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Plan to put turn disused Tube lines into cycle paths under London - but could it work? (+ video)

Award winning London Underline concept could ease city's overcrowding, say designers - we dig in to the details...

A proposal to turn disused Underground tunnels beneath London into a network of paths for cyclists and pedestrians has won an award for Best Conceptual Project at the London Planning Awards, hosted earlier this week by the city’s mayor, Boris Johnson.

Using former rail tunnels as cycle routes is not as unusual as it might seem, here in the UK we already have the Two Tunnels route in Bath, while last year a cycling tunnel was opened in Lyon using what had been a road tunnel. The London plan though is even more ambitious, going deep underground - we look at how well it could work in practice.

Designed by international architecture firm Gensler, the London Underline would use tunnels from Holborn to Aldwych (formerly Strand) stations, a branch of the Piccadilly Line closed in 1994, and from Charing Cross to Green Park, obsolete since the Jubilee Line Extension opened in 2000.

Gensler says the tunnels could be furnished with cultural and retail spaces, and would be self-sustaining, powered by a kinetic energy system called PaveGen which generates electricity from people’s footsteps.

Ian Mulcahey, managing director of Gensler’s London office, said: “Now that London has reached the highest level of population in its history we need to think creatively about how to maximize the potential of our infrastructure.

“The adaptation of surplus and underutilised tube and rail tunnels could provide a quick and simple addition to our infrastructure network.”

The following video gives an idea of how the tunnel might look, and also canvasses the views of a taxi driver, pedestrian, cyclist and tourists regarding the concept – with the cabbie giving the impression he’d be happy to see pedestrians and cyclists disappear underground for good.

It’s not just disused London Underground tunnels that could ultimately be incorporated into a subterranean infrastructure network, according to Gensler, which says:

Underneath the whole of London is an untapped surplus of disused space in subterranean infrastructure - tube tunnels, exchanges, stations, and reservoir chambers. We envisage, through the emergence of kinetic energy technology, London’s acceptance of alternative transport, and Londoners’ insatiable urban curiosity, that a dynamic new network of pedestrian and cycle links across all boroughs could be made by regenerating this existing infrastructure.

Coming in a week when Transport for London voted in favour of the most ambitious cycling infrastructure projects yet seen in the city, the two Cycle Superhighways that will cross the centre of the capital, how viable is Gensler’s idea?

Well, as far as cyclists are concerned, the planned East-West Cycle Superhighway will pass along the Embankment close to Charing Cross station and then heads westwards towards Green Park. Would people wanting to travel by bike between the two locations want or need to use a tunnel?

Staying on the same route, from a tourist perspective, a walk from Charing Cross to Green Park would take in some of the capital’s most iconic tourist sights including Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace, and the pavements on the Mall are among the widest and most pleasant in the city. Would they risk missing all that by walking through a tunnel instead?

Regarding the Holborn to Aldwych route, a distance of a little more than half a kilometre, it’s difficult to see the attraction to cyclists of adding the time and effort to get down to tunnel level and re-emerge at the other end for a journey that they can do in not much more than a couple of minutes.

From a pedestrian point of view, the surface route isn’t a prime tourist area so there aren’t problems of congestion, helped again by the pavements being wide, and is an office worker, say, walking from say Holborn to Waterloo Station to catch their train home in the evening going to add a few minutes by heading underground? Again, we doubt it.

There's also the consideration that both the Tube lines involved are among the deepest on the London Underground network. For safety reasons, it's difficult to imagine that access would be via escalator, which means lifts would have to be used instead - raising the question of how many cyclists and their bikes you could squeeze into a lift at a time, and likely to result in long delays at peak times.

That’s not to say there are no merits in doing something with those disused tunnels – we’re just not convinced that making their prime purpose a transport route is the most suitable use for them.

And it has to be acknowledged that often, conceptual designs of this type are intended to provoke debate, rather than presenting something that will necessarily see the light of day.

Now, if Gensler could find something big enough to turn into a facility similar to the Mega Cavern bike park in Louisville, Kentucky that we reported on last week (videos here), we’d be well up for that – for now, the closest we have is the House of Vans skate park, which opened last year in tunnels beneath Waterloo Station.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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32 comments

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a_P | 9 years ago
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MailRail isn't really a goer either as although the tunnels are in pretty good condition the majority of the sorting offices at ground level have been sold off and consequently access would be extremely difficult to arrange. The tunnels are small, but perfectly adequate to walk along, they'd have to be one way though...

