London Transport A brief history London Transport A brief history Sim Harris First published 2011 by Railhub Publications Dunstable, Bedfordshire www.railhub2.co.uk © Sim Harris 2011 The moral right of Sim Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, circulated or exploited in any way whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder, with the exception of excerpts published for the purposes of review or brief quotations, in connection with which this work shall be cited unambiguously as the true source. ISBN awaited This digital edition designed and created by the Railhub studio Contents 1 ‘Sensational plan’ 11 2 ‘Serious doubts’ 23 3 ‘Fares fair’ 31 Chronology 40 Notes on sources 41 8 9 LONDON TRANSPORT Daily Express 3 December 1929, reporting the announcement of a new Passenger Board for London, and the new LPTB logo, which was soon replaced by the classic ‘bullseye’ 10 Chapter One ‘Sensational plan’ T caused by unrestricted competition by bus operators on the streets of London had become extreme by the early 1920s, when ‘pirate’ buses concentrated on peak hour flows, causing traffic disruption and neglecting passengers at quieter times. Their presence led to calls for controls, which were largely achieved by the London Traffic Act in 1924. This allowed the authorities to ‘designate’ streets and so restrict the routes available to the pirates. But further reforms were urged, particularly by Labour politi- cians, and in December 1929 the Minister of Transport Herbert Morrison published the Labour government’s proposed London Pas- senger Transport Bill. He was supported by the Chairman of the London Underground Group, Lord Ashfield, who saw unification as the best way of securing capital for development of the capital’s transport systems. The London Passenger Transport Act was passed in 1933, and came into effect on 1 July. The Board was a public authority but funded independently, with a statutory duty to make ends meet with- out subsidy. The new London Passenger Transport Board, which adopted the trading name ‘London Transport’, had absorbed the London Under- ground Group (which owned the tube railways and the London General Omnibus Company), the Metropolitan Railway and several tramway undertakings including London United, which had just in- troduced trolleybuses. The Board’s area was large, reaching Bedford- 11 LONDON TRANSPORT The London Passenger Transport Area remained essentially the same between 1933 and 1969, although there were some changes in Grays and Tilbury in 1951, when most Eastern National routes in the area were transferred to London Transport 12 LONDON TRANSPORT shire in the north and Sussex in the south, and in its outer ‘country’ area it had inherited 66 smaller bus operators, work- ing 246 routes.1 All the undertakings which had been taken over were ‘bought’ with interest-bearing stock, the issue of which was authorised by the Board’s Act. There were major developments in the rest of the 1930s. The LPTB announced in 1935 that its trams would be progres- sively replaced by trolleybuses. It continued with extending the Underground and designed new motor buses. A ‘New Works’ programme envisaged Underground lines to such places as Ruislip, Denham, New Barnet and Ongar. The outbreak of war in September 1939 naturally hindered these improvements. Some of the unfinished Underground projects, including extensions of the Central Line both east and west, had to wait until peace had been restored, while the with- drawal of the remaining trams was also postponed. One minor development soon after the Board had taken over had been the speedy abandonment of the original LPTB logo (page 10) in favour of the bar and circle ‘bullseye’ which had been favoured by the London Underground Group and London General since before the First World War. The Board also inherited the lettering designed by Edward Johnston for the Underground in 1916 and a recent innovation – a diagrammatic version of the Underground map – which had been successfully submitted by one of the Underground Group’s draughtsmen, Harry Beck, in 1932. The Board’s systems were inevitably damaged during World War 2, once London had started to come under attack from bombs and later V1 and V2 missiles from the late summer of 1940 onwards. Some of the worst incidents included the explosion of a bomb in the northbound running tunnel at Balham on the Northern Line on 14 October 1940. Water from burst mains deluged both tunnels, and 68 people died. 13 LONDON TRANSPORT London Transport published Country Walks for more than thirty years. The primary purpose of these booklets was to encourage passengers to use lightly loaded off-peak and weekend trains and coaches to reach ‘London’s country’. This 1938 poster featured artwork by Clare Leighton. 