|
Local Politics Desk
MP for Chipping Barnet, Theresa Villiers, has cautiously welcomed today’s announcement by Transport for London that upgrade work on the Northern Line will begin later this year. Under the PPP set up by Labour, Barnet residents would have had to put up with extensive closures including an early finish to services on the Northern Line's Bank and Barnet branches on weekdays throughout the summer.
Under the new upgrade schedule agreed by the Mayor and TfL, following the ending of the PPP, there have been major reductions in the closure programme.
There will be no early evening weekday closures. Instead, there will be eight weekends of full line closures - five in 2013 and three in 2014 - followed by eight additional weekend closures, mainly affecting residents served by the High Barnet branch. From October, service on the two northern branches of the line will, in turn, start at 8.30am on Sundays to allow for extensive work during Saturday night's engineering hours to be completed. There will also be six closures to parts of the line for up to four or five days at a time during the Easter and Christmas holiday periods.
When complete, the Northern Line should operate a faster, more frequent and more reliable train services for customers, increasing capacity by 20 per cent and cutting journey times by around 18 per cent.
Theresa said, “In comparison to the programme of closures proposed under Labour’s PPP last year, this new schedule is a far better outcome for my constituents. TfL’s decision to restrict line closures to the weekends will impact on many fewer people than if they had pressed ahead with a whole summer of early weekday closures.”
“Of course the planned closures will still be frustrating for my constituents, but unfortunately, it is impossible to carry out this much needed upgrade work without some level of disruption. The end result of the work will be a dramatically improved service for my constituents.”
“I will be keeping the pressure up on TfL to make sure they stick to the schedule, keep any disruption my constituents suffer to a minimum and keep them fully informed on what’s happening. It’s vital that there isn’t a repeat of the mistakes made on the Jubilee line, whereby frequent additional closures were requested under Labour’s PPP, sometimes at relatively short notice.”
|
