• Commentary: Treasury must rue the day it ever decided on PPP
• Delays: Finance row risk to Olympic upgrades

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The newest line, and it's closed every weekend. Why couldn't this current upgrade have been included when it was built -- only ten years ago. Compare the Bakerloo line. Runs like clockwork, dependable, and one of the oldest Underground lines.

- Phil Jones, London UK

The Jubilee Line was great until it was extended from Charing Cross.
The major mistake was that botched rush job to get Blair to the Dome on time. But he was far too important for the collateral damage to the rest of us to matter. (I guess he was too young to have been asked "Does your journey really matter?")
I suspect He's earning enough now to pay the excess cost himself.

- E Thompson, Willesden Green, London, England

Tubelines = bad news ; send it back in house or to metronet tfl at least it will eventually get done properly.

- Tony ,Essex, Harlow,UK

According to a friend employed by London Underground, the reason for the extended work on the Jubilee Line is that the extensive new cabling that was laid for new signaling and other equipment to be installed proved to be incompatible (i.e. the wrong kind of cable; makes a change from the wrong kind of snow) with the new signaling/equipment, and so is being taken up, and the correct type being laid. Can any LU whistleblowers confirm this?
Oh, and the "highly qualified' person who originally decided which cable to use is still in his highly paid job. It takes more than a monumental cock-up to lose your job from LU - ask the unions.

- Paul H, London, UK

Just be grateful it is only the weekend the Jubilee line is closed. I just found out the Bakerloo line will be closed Thursday and Friday this week as well. Unlike TfL employees some of us need to get to work - we don't all throw sickies/strike/take a long weekend at the drop of a hat. So much for keeping people informed.

- Jon, London

Upgrading this sort of infrastructure will always cause massive disruption. If you really want to complain about public transport, then try living in the south west. Bath and Bristol are examples of how a lightly regulated, private monopoly calling itself First have fleeced local populations for over 2 decades.

No tubes on saturday? I feel sorry for you. I visit Canada water often and sometimes it's inconvenient to get a replacement or service bus from waterloo. Trying and get anywhere in Bristol and Bath after 19:00 any day? Most buses run hourly. You won't get much change out of a fiver. On sundays, some don't run at all.

- Anil, glos

We are still paying the price for the Millennium Dome fiasco. If the line completion had not been rushed so that it could be ready for this white elephant, the signalling could have been properly done first time round.

- Tony Woolf, London UK

Why not just shut it down for a couple of months, get the work done and then open it when it is fit for purpose? These constant, over-running delays are benefitting no-one, especially when there is no end in sight.

- Nobby Clark, Perth, the Scottish one

All Bloated Boris ever does is blow a load of hot air, he hasn't achieved anything as Mayor yet, so I don't know why you're bothering with this story. So he had a rant - big deal! It's about time he did something to earn his "chicken feed" instead of milking the taxpayer so that he can be a useless z-list celebrity like Kerry Katona.

- D.W., London

Shutting down tube and rail lines at weekends is poor project management and a real pain. It's a disaster for sports, theatre and music fans --and thoroughly disruptive for all other leisure travellers.
Suggest Boris allows the extra 5 days BUT imposes stiff penalties should they still over-run.
Let's get this rubbish sorted by mid december -big time.

- William Grierson, Kimpton-UK

Comments from people like Sarah and ST crack me up and sadly these are the people that voted in a Have I Got News For You tv presenter rather than a suitable politician like Ken Livingstone. Did you two actually read the article or in fact read any news about London from the past 8 years? Ken did a good job and warned about the problems ahead with the tube but was over ruled by Gordon Brown and now because Boris is completely ineffectual we are in the mess we are in now with no one taking responsibility. This is a classic Boris manoever. Policy is created and then when it goes wrong he blames everyone else when in fact he is the individual charged with responsibility. It says a lot of the man when after his first year in charge he said he would not run again and was looking for new challenges. Thanks Boris.