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a_P | 9 years ago
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Apart from its putting the wrong group of people underground, its got a couple of other issues IMHO:
Whilst reusing disused Underground tunnels is a nice esquisse, once thought through it just doesn't stand up under scrutiny:
The turnout from Green Park to the new Jubilee Line Extension tunnels is some way beyond the station, so you'd need to build a new street level access building - the Jubilee Line is about 15m deep there (ish) - the land is pricey. Thinking about I think the split is somewhere between Green Park (the park itself) and Parliament Square.
The disused Jubilee Line tunnels don't go to Aldwych (the Fleet Line nearly did, but then they didn't extend that beyond CharingX) - you'll need to build new tunnels, it could be in SCL, but I'd suggest that there'd need to be at least 1 intermediate construction shaft between CharingX and Aldwych.
There's no step-free route from street to platforms at Aldwych, so you'd need to allow also for a new lift shaft from the foot of the existing (disused) lifts to the platforms.
The tunnels don't reach Holborn station (so the same thing as at Green Park...)
To do this you'd need a Transport Work Act Order, which takes about a year....
I reckon you're heading beyond £250-300m+ (excluding property costs) for this scheme.

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Jaynana | 9 years ago
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Great tourist attraction, walking route in the winter, helpful for short-haul cyclists

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mrfree | 9 years ago
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CO2=320 for a bike? Where does that come from? Last time I checked bikes didn't create any carbon dioxide. Did we include the taxi driver's breath (and farts) in this equation too?

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Jacobi | 9 years ago
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There are hundreds of disused railway lines throughout the UK that were closed by Beeching in the 1960s. They could be converted into cycle tracks that would form a nationwide network for Britain's cyclists.

They would get cyclists from town to town while keeping them safe by being off of main roads. However, would the government be prepared to put up the money?

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severs1966 replied to Jacobi | 9 years ago
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Jacobi wrote:

There are hundreds of disused railway lines throughout the UK [ ... ] They [ ... ] would form a nationwide network for Britain's cyclists.
They would get cyclists from town to town [ ... ]

The closed lines were primarily rural branch lines (except the Great Central, where this idea would be very effective), and would most definitely not form a national network.

That said, the ones that were not re-used to create bypasses, were not sold off (or illegally expanded into) and have not been re-used as tram routes do tend to make good cycle paths.

It would be great if lots of ACTIVE railway lines had a bike path put alongside them (fenced off from the trains, one assumes), taking advantage of the aforesaid national-network, town-to-town thing. They are flat, and don't have parked cars on them (or tipper trucks left-hooking you).

I remember riding along such paths in the Netherlands and Germany and since then, whenever I am on a train, I have spent hours staring at empty space alongside the rails on railways alignments around the country.

I vote that the first one should be alongside the trans-pennine rail route between the towns and cities of West Yorkshire, because I live there.

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HKCambridge replied to Jacobi | 9 years ago
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Jacobi wrote:

There are hundreds of disused railway lines throughout the UK that were closed by Beeching in the 1960s. They could be converted into cycle tracks that would form a nationwide network for Britain's cyclists.

They would get cyclists from town to town while keeping them safe by being off of main roads. However, would the government be prepared to put up the money?

You can see historic railway lines on this map: http://www.itoworld.com/map/26

You can also see that many have already been re-purposed, including for cycle paths.

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exilegareth replied to HKCambridge | 9 years ago
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Railway lines should be used as railway lines,it's really quite simple. Truth is, if road traffic was diverted onto rail, the roads would be safer for cyclists.

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Cyclist | 9 years ago
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Fresh air, wind in your hair at one with the elements... Oh.
More how can we get these darn weirdos on two wheels off our roads plan. Dicks.

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congokid | 9 years ago
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It's obvious neither the designers nor the outfit that doled out the prize have given the least amount of thought to the potential costs of such a hare-brained scheme (which is probably even dafter than the nutty Skycycle and Thames Deckway ideas).

The cost of refurbishing a single abandoned tube station would dwarf that of *all* of the current cycle superhighway projects that have just been given the go ahead by TfL, never mind the cost of installing elevators and creating infrastructure for cycling on.