14 LONDON TRANSPORT In January 1941, a bomb burst in the underground con- course at Bank, producing a vast crater. The blast even dam- aged two trains which were standing at the platforms 20 me- tres below ground. On this occasion 57 people were killed – as at Balham, many of the casualties had been sheltering from the raid above. On 10-11 May 1941, which was among the worst nights of the war in London, a bomb plunged through the main line concourse at St Pancras station, damaging the subsurface tun- nels below and interrupting Inner Circle and Metropolitan Line services for five months. It was later revealed that 300 enemy bombers had been over London, and no fewer than 20 direct hits were recorded at various points on the Underground. Tram tracks were damaged in fourteen places, and the threat of unexploded bombs or unstable buildings caused blockages in many other streets, while ‘great lengths’ of trolleybus over- head wires were brought down at eighteen locations. Seven of the Thames bridges were closed, and no buses could run through the City of London. Three bus garages were damaged, including a particularly bad incident at Croydon, and yet, apart from the Circle Line interruption at St Pancras, all the affected services had been ‘substantially restored’ within 10 days. It was not to be hoped that the aspirations of the 1935 New Works Programme could be met in these circumstances, and longer-term projects were suspended while London Transport workshops were turned over largely to the production of war- time equipment, including complete aeroplanes. An initial ban on the use of stations below ground as air raid shelters was lifted in the light of experience, particularly as there was no effective way of preventing it. The Board’s annual report for 1945, the first edition which was permitted to discuss the effects of the recent conflict, com- mented philosophically that after the first major raid on Lon- don, on 7 September 1940, ‘the new situation was promptly accepted, and the Board took undertook responsibility for the 15 LONDON TRANSPORT Wartime security considerations concealed the real reason for these station closures in September 1939: in fact, flood gates were being installed to protect the Underground from the consequences of a bomb breaching one of the tunnels under the Thames 16 LONDON TRANSPORT shelter arrangements until they could be taken over by the appropriate Civil Defence authorities’. Because of the risk to lines running under the Thames, a number of stations were closed during the first few weeks of the war while flood gates were installed – although the reason for the closures was kept under wraps. Political changes after the war inevitably affected London Transport, even while the repairs of wartime damage were still under way. The 1947 Transport Act created a British Trans- port Commission, which was to take over the main line rail- ways and many road haulage undertakings. The LPTB was also included in the acquisitions, and from 1 January 1948 LT became the London Transport Executive – one of several ‘ex- ecutives’ which were the operational subsidiaries of the BTC. Postwar improvements continued: the Central Line was extended to West Ruislip in the west and Ongar in the east – although the final section from Epping to Ongar was not elec- trified until 1957. Some prewar projects were re-evaluated and abandoned: among these abandonments were several exten- sions of the Northern Line – from Mill Hill East to Edgware and onwards to Bushey Heath, and also to Alexandra Palace – as well as the short section of the Central Line from West Ruislip to Denham. Most of these changes of heart were caused by the establishment of a ‘Green Belt’ around Greater London. Other prewar plans did continue, particularly the withdrawal of trams, which was completed in 1952. However, diesel buses replaced the remaining trams, rather than trolleybuses, because it had been decided that the trolleybuses would also go, by 1968. The date of the last trolleybuses was later brought for- ward to 1962, while the ‘last’ trams proved to be nothing of the sort, because tram lines were to be relaid in the streets of Croy- don and neighbouring centres in the later 1990s. The last trolleybuses ran in May 1962, in what also proved to be the last months of the London Transport Executive. The perceived failure of the British Transport Commission led to its 17 LONDON TRANSPORT Pre- and postwar rolling stock for London Transport above 1938/1949 tube stock below RT bus, first built 1938-1940, and then 1947-1954 18 LONDON TRANSPORT replacement by a series of statutory Boards from 1 January 1963 as a consequence of the 1962 Transport Act. As part of these reforms LT became the London Transport Board, re- sponsible directly to the Minister of Transport.