- Andrew, St. John's Wood, London

Why don't they just shut the whole system down at weekends! And how about a reduction in the price of travelcards etc to reflect the inconvenience. When you buy a Mars Bar you don't expect a whole chunk of it to be missing at weekends! And how about free travel for londoners when it's done (for a weekend say). The Parisians wouldn't put with this, why should we!

- Paul,London, London

Could they not at least communicate with us better?

At least make some kind of short film so we can understand why it's such a hard job. If you don't you leave us no choice but to envisage you sitting down there scratching your arse. They don't even have the excuse that they're working with Victorian-era infrastructure.

- Thomas, E1

All this boils down to is the Olympics, let's face it, if London hadn't won it, and I wish to god it hadn't! We would still be able to travel by tube, national rail, and even walk the streets along a pavement, or cross the road under a subway, which now since Tfl seems to have taken over, the subways suddenly need closing!

Once again I think it also comes down to the amount of money wasted on this country striving to be the best? What do you mean best, a few years ago I could travel around London, cheaper, and at weekends, walk around the streets and not see a building site. Now suddenly a tube system that works needs improvement work?! Eh?

All Tfl stands for is inconvenience, and as soon as they get a chance to buy a transport system, suddenly it needs closing hmm funny that! A most recent example being the Overground, what was wrong with it exactly? Perhaps it was the lack of Temporary signs or orange benches!

But anyway back to the Jubilee line, it also becomes worrying when it turns out that some of the track being replaced by tubelines is actually low speed siding track. In english this means that sections of normal track are being replaced by low speed track, that should be in a siding and not on the main line! Considering the 1996 stock trains on the Jubilee currently reach 55 - 60mph on this siding track, then we can look forward to a derailment in near future when these trains get put in to full power.

- Dan, London

Of course if Ken was still in charge he would have simply rolled over and let them take as long as they wanted, no doubt bailing them out with hard-earned taxpayers money if things went wrong. - Sarah, London.

This is a lie. ken opposed PPP, Gordon Brown forced it. Less dishonesty please Sarah.

- John, Brixton

I'm not sure that people commenting along the lines of Boris is rubbish, Ken was great, or vice versa, really get the point. The LU is out of control, the mayor cannot really do that much about it. Ken was the one who had the most chance to change the future but he wasn't able to, and not by any fault of his own (and I'm not a Ken fan). The decision for PPP was forced onto him by the govt, he tried everything to stop it but was not able to. The mayor's hands have been tied ever since, and once again, Londoners, more than anyone else (where do our taxes go exactly? Not to London that's for sure) bear the brunt of government dithering and ineptitude.

- Ted, London UK

When it comes to Public Transport there can be no doubt you Londoner's are spoilt,if you wish to know what a bad transport system is come to Bristol,here we have a private monopoly First Bus opperating our (in loose terms)bus service,the most expensive in Europe,with complaints filling our newspaper on a daily basis.

- Colin, Bristol

With one hand everyone is blaming Bechtel for the lateness and poor performance it is true they are very poor at best, however with the other hand we have decided to award the Management of the CrossRail scheme to the very same jokers. There must be an inquiry into this and I for one, as a London resident believe Bechtel should not be allowed anywhere near the Cross Rail Project, otherwise that will suffer a similar fate of shambolic proportions, let Bechtel go back to America and make a mess of things in their own country!

- James Weir, London, England

Its their own fault.
Instead of tryign to make it cheap when the line was build, they shouldve done it properly from the first time.
Now all they do is close that line almost every weekend and I can only imagine how annoying it must be for the O2 arena.

Another great example of these engineering plannings:
Last weekend, when on Sunday Chelsea was playing Fulham ( Both grounds are on the Wimbledon branch on the District line). Who's genius idea was it to do a Putney bridge to Wimbledon closure?!

