Northern line could close from 10pm on weekdays for upgrade

Parts of the Northern line would close early on weekdays to give private maintenance firm Tube Lines time to instal a new signalling system.

Early closures were pioneered on the Victoria line but caused huge disruption, with many travellers forced to find alternative routes home.

Now Tube Lines, which was yesterday attacked by Mayor Boris Johnson for the repeated weekend disruption caused by its upgrade of the Jubilee line, has asked Transport for London for permission to shut parts of the Northern line early from next year.

This most complex line on the network is about to undergo a two-year replacement of its signalling system to increase capacity by 20 per cent.

Dean Finch, the new chief executive of Tube Lines, yesterday issued a public apology for the Jubilee line chaos and vowed that "lessons would be learned" on the Northern line. He said closing sections earlier in the evening — stations normally close after midnight — would speed up the upgrade.

Mr Finch added: "We're in talks about early closure at 10pm.

"We would be looking to use the early closures throughout the programme, but not throughout the line. We would be moving from section to section of the line."

He added "There are bits of the line, such as in central London, that we wouldn't be touching with early closures. We would have to do that work at weekends."

Caroline Pidgeon, Lib-Dem transport spokeswoman on the London Assembly, encouraged TfL and Tube Lines to "think outside the box" and suggested that full-line closures, lasting several weeks at a time, may be more efficient than repeated weekend shut-downs.

However, she feared that weekday evening shut-downs were a way for Tube Lines to avoid contractual obligations to keep the Underground open.

Brian Coleman, Tory London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden, said there appeared to be "no end to Northern line commuters' suffering".

He said: "I am horrified at this potential inconvenience to my residents."

A TfL spokesman said it was "too early to say" whether it would grant permission for the early closures.

Richard Parry, TfL's managing director of the London Underground, had earlier described the 10pm Monday to Thursday closure of another line, the Victoria, as "successful if disruptive" as it "dramatically increased the productivity" of testing the new line's train system.