Blog post: Central line - thoughts, reflections and where to next for TfL?

20 February 2025

2024 was a difficult year for passengers of the Central line, one of the busiest Tube lines. An unusually high number of motor failures forced many trains out of service, leading to a revised timetable from last February to try and deliver a more even and certain service with fewer unpredictable gaps between trains. London TravelWatch wrote to TfL’s Commissioner, Andy Lord, last March to register our concerns about the Central line’s issues.

2025 has finally brought relief, with sufficient repairs to trains being made to allow TfL to reinstate the full weekday timetable of 71 trains (compared to the 60-train temporary timetable), though the weekend timetable remains unchanged to allow work to continue repairing more trains.

A slow road to recovery

While the return to service as (nearly) normal is welcome news, it’s not been without its bumps along the way.

The scale of the challenge to repair so many train motors led TfL to urgently strengthen its engineering and fleet teams in early 2024, who then worked with suppliers to return trains back to service as quickly as possible. But even these around the clock efforts meant that it would take many months before the service could be improved, and passengers had to deal with the effect of a reduced number of trains. And unfortunately, TfL’s communication was not always as good as it could have been.

 At the start of 2024 when the service was poor, communication from TfL about the problems and why they were happening felt slow to appear. This was followed by a flurry of useful communication around the launch of the temporary timetable. From then until the end of 2024, as work to repair the train motors was progressing unseen by passengers, there was barely any update to be found in stations or on the TfL website. We believe that keeping passengers updated is crucial in building trust and confidence, even if just to apologise for continued problems and to update on whatever progress there has been.

TfL did provide important live updates on their website but, even here, it was initially not done consistently, with a page containing detailed disruption information and the mitigations put in place not referred to on the page with the ‘rainbow’ tube line status indicator. We believe that during times of disruption passengers should be able to easily find all the information that they need.

Bringing this up to date, TfL has helpfully emailed some passengers in the last few days to confirm the improved timetable. The email details the increased number of trains in the stations in the core section but does not provide similar details for passengers using the stations on the branches. This was a missed opportunity to include a link to the Central line disruption webpage containing that information and reflects again a somewhat lack of joined-up communications.

It’s important that TfL takes the opportunity to learn from what happened on the Central line. Whilst there are lessons about how well TfL understands the state of its assets, the strength of its internal technical expertise and the resilience of its supply chain, TfL should also evaluate how they responded through their passenger support and communications. It is inevitable that technical problems will at times occur on the transport network, but how TfL responds to them can make a real difference to people’s experience – providing reassurance and information to help people make their journeys or compounding the misery through lack of information and support.

Where next?

This is particularly important given the ageing network TfL manages. While it was the Central line’s performance that suffered this time, we could well see similar problems elsewhere in the near future. London TravelWatch is concerned about what and when will be the next ‘Central line’.

It’s not unreasonable to suspect that the next significant problem Tube line will be the Bakerloo. Here, the trains are well beyond their design life and, at more than 50 years old, are the oldest trains in daily passenger service in the UK. TfL acknowledges that the fleet is increasingly unreliable, with its maintenance becoming more challenging and the number of trains available for service starting to decline. An order is yet to be placed to build new trains so this situation will only worsen in the coming years.

Elsewhere, the trains on the Piccadilly line are nearly as old as those on the Bakerloo line, although the fleet of new trains for the Piccadilly line will begin rolling out from the end of this year. Also pending (though still with no confirmed introduction date) are new trains to replace those on the DLR which are more than three decades old, whilst most of the Trams fleet is nearing the end of its 25 years design life. New trams to replace them are not expected to start running until the late 2020s.

Prior to the problems beginning on the Central line, delays to the overhaul of the Jubilee line fleet saw TfL introduce a temporary timetable to address unplanned and short-notice cancellations and uneven service gaps, in what can now be seen as a forerunner to the Central line experience.

London TravelWatch supports TfL’s wish to secure long-term funding from government, which is key to bringing in new trains. But it is also important that TfL makes proper provision for renewals to make up for a historic backlog. TfL is looking to increase renewals spending in its budget for the next financial year and it would be good to know what impact that will have on everyday operational performance and that it will be sustained and even increased further in years to come.