Lines
As of 2012, the length of the network 402 kilometres (250 mi). In 1971/72 it was remeasured in kilometres using Ongar as the zero point. The table below lists each line, the colour used to represent it on Tube maps, the date the line became operational and the first section opened (not necessarily under the current line name), the date the line gained its current name (in some cases originally with the word "Railway" rather than "line"), and the type of tunnel used in the central area.
| Name | Map colour | First operated |
First section opened * |
Name dates from |
Type | Length /km |
Length /miles |
Stations | Journeys per annum (000s) |
Average journeys per mile (000s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bakerloo | Brown | 1906 | 1906 | 1906 | Deep level | 23.2 | 14.5 | 25 | 104,000 | 6,617 |
| Central | Red | 1900 | 1856 | 1900 | Deep level | 74 | 46 | 49 | 199,000 | 3,990 |
| Circle | Yellow | 1884 | 1863 | 1949 | Subsurface | 22.5 | 14 | 27 | 74,000 | 4,892 |
| District | Green | 1868 | 1858 | 1868–1905 | Subsurface | 64 | 40 | 60 | 188,000 | 4,322 |
| Hammersmith & City | Pink | 1863 | 1858 | 1988 | Subsurface | 26.5 | 16.5 | 28 | 50,000 | 2,778 |
| Jubilee | Silver | 1979 | 1879 | 1979 | Deep level | 36.2 | 22.5 | 27 | 127,584 | 5,670 |
| Metropolitan | Corporate Magenta | 1863 | 1863 | 1863 | Subsurface | 66.7 | 41.5 | 34 | 58,000 | 1,294 |
| Northern | Black | 1890 | 1867 | 1937 | Deep level | 58 | 36 | 50 | 206,734 | 5,743 |
| Piccadilly | Dark Blue | 1906 | 1869 | 1906 | Deep level | 71 | 44.3 | 52 | 176,177 | 3,977 |
| Victoria | Light Blue | 1968 | 1968 | 1968 | Deep level | 21 | 13.25 | 16 | 183,000 | 12,175 |
| Waterloo & City | Teal | 1898 | 1898 | 1898 | Deep level | 2.5 | 1.5 | 2 | 9,616 | 6,410 |
| . | ||||||||||
Until 2007 there was a twelfth line, the East London line, but was transferred to the London Overground network in May 2010 following the opening of the extensions.
Read more about this topic: London Underground Infrastructure
Famous quotes containing the word lines:
“He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture.”
—Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)