Keeping London Undergound cool

Anyone who’s travelled on the London Undeground during the summer months knows how hot and stuffy it can get hundreds of feet below ground, especially on packed trains or narrow platforms crowded with passengers. The Mayor of London and the Managing Director of the Tube have been detailing the short and long term plans to try and bring some relief from the worst of the heat on the Underground.

The mayor said that £150million will be spent over the next few years on cooling the Underground system and that first full-scale trial of the award-winning groundwater cooling project will take place at Victoria Tube station. They’ll also be a new ‘bore hole’ cooling technology trial at Stockwell station.

The Mayor said ‘London’s Tube network is the oldest in the world and its design makes cooling the system extremely difficult. Transport for London is pushing forward a programme to tackle the problem of heat on the tube. This will take years, not months, to deliver results.’ It is a massive job, the Tube network is huge and probably not how you would design it if you were building it today.

London Underground’s MD Tim O’Toole said ‘Cooling the Tube is a major and long-term engineering challenge, but we are also trying out short-term measures to help tackle the heat now. This summer a special engineering team will continue testing a new way of cooling the Tube, using cold water from an underground river, at Victoria station. A large number of station ventilation fans which had previously been allowed to fall into disrepair have been brought back into service and portable industrial fans will be trialled in two stations.’

Among the actions being taken are the on going trial using groundwater at Victoria Station throughout 2007, the start of the trial at Stockwell where a borehole will be drilled to the water aquifer below London where cold water will be extracted and used via a heat exchanger to cool warm air, the station ventilation fan network will be upgraded, temporary portable industrial fans will be trialled at Seven Sisters and Chancery Lane stations this summer and if successful will be rolled out at other stations, a new mechanical chiller is being installed at Oxford Circus station, a new ventilation shaft is being installed at Liverpool Street station to extract warm air while a condenser unit at Charing Cross will redirect heat to outside, rather than within. The first air-cooled trains are not due to arrive in service until January 2010.

At the height of summer always take water with you when you travel on the Tube, you never know when a train will stop in a tunnel for twenty minutes, and if you’re only going one or two stops try walking it, it’ll probably be much more pleasant.