- Josh, London

I booked to see BodyWorlds at the dome this summer, not knowing that the tubes would be down (because I very rarely use them). It took ages to get there and back because the boats were also messed up, so we didn't get to buy the nice dinner out that we'd planned as part of the trip. I sincerely hope there's nothing else that I want to see at that venue any time soon.

- Suzanne, London

if you actually live in London you'll know that most of the tube system is shut down at weekends. It's OK for commuters who go back to their suburban bus routes on Saturday and Sunday. For Londoners we have to stay within walking distance of our homes!

- Simon, London, N5

These upgrades to the Tube are crippling the network and should be stopped immediately. They're only being done because London needs to 'show off' during the Olympics. There's more important things we should be spending our money on, like getting this country out of the horrendous debt it is in.

- Frank, London

Why don't they just fix the 'signal failure' element, which seems to be the most dysfunctional set up I have ever experienced.

- Tracy Verga, London

Private enterprise fails again. Re-nationalize now.

- Mick, London, England

London is a nightmare at weekends now. Michael, London I agree I do that journey every weekend. Its amazing that they can shut all north/south links at same time as has happened.

The problem is we have had no investment for years and now have so much to do in one go.

At least with thameslink you know its every weekend and can plan, when its finished we will have so much better system.


The real scandel is the jubilee line, the extension is brand new, the actual line isn't that old either. Yet its closed more than most - the extension was badly built. Again wasting money to rush something in then having to have to redo it at more cost e.g. International Terminal at Waterloo - now St Pancras what a waste.

However did read at the time that Madonna fans were late as she started her show v.late.

WWouldn't it be much better to close lines entirely for work for a few weeks rather than this continual weekend closure. Surely they must spend alot of time just tidying up and checking to get it ready for monday rather than actually doing the work?

Sarah, London - when Ken was in charge he got that much derided American to negioate such tough penalty contracts with metronet, that they went bust through having to pay so many fines to TFL. They didn't make a profit!!!

Of course this was this doomed public/private partnership which everyone, said wouldn't work.

- Bob, london

Trouble is, what really can be done to get Tube Lines to perform more effectively? The mayor puffing up his chest and getting all cross may be good for his personal PR, but is there any kind of penalty clause in the Tube Lines contract? Doubt it very much. The Jubilee line extension itself was years over budget and still you can see that some of the stations simply weren't finished! Methinks it will be closer to 2012 before the Jubilee line upgrade is complete!

- Paulo Uccello, London UK

"Sort it out now Boris!"

Um, London decided last year they'd rather have a clown than a municipal administrator, so in essence you're stuck with what you voted for. It's a bit harsh to expect him to be any good at a job he's fundamentally not interested in when he could be talking into a camera. Anyway, Thameslink is nothing to with TfL, since the Government refused to hand over responsibility.

In reality rumours of Tube Lines being in trouble over meeting the December deadline even after Boris and TfL gave them extra time a few months ago have been circulating for weeks, but there you go. Boris has a major weakness around taking prompt action when problems arise and now has the problem of delaying the Jubilee Line and thus having a knock-on effect on the next line upgrade, or allowing them extra closures with the risk that a rush job will lead to unreliability. The fatal delay means there's no good way out left.

- Tom, London, UK

We came up to London to watch something at the O2 and were staying at a hotel that way on. It took us 2 hours to get from Green Park to Docklands because as well as the Jubilee being closed, they'd also closed the circle and district! I mean, do these companies not actually look at the impact of closing one line before they go and shut more down? Appears to be absolutely no thought behind it.

- Kirsty, Dorset

Good news that Boris is getting on top of this. The only way to make these contractors do anything is to incentivise them and with the economy in the state it is, I suspect they would have no choice but to accept re-drawn agreements which penalise late delivery but also offer bonuses for meeting targets. Ken, of course, probably just gave them a flat number and told them to do it in their own time as long as they maintained a closed-shop foor.

