Most Underground lines normal after power failure

Normal service resumed on most lines on the London Underground network on Tuesday morning after a power failure caused major disruption.

The Elizabeth, Jubilee, Northern, Waterloo & City, Circle and Piccadilly lines are operating a good service, according to Transport for London (TfL).

However, Metropolitan line passengers faced delays due to the "late finish" of engineering works at Baker Street, while a passenger incident at Barking caused a part suspension on the District and Hammersmith & City lines.

TfL apologised and said the disruption seen on several lines on Monday was due to a short power cut in south-west London at about 14:30 BST, leading to knock-on problems across the network.

London TravelWatch, a group representing public transport users, said there had been a "disappointing" lack of information for passengers during the disruption, due to TfL's website crashing.

A spokesperson said: We accept that incidents like this can occur but do expect TfL to do much better when it comes to communicating with the millions of people who are reliant on their services.

"Directing all passengers to their website is not practical if the site then crashes."

The group added that passengers "need reassurance that public transport services will be more resilient in future to incidents such as this".

TfL has been approached for comment.

The power cut also caused a fire at an electrical substation in the Cunningham Place and Aberdeen Place area of Maida Vale, a London Fire Brigade (LFB) spokesperson said.

Firefighters brought the flames under control, but three metres of high voltage cabling were destroyed, LFB said.

The National Grid has apologised for the disruption caused by the power failure.

A spokesperson said: "The fault was resolved within seconds and did not interrupt supply from our network, but a consequent voltage dip may have briefly affected power supplies on the low-voltage distribution network in the area."

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