Today’s ‘new Tube train’ press is of course nothing of the sort - these are the trains specified and ordered back in 2006 and not yet anywhere near service. They’re also not ‘Tube’ trains per se, they’re sub-surface stock built to normal mainline size. Given that, it would actually be rather astonishing if they didn’t have aircon, since all the other UK fleets of similar trains being built this millennium have it, including the London Overground ones we saw rolled out the other day without the benefit of Boris, despite actually being complete and ready for testing rather than just a mockup. They didn’t make his manifesto, of course. Of course, there’s a fine old barney going on at the Evening Boris comments section where I’m glad to see roughly equal numbers of muppets who think you can design a train in five months and realists who know exactly who was Mayor when they were ordered.
What’s interesting here is another collision between Boris and reality, with reality the clear winner and the end result being, yet again, exactly the same policy as his predecessor:
Johnson admitted that passengers on the seven deep lines - including the busy Northern, Central, Victoria and Piccadilly routes - will have to put up with uncomfortable summers for a while yet. While there is room for bulky trains carrying roof-mounted air-conditioning units on the District and Circle line tunnels, it is impossible to fit them into the much smaller deep-lying tunnels.
There is also no outlet in those tunnels for any hot air that is pumped out of the carriages, meaning that there would be a “negative feedback” effect, whereby hot air will be sucked back into the trains by the conditioning systems.
We, of course, predicted all this back in June, for extra smug points. On the deep tube you can cool the stations but you can’t aircon the trains.
Let’s dissect things a bit:
BoJo: After decades spent sweltering in tropical conditions on the Tube, in just two years time Londoners on the sub-surface lines will be able to use the first of these superb trains.
Translation
BoWa: After decades spent sweltering on the deep Tube, in just two years time Londoners will be able to enjoy a slightly more comfortable journey if they happen to travel on the Metropolitan Line and one of the new trains comes along.
That’s a bit better. As for the deep tube, the Official Boris Position is now aligned with the Tube cooling work being reported back in March:
London Underground is scouring geological maps of the capital to find untapped water sources that can be used to cool down the hottest stations. It is using water from the river Tyburn, which rushes beneath several stations, to drive cool air through Victoria station. It is also looking at putting blocks of ice underneath train seats that will then release chilled air into carriages and is considering putting more industrial fans inside stations after installing 40 this summer.
In other words, Boris’s clarion cry for boffins to rally round with good ideas has met with the unsurprising response ‘perhaps you’d like to see the ideas we came up with for the previous Mayor’. As a final demonstration of this latest manifestation of Red Boris, can you match the quote with the Mayor:
Quote 1:
“This upgrade will be felt by passengers every day, who will benefit from air-conditioning and extra space on the trains.
Quote 2:
‘As well as keeping passengers cooler the new trains feel far more spacious, boast the latest CCTV systems and have been designed to make life much easier for disabled passengers.
6 responses so far ↓
The Evening boris comments section is great fun. I particularly liked your (?) point that voting Conservative doesn’t change the laws of physics. If only it did.
There is as has been pointed out a few flaws in Boris idea . Air-conditioning works by transferring heat from the inside of a building or in this case train to the outside. The problem is where does all the transferred heat & the heat from the energy to transfer it go? Answer: To the air in the tunnel. the air temperature in the stations and tunnels is already very high in the summer so adding heat from the trains is only going to make it far worse. A person will get out of a cool carriage and be hit by the high temprature and humidity of the station, while at the same time the cool air will escape from the carriage being replaced by the hot air outside! this will use even more energy once the train gets going to cool it down again, making the tunnels & stations even hotter The cycle goes on…
Back to the drawing board.
Cool the stations and tunnels & the trains will be bearable.How you may ask not a big problem (send cheque in post for my ideas) The problem is the COST but probably cheaper in the long run than changing all the trains & all the problems of maintaining the on-board air conditioning units against that of maintaining the much bigger static units which would be installed on the underground network. but again it is the cost of installation power consumption & maintenance which is the problem. cancel the 2012 Olympics & using the money will give you some idea, & better way to spend the money long term!
I’m sure Boris will be more than happy to credit the previous mayor with the design of the new trains when the inevitable complaints about lack of seating crop up.
Stop press! We can all go and see the new trains for ourselves outside Euston station for most of the next week or so. There’s even a PDF to advertise how exciting an opportunity this is!
The TfL London Loop Weekend ‘What’s on in London this weekend’ e-mail places this as one of the only three events of this coming weekend worth promoting, which seems pretty weird. Normally the e-mail is full of things I do actually consider leaving suburbia for, but even as a wannabe transport geek I’m not sure I can justify a Travelcard and hour-each-way trip to look at a train.
The best observation I’ve seen is that the articulated walk-through connection between the new carriages makes it look like the redundant bendies buses could be converted to tube trains!
“voting Conservative doesn’t change the laws of physics”
Yes, that was one of mine. I’m surprised they printed something calling Boris groupies ‘insane’ though. They really are losing the honeymoon feeling.
ron - you’ve explained concisely why aircon on tube trains in the central section is a no go - you need the cool air in the tunnels and the equipment on the surface in the open air, which can only be achieved at fixed locations like stations. The sub-surface lines don’t really suffer from the heat being trapped in the London clay as much, since they’re wider and shorter with frequent open sections where the heat can escape. The Met/District lines run on the surface in the suburbs anyway, so there’s no reason not to use proper aircon systems as fitted to ‘Overground’ stock.
I’m sure someone can dig up a Boris comment wondering why the deep tubes can’t be air-conditioned though..
Mark Lee - you reckon? I give it a week after introduction to service. The ’spacious’ element is basically because they’ve take out a lot of seats, which is fine for a couple of stops on the Circle, but not for the drag from the City to Amersham or somewhere, where you need mainline-type stock or at least a mixture of seating types.