- St, London

I live in Canary Wharf and most weekends are a complete write-off for getting around. What this article doesn't point out that more often than not the DLR is also down due to the platform extension programme, Bank Station is often 'semi-closed' due to an upgrade so cannot be used by anyone with a pram or wheelchair. Businesses and events are getting hit very hard in EastEnd and for what ? A few seconds to journey ? Jobs for the maintenance boys and money in the pockets for bug contract companies more like. These jokers need to be investigated.

- Hansel, London

Sarah, are you a real person or a computer programmed to respond to any story on the Standard website with a comment praising Boris and criticising Ken?

For the record, Ken said right from the start that PPP was a mistake, and fought in the courts to stop it. He pulled the plug on Metronet when they failed to meet their PPP contract commitments. If Boris has the guts to do the same with Tubelines, then come back and crow, but I think we'll have a long wait.

- Roy, England

Use the Clipper to get to Westminster from the O2, it's fast and fun and cool and a fiver.

- Squiz, Islington

Despite Gordon Brown and his cronies insistence to the contrary, how much more evidence is needed to prove that PPI provides neither value for money for the taxpayer, nor delivers what it promises to within an acceptable time frame ?

Of course the Tories are not likely to protest too loudly about reversing one of the most destructive policies of the New Labour regime because they have to find ways of keeping the appearance of increased borrowing down as well as finding new sources of revenue coupled with spending cuts.

But this cannot continue

- John, Twickenham

It goes from bad to worse. The cross london Thameslink route is closed most weekends. First choice then is the Jubilee Line between West Hampstead and London Bridge but that is usually closed in part. Second choice is the Northern Line between St Pancras International and London Bridge. Not any more - some plonker has decided this would be a good time to close the Northern Line platforms at St. Pancras at weekends. There is just no joined up thinking any more. Sort it out now Boris!

- Michael, London

It is hard to take TfL seriously when they criticise publicly their PPP contractors and then go on to award two more very large multi-billion outsourced contracts to Balfour Beatty and Bechtel - two of the largest contracts TfL have - the East London Line and CrossRail!

The taxpayers money involved on the above contracts is simply huge and yet it appears the contractors are in control of the terms - so how are they awarded additional contracts after TfL have criticised them so publicly? Could it be because we not TfL or their supply chain carry all the financial risk - I think yes.

Wastage of increasingly scarce taxpayers money on UK, especially London based infrastructure, beggars belief in comparison to other European countries.

- James, South East

Blimey, Boris has let himself go! What? Oh, it's a photograph of Madonna.

I've not travelled to central London for the best part of three years simply because TfL has made it as dificult as possible for me to get there with various closures of entire lines or worse, partial closures that helpfully manage to include useful interchanges, thus eliminating a potential alternative.

As for the Jubilee Line, I'm certain that from 2010, when I get down to the platform at West Ham or Southwark the next train will be at least four minutes away, which we all know, in the LU parallel universe, 4 miuntes does not necessarily equal 240 seconds, and the 18 minute journey will still take 25 minutes, at best.

- Escobar-Alop-Lop, Camden County

So will Brown comment on this? After all he was ultimately responsible in his time at the treasury or will he just pass the buck on to Darling.

- Jim, London

This is an excellent move by Boris keeping pressure on these companies that are making a horrendous profit at the expense of everyday Londoners. Of course if Ken was still in charge he would have simply rolled over and let them take as long as they wanted, no doubt bailing them out with hard-earned taxpayers money if things went wrong.

- Sarah, London

Of course it won't be ready for Xmas, they'll still arguing over what colour to paint it.

- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark

"Journeys to the O2 arena in Greenwich have been badly hit. Beyoncé and Madonna fans complained of a transport nightmare when trying to get home after the concerts. Some took six hours."

Just try living in SE London and get home from the O2, at least you have a tube line, even if it only works occasionally. We have this travel nightmare all the time.

- Jim, London, England

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