London Underground - When will the weekend horror end!

[philwhite]

I've posted about this before but now it’s starting to get really silly, I’m up in London again this weekend and just thought I better check to see what lines are closed, and only three lines are running normal service! What a joke!!!!

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/realtime/...

I understand that improvements need to be made, but why close so much of the system? Every weekend I’ve been to London in the past year it’s been chaos, and it really can’t be doing tourism any good either.

Can anyone shed any light on what’s actually being done and why it’s taking so long, I understood them to be widening tunnels to allow for new rolling stock, or is this all something to do with the Olympics?

Oh, and why is it taking two years to refurbish Backfriars station?

I’ve used underground systems in many cities (NYC, Paris, Barcelona, and Munich) and ours is by far the worst in terms of service and cost.

Oh well, I suppose I’ll have a nice walk this weekend!

Rant over.

[aeropilot]

Shutting down at weekends is the only time they can do extra work other than during the night hours, which is really only allows for about 4 hours work each night.

It's pure logistics......with limited access to do the work it has to be spread over a longer timescale to allow for the system to continue in operation...and weekday commute operation is considered more important than weekend operation.