It would be so expensive that they would have to charge users, and no one on a bike in their right mind would pay to have their journey so disrupted.

The designers also include the science fiction fantasy of 'kinetic paving at stations, which would use footfall to generate energy'.

At present it's a very inefficient technology (an average person might walk 150 million steps in a lifetime - in theory only enough to power the average family home for three weeks) which would also be so expensive that the outlay would never be recouped in several lifetimes. And ignores the fact that extremely inefficient fossil fuel-guzzling motoring continues unabated at surface level.

As well as side-stepping the primary needs of most people who want to cycle, the scheme ignores, as did the sorry Skycycle, the need to urgently address the externalities of motoring, including pollution, congestion, death and injury and environmental damage.

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Tjuice | 9 years ago
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If there were an underground tunnel that was set up for me to cycle at 20mph+ ... from near the start of my journey, to near where I want to get to ... with no traffic lights or large motor vehicle traffic (or any other obstructions*) to get in my way and slow me down ... then I would use it in a heartbeat.

* I tend NOT to find even pretty sizeable numbers of other cyclists an obstruction - there's generally a reasonable way past/through them (and perhaps there could be an expectation of travel on the left unless you need to overtake)

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kraut replied to Tjuice | 9 years ago
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If there were an underground tunnel that was set up for me to cycle at 20mph+ ... from near the start of my journey, to near where I want to get to ...
Grand idea. The only problem is that digging tunnels is expensive. Really expensive. So it'd be cheaper to hire a helicopter.

Opening up the tunnels as a tourist attraction is a great idea; looking at the map on the guardian page: no way is that going to make much of a contribution to safe cycling even in central London. Way to short, and just connecting a few destinations. Why not run some light rail through it instead?

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Scoob_84 | 9 years ago
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Thanks for the links Gizmo. It would seem to me that the tunnels are probably just that little too short to justify getting down the them from street level.

In principle, the idea of using these tunnels would be great, but the route they offer have to be worth the effort to get down into them.

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HKCambridge replied to Scoob_84 | 9 years ago
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Scoob_84 wrote:

Thanks for the links Gizmo. It would seem to me that the tunnels are probably just that little too short to justify getting down the them from street level.

In principle, the idea of using these tunnels would be great, but the route they offer have to be worth the effort to get down into them.

I'm not even sure about that. I quite like things like natural light, warm sun and cycling through communities. It's one of the great advantages of cycling that it makes you feel more a part of the areas you travel through than driving. Even a bit of weather is okay.

For all the talk of having shops down there, it also severs you from places you might want to stop off. One of the economic benefits of cycle lanes is that it increases business along the route, helping create a quieter, more human streetscape. All of that is lost by hiding cycling in tunnels, while cars are free to park up on pavements and release ground-level fumes.

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Scoob_84 | 9 years ago
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They need to show a map of eligible tunnels to see if this is a goer or not.

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jollygoodvelo replied to Scoob_84 | 9 years ago
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Scoob_84 wrote:

They need to show a map of eligible tunnels to see if this is a goer or not.

There's a diagram here. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/bike-paths-abandoned-tube-...

There are lots of abandoned stations, but not many abandoned Tube tunnels - when lines become disused they tend to get used for other things such as foot tunnels for new stations (e.g. at Bank), phone exchanges, etc.

If anything the old Mail Rail tunnels might be a good option for a cross-London route - http://www.mailrail.co.uk/ - but it's unclear what condition the tunnels are in for their full length.

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OldRidgeback replied to jollygoodvelo | 9 years ago
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Gizmo_ wrote:
Scoob_84 wrote:

They need to show a map of eligible tunnels to see if this is a goer or not.

There's a diagram here. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/bike-paths-abandoned-tube-...

There are lots of abandoned stations, but not many abandoned Tube tunnels - when lines become disused they tend to get used for other things such as foot tunnels for new stations (e.g. at Bank), phone exchanges, etc.

If anything the old Mail Rail tunnels might be a good option for a cross-London route - http://www.mailrail.co.uk/ - but it's unclear what condition the tunnels are in for their full length.

