Transportation Deployment Casebook/2023/London Underground

Pre history - before 1854
Railways have been existing in different forms in United Kingdom (UK) since the 16th Century. During the initial days, tracks were laid using wood and cars were drawn using animals such as Horses. In the 18th Century, further developments to the lines were brought and the wooden tracks let go for a much effective iron track. In 1807, the first Passenger Carrying Public Railway line opened in Oystermouth, which used horse drawn cars on the existing track. In 1830, the Railway between Liverpool and Manchester which was underdevelopment from 1824 was opened for service. There was much resistance to this development by the existing Canal operators who saw this as a competition to their operation. Liverpool and Manchester service used Steam locomotives to carry passengers between the two cities. This allowed customers to travel between the two cities in a much shorter time span, thus the passenger demand for the originally freight shipping targeted railway was greatly high when it opened. The Liverpool and Manchester railway altered the common carrier concept as well, with the railway required to both own and operate the equipment in order to manage the locomotives and schedules. Using the technical knowledge that they had gotten from tram and wagon service experience, they built freight cars and first class cars for the railway services. In 1833, British Parliament gave the approval to construct a new railway line between London and Birmingham which opened in 1838 and took 5 and half hours to complete the journey. During this period of early 19th century, few other modes of public transport existed in London. These include Stagecoach services in the city to nearby villages as well as river taxis that utilized the natural rivers and canals in London. However, most of these services were expensive which made Public transport something that the average working class at that time could not afford. In 1828, George Shillibeer launched an Omnibus service which utilized Horses to draw a bus. However, these were not cheap either with it being affordable only from the Middle class people onward.

Beginning - 1854 to 1863
In the year 1854, Metropolitan Railway (MR) was formed and was given the power and directive to construct an underground railway, which would be a feat the world had not yet seen at this point in history. Works on this project were started, and by the dawn of 1863, they were poised to open the first railway line. The line was 6km long and was operated using steam engine trains. London welcomed the first underground rail network in 1863. It originated with a 6km line operating. On the opening day alone, the Railway line catered to 36,000 people, which lead to a total of 9.5 million catered by the end of the year.

Expansion - 1863 to 1899
After the immediate success of the first railway line, requests for expansion of the railway lines started to flood into the British Parliament. As a result, District Railway (DR) was incorporated in 1864 and was tasked with working with MR and expand the service lines. With the radical development of tunneling technique by Marc Brunel and Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the mid 19th Century, the Railway operators were able to dig deeper underground. This benefited them with cheaper costs and allowed them to construct without affecting the life at street level. Using Electric locomotives, the 1st deep level underground railway line in London was opened in 1890. This line was 10.5km in length and was operated by City and South London Railway (C & SLR). During the latter half of the 19th Century, numerous Railways were incorporated and were operating in London. Some of these include:
 * District Railway (DR)
 * City and South London Railway (C & SLR)
 * East London Railway (ELR)
 * Central London Railway (CLR)

By the end of the 19th Century, the Underground Railway system which started with 9.5 million a year was catering around 112 million customers a year. This could be contributed to the expanded network lines and services.

Redesign - 1900 to 1944
By the beginning of the 20th Century, London Underground Metro lines were in dire need of converting from Steam Locomotives to Electric to operate their lines as the steam was filling up the stations and affecting the customer journey. As a result, two of the major Railways of the time, MR and DR joined in 1901 to covert their lines to Electric. By mid 1905, both MR and DR were operating electrified lines. After the investments and acquisitions into London Railways by American Investor Charles Yakes at the beginning of 20th Century, Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL) was formed in 1902. Yakes was one of the investors behind the drive by DR for electrification during this period as well and had built Power stations to provide electricity to both existing DR lines and new UERL lines. By this time, the number of individual railway operators were dwindling due to amalgamation and mergers with other railway operators in order to stay afloat in the business. During this time, a joint Branding and Marketing effort by the companies were made to increase the ridership of the underground railway network, where the term "London Underground" was first used as a consolidated marketing tool.

During the period of the first World War (WW1), traffic increased amongst the customers and Women were temporarily replacing Men in Male-centric jobs in the railways, such as Guards, Clerks and Cleaners. The Underground stations were also used during as shelters during the bombing raids of London during the war.

Post WW1, there were increased government capital available for employment-centric investment and business, hence there was an increase in the Railway lines being built and opened. MR, who still was not a part of UERL took another approach for suburban development by developing housing near its Railway lines. They had launched their moniker "Metro-Land" to promote housing and development in the suburbs centered around the train lines of MR.

