Engineers bring more Tube chaos

For the fourth time out of five, engineering work on the Tube has failed to finish on time - again delaying thousands of passengers.

This time the Bakerloo line suffered with half the route from Elephant & Castle to Paddington failing to open on schedule today.

The delay, caused by the Metronet consortium which has also been responsible for travel chaos earlier this week on the Central, Circle and District lines further infuriated Tube chiefs. They have blasted Metronet - which made ?54 million pre-tax profits - of "poor planning, management and execution" of night engineering work.

Metronet's catalogue of failure for this week is;

John Weight, Metronet executive chairman, has apologised for the Central line failure saying: "We are reviewing our management processes to ensure that those circumstances are not repeated."

Metronet and Tube Lines have been pressing LU for permission to close lines for weeks at a time - but Tube chiefs have refused saying it would cause too much disruption.

However, Bob Kiley, London's transport commissioner, has now suggested line closures for weeks or months at a time "in one fell swoop" to get engineering work done more quickly.