Transport for LondonHammersmith & City line
Hammersmith & City line Manager Pete Allaway
We want to let you know what we're doing to your line and how it will help you.
Here, your line manager will be giving you updates about disruptions or closures, and tell you about the improvements you'll see when we're finished.
You can also hear from the man in charge of the overall plan to upgrade the Tube, and get answers to some of the common questions we get asked.
What's the Tube Improvement Plan?
What's going on?
Our upgrade of the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines includes the oldest section of the Tube - from Paddington to Farringdon - which is 150 years old.
To limit disruption, we've planned the upgrade to these lines in three stages: a new route, spacious new air-conditioned trains, and a new signalling system that will make journeys smoother and more reliable.
New trains
We're introducing 53 new trains on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines. These will be seven carriages long - one carriage longer than our current trains.
In addition to being air-conditioned, they will have walk-through carriages, automated visual displays and station announcements, plus the reassurance of CCTV.
To improve accessibility, they will also have dedicated wheelchair areas, wider doors and walkways, lower passenger alarms and a smaller gap between the train and platform.New signalling
In 2011, we agreed a new contract - our biggest ever - to deliver a new, modern, centralised system on the Hammersmith & City line, together with the Circle, District and Metropolitan lines for 2018. This state-of-the-art system will replace a number of older systems, including manual signalling dating back to the 1920s at Edgware Road.
We know it's not something you see or take much notice of, but new signalling will allow us to run more trains, more often and with fewer failures. Combined with bigger trains that we can move more quickly and closer together, it'll mean more room - or capacity - on the line.
That's good news because as London keeps growing there'll be more people using the Tube. When the upgrade is complete the combined line capacity will increase by 65 per cent, which means we can carry about 17,000 more passengers an hour.
See a preview of the new trains.
King's Cross St. Pancras
In 2010, we completed a massive redevelopment of King's Cross St. Pancras that quadrupled the size of this key station.
It already sees more passengers a year than Heathrow Airport, with more than 100,000 people passing through the station at peak times every day.
King's Cross St. Pancras is now modern and spacious, has step-free access to all lines, and is less congested thanks to new ways to enter and exit the station.
Paddington station (Hammersmith & City)
More than 60,000 passengers currently use the Hammersmith & City station every day and demand has already increased dramatically as a result of the extension of the Circle line to Hammersmith.
We need to prepare for further increases in demand in advance of Crossrail services in 2018.
When will the work be finished?
Key improvements
- More trains to Hammersmith
- Capacity increased by 65%
- New air-conditioned trains
- New signalling system
- Major stations more accessible
- See also
- About London Underground
- Crossrail
Check if your Tube line is affected by improvement works
