Figures released today by Transport for London (TfL) reveal that more people are using London Underground than at any point in its 152-year history.

This is not entirely unsurprising, as London is growing faster than any other European city. Its population of 8.6 million today will become nine million by 2018, and is expected to reach 10 million by 2030.

Close to five million customers (4.735 million) used the Tube on 9 October 2015, making it the network’s busiest day ever. The previous record was reached on Friday 28 November 2014, when 4.734 million passengers travelled on the Tube. The last week of October was the busiest ever week, with 28.614 million customer journeys. The previous busiest week was in December 2014, which saw 28.345 million journeys.

TfL expects both the daily and weekly records to be broken again before the end of 2015.

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Overall, the number of customer journeys on the Tube has increased by a third since 2001, with the rate of growth increasing in the last five years.

Nick Brown, LU’s Managing Director, said: “The Tube is carrying more customers than ever before as London’s economy and population continue to grow. This is why we are continuing to invest all of our income to modernise the service, improving reliability, train capacity and frequency and upgrading major stations to reduce congestion.”

Upgrades are ahead, with new air-conditioned trains now serving the Metropolitan, District, Hammersmith & City and Circle lines, new signalling planned for those lines, and the modernisation of the Central, Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Waterloo & City Lines in the 2020s. Work on the Northern line extension to Battersea is due to start this year.

With the Elizabeth line expected to be at full capacity in little more than a decade, Crossrail 2 is being talked about.

It’s worth noting that timelines are such that Crossrail 2 will be opening its doors to the first passengers around the time that children born today are starting their first day as a working commuter.

That is also in part how they can be sure that London’s population will keep on growing, it’s a natural consequence of human nocturnal behaviour.

Like autumn leaves on the line, one transport constant is that we can expect more traffic records to be broken on the tube in the years ahead.

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One comment
  1. GT says:
    13 November 2015 at 8:26 am

    CORRECTION (?)
    With Crossrail expected to be at full capacity in little more than a decade within a month of full opening …..

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