The old mail tunnels are very low. They'd probably be for recumbents only. They have been maintained and there has been talk of reopening them for tourist purposes. Quite what exotic vistas people would expect to see is beyond me. I've travelled many miles along rattly train tracks in underground mines and the view is rather limited.

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jacknorell | 9 years ago
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The design agency's PR agency has done a good job in getting this much coverage, well done!

This is a complete non-starter, it's faster to walk these stretches above ground with the bike, than it would be to take the elevator down to even start riding it...

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I love my bike | 9 years ago
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'The Village Idiot of Urban Innovation'

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2015/02/the-village-idiot-of-urban-innovati...

Or just Architecture/Design companies getting lots of free publicity for minimal effort?

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Simon_MacMichael | 9 years ago
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Interesting comment, Al_S, thanks.

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Al__S | 9 years ago
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I'll post the same thing I've been posting under every story covering this. Because the design agency are basically wrong. There are no suitable tunnels for this.

The Jubilee lines from Green Park to Charing Cross are often in use a turn-back when there's disruption east of Green Park. Even if they were disconnected, the available tunnels wouldn't, of course, actually reach Green park. You'd need brand new shafts down to reach the tunnels.

Aldwych to Holborn is maybe a little more promising, but that's only about 500m, and you're still going to want a separate access route to the one used by the tube at Holborn, so that's another massive shaft.

At Goodge Street and Stockwell you've got the deep level air raid shelters, which are 370m long. The entrances are not at the ends of them (on the standard designs, they're at approx. 1/4 and 3/4 plus an additional access from the station platforms), so you've not got 370m of usable tunnel- the distance between accesses is closer to 200m.

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bikebot replied to Al__S | 9 years ago
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Interesting remarks from Al__S. It sounds like what exists is no longer than the Exhibition Road tunnel, with just as little real application with regards to transport.

Anyway, we already know TfL is developing some long term plan for a massive underground orbital road.

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theloststarfighter | 9 years ago
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Sounds like a truly daft idea for all the comments given about access, distance & practicality.

They'd be better used as a place to put city planners who travel everywhere in the back of taxis with their noses buried in 50 shades of (tarmac) grey.

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timb27 | 9 years ago
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I think the best way to transport people underground is on a long tube shaped carriage, possibly on rails with defined stop points along the tunnel's length.

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Simon_MacMichael replied to timb27 | 9 years ago
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Spatulala wrote:

I think the best way to transport people underground is on a long tube shaped carriage, possibly on rails with defined stop points along the tunnel's length.

Plus bonus unscheduled stop points in between the defined ones  3

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bikebot | 9 years ago
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I used to walk through Greenwich foot tunnel every day, which I think is what they've used in that video to show how it would look.

God it was dull.

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HKCambridge | 9 years ago
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Look, we already have plenty of space for cycling on the surface. We just need to reallocate it.

I'm getting pretty sick of these vastly expensive 'innovative' ideas that pretend to be for cycling, which seem to be less about making cycling safe and convenient, and more about protecting every square metre of roadspace allocated to motor traffic.

This isn't an engineering problem, it's a political one.

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jollygoodvelo | 9 years ago
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It's a great idea - warm, dry, etc - but there simply aren't enough tunnels to make it worthwhile.

And they'd undoubtedly have a speed limit and be shared-space with pedestrians anyway (see the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.)

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Simon_MacMichael | 9 years ago
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Good point, Nuclear Coffee, the two lines are so far underground that riding down isn't an option, you'd need lifts - I'll add something in.

Putting traffic underground is not an option, I was reading an article the other day talking about the costs involved - the Limehouse Link tunnel by Canary Wharf (used on route of Tour de France last year) cost around £300 million in the early 1990s and is just 1.1 mile long; it's by far the most expensive stretch of road in the UK.

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rggfddne | 9 years ago
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Yeah, not sure that'll fly. How far beneath the surface are underground lines? That's a descent (that's got to be done whilst you eyes are adjusting), and and ascent. Whilst not solving the age-old problem of cycle paths that are too fragmented and don't go anywhere useful (although maybe they do go somewhere useful, idk).

Conceptually, and possibly predictably, I'd far rather motor traffic shoved underground. Shoving pedestrians underground into dark tunnels is stupid. The surface is for people to walk on - cycling can be there too, but only because you have to be a real idiot to seriously bother pedestrians.

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