Weekend closures resume on the London Underground

Now that the Olympics are over, the Tube and Overground networks start to return to more conventional working.

The smiling happy faces heading to Olympic venues have been replaced by glum commuters reading the Metro or studiously ignoring each other.

...and the weekend engineering works have returned.

Considering the lack of works carried out over the past 6-weeks, they are of necessity returning with a vengeance. In fact, looking at the tube map for this weekend, it might be easier to summarize it as "stay at home". Which coincidentally was a part of the message to encourage people to work from home during the Olympics to help reduce overcrowding.

TfL is rather pleased that a decent percentage of those who could change their travel plans actually did so, and it will be interesting to see just how much of that change continues now that the Olympics are over.

When you think how much extra capacity was released by people spreading their commute around a bit or working from home occasionally, and at a time when the network carried record numbers of passengers - it would be wonderful if we could keep that going.

Back to the weekend works, and TfL says that the effect of the works has been reduced by 10 percent compared to last year and by 25 percent compared to two years ago. Although that comparison is affected by the Jubilee Line debacle which saw parts of the line closed almost every weekend.

Something to look out for though if you use the Central Line - they warn that there will be a longer closure on the Hainault loop in the last week of October and the first few days of November.

One small crumb of comfort - there will be no weekend works at all on the Underground during December.

Enjoy your Christmas shopping! 

PS - whenever the East London Line is closed, and the tunnel isn't part of the works, they should try to let people walk through it again. That was incredibly popular last time.