Railway. This would run from Waterloo through London Bridge to Canary Wharf and then to Westcombe Park in Greenwich, and would cost £400 million. However London Transport resisted this idea, preferring to wait for the results of studies into new railways construction in London. One of these, the East London Railway Study, recommended an extension of the Jubilee Line from Green Park to Westminster, then following the route of the Waterloo and Greenwich Railway, before carrying on to Stratford via Canning Town. It was this option that was ultimately adopted, with an estimated cost of £2.1 billion to which Olympia and York would make a £400 million contribution, a figure based on the original cost estimate of the Waterloo and Greenwich Railway (Mitchell 2003). In the end the scheme cost £3.5bn, partly because of huge cost overruns during its construction. Where initially the developers were to pay for a large part of the scheme, their final contribution was less than 5%. [1]
The extension was authorised in 1990 and opened in late 1999, just in time for North Greenwich tube station to serve the Millennium Dome. It has proved extremely successful both in terms of relieving congestion on the DLR and in opening up access to parts of east London with formerly poor transport links. However, its considerable costs have delayed alternative Underground expansions, such as the long-proposed schemes of Crossrail and the Chelsea-Hackney Line.
[edit] Design aspects of the extension
The physical design of the extension is radically different from anything previously attempted on the London Underground. Stations are characterised by cavernous, stark interiors lined with polished metal panels and moulded concrete walls and columns. Some of the stations are truly enormous — Canary Wharf has been compared to a cathedral, while Westminster has a dramatic vertical void nearly 40 m (130 ft) deep.
The size of the stations was a response to safety concerns — overcrowding and a lack of exits had been significant factors in the 1987 King's Cross disaster — as well as an attempt to "future-proof" stations by designing from the start for a high volume of use. One consequence of this is that most of the extension's platforms and halls are full only in a busy rush hour. (North Greenwich in particular is far too large for the numbers currently using it, following the current vacancy of the Millennium Dome. The Greenwich Peninsula residential and commercial development proposals, private exhibitions and use in the 2012 Summer Olympics will however see the station's passenger levels change.)
A number of leading architects were employed to design the stations, with the lead being given by Roland Paoletti. It was decided from the outset that although each station would be designed as an individual entity, they would be linked to the others by a common design philosophy and functional elements. Spaciousness was the most noticeable, along with the shared theme of grey and silver polished metal and concrete interiors. More subtly, many of the stations were designed to admit as much natural light as possible. At Bermondsey and to a lesser extent at Canada Water and Southwark, rotundas and shafts allow daylight to reach, or nearly reach, the platforms.
The platforms saw another innovation: platform edge doors, to improve the airflow through the system. These have the additional benefit that they stop people falling or jumping onto the track.
[edit] References
Mitchell, Bob (2003), Jubilee Line Extension: from concept to completion