In 1933, UERL which was the consortium using "London Underground" and MR was merged and a new Public Corporation named London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was formed. LPTB planned and aimed to modernize and and extend the network further. Upgrades were carried out to revamp the existing carriage infrastructure and lines till the start of the 2nd World War (WW2). The tube stations were again used as Bunkers during the war, but there were more damages to the stations during WW2 than in WW1 which had resulted in more casualties as well.

Post WW2 - 1945 till 1999
After the end of WW2, the services were resumed with moderate expansions to the service lines as well. That was till 1948 when the government nationalized the Railway networks which lead to the abolishment of LPTB and the formation London Transport Executive (LTE) which was under the British Transport Commission (BTC). This meant that for the first time since its introduction, the Underground Railway lines were the direct control of the Central Government. BTC and LTE abandoned the previously set plans by LPTB and focused on the expansion of the National railway lines instead. However, further line electrification and renovations were continued during this period as well. In 1970, the responsibility of managing Public transport was moved from the mandate of Central to local government, which lead to Greater London Council (GLC) taking control of the Underground Railway network and its operations. GLC established a new LTE which managed London Underground services till 2000.

Dawn of 21st Century - 2000 onwards
In the year 2000, Transport for London (TFL) was established and introduced to manage the public transport services. TFL reorganized London Underground structure with a Public - Private Partnership (PPP) being established to manage separate functions of the operation and fund the renovation of the Railway services. Till date, there have been numerous upgrades brought to the Railway network, with the introduction of new trains, upgraded stations and improved accessibility. Electronic ticketing mechanisms were also introduced which were further improved with the acceptance of contactless bank cards. The ridership of London underground kept hitting higher than before, with the record 4.8 million customers using the service in December 2015. With the sudden plague of Covid 19 that hit the world in 2020, London Underground was affected heavily as well. Passenger numbers reached a near all time low during the April and May of 2020 and continued to be affected with the lockdown and travel restrictions measures that were put in place in 2020 and 2021. Gradual improvements are found in 2022 but the numbers are yet to reach the heights that they were prior to the arrival of Covid 19.

Lifecycle of London Underground
London Underground had continued its expansion of railway lines as well as closure of some line till date, with a new new extension project completed and opened in as late as 2022. The service that started with 9 Million passengers annually had grown to one that catered over 1300 Million passengers annually (prior to Covid 19). Due to the unavailability of the accurate information of customer journeys from 1865 to 1990, the lifecycle is analyzed based upon the number of railway line expansions (new and existing lines) carried out during the period, policies by Railway operators and government. From 1991 till 2022, annual passenger data available has been incorporated in the analysis.

Birthing - 1863 to 1980
London Underground opens its doors in London in 1863. During its initial year, a total of 9.5 Million Customers used the services. This number increased to 12 Million in the following year of 1864. This was the period where Underground Railway lines were being established, with the majority of these lines acting as the stepping stones for further expansions in the future.

Growth - 1981 to 1920
This period included lots of development in the London Underground history such as the development and opening of the Central Station, large expansions of track and railway lines, replacement and conversion of the existing Steam Rails to Electric in majority of the railway lines as well as development of suburbia around the areas the railways were extended to. The start of WW1 lead to a sudden drop of commuters.

Maturity - 1921 till date
By the end of the WW1 and the start of new decade (1920s), majority of the dozens of railway operators present in the market were struggling financially to be afloat, thus lead to numerous amalgamation of multiple railways. The expansion effort of railways slowed down as well and came to an end by the end of 1920s. In 1933, the remaining Railway operators were amalgamated and LPTB was formed. The direction of LPTB was to improve the existing infrastructure of operations rather than further expansion. This include upgrading the carriages and stations and converting the remaining few steam engine lines to electric. When London Underground was nationalized after WW2, the directive remained same, with the policies aimed at service improvement rather than further major operational expansion. However, critical railway expansions still continue such as connecting lines to new Terminals at Heathrow which are done on new requirement basis rather continuous expansion. From the passenger the Annual passenger movement data available from 1991 onwards till 2022, we can identify that the passenger movement numbers overall kept on increasing. It reached a stable maturity at the range of 1300-1400 Million passengers per annum from the period 2014 till 2019, with the peak coming in 2018. From 2020 onwards, the impacts of Covid 19 can be strikingly visible from the numbers alone. The commute numbers have risen gradually afterwards till 2022, but the numbers are yet to come to the range that it was prior to Covid 19.