The long-awaited “Victoria Line” – an underground railway between Victoria and Walthamstow – is at last to be built. The Government’s decision to accept the London Transport Executive’s proposal for its construction was announced yesterday.

The line, which was first mooted some 14 years ago, will run through Central London from Victoria by way of Green Park, Oxford Circus, Warren Street, and Euston to King’s Cross, and on to Seven Sisters, Tottenham, and Walthamstow. It will be the first piece of major tube construction in Central London since 1907.

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Among the line’s main advantages will be the provision of direct travel facilities between the main line stations of Euston, King’s Cross and Victoria, and of interchange facilities at 11 of its 12 stations.

Another possible effect of the new line is that Londoners may be faced with an increase in fares. This may turn out to be the only way the LTE can find of reconciling its conflicting obligations – of providing an efficient service and of paying its own way.

Loss predicted

Such a solution was aired by the London Travel Committee when it reported to the Minister on the proposed line in 1959. The committee estimated that the line would cost £55m (this has now risen to an estimated £56m in spite of a saving of £1.4m made by ending the line at Hoe Street, Walthamstow, instead of at Wood Street, Walthamstow, as the committee recommended). It also calculated an annual loss on the line of £2.5m to £3m made up of interest charges on capital, plus an operating loss of just over £200,000.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Construction of the Victoria Line circa 1968. Photograph: Stefan Tyszko/Getty Images

The committee suggested that this loss could be reduced by charging higher fares, either to users of the new line alone or to users of the underground system as a whole. It is likely that the new London Transport Board will find it easier to obtain permission for increased fares in order to pay its way than the present LTE. The Ministry of Transport’s statement yesterday was not revealing on this point. It said, simply:

“London Transport, who, under the Transport Act 1962, have a statutory duty to provide an adequate system of Passenger transport in the London area, have given an assurance to the Government that they will so conduct their Policies for the system, including the Victoria Line, as to maintain financial viability in accordance with the White Paper of April 1961, on the Financial and Economic Obligations of the Nationalised Industries.”

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Six years

The LTE, to whom the announcement appeared to have come as something of a surprise, was last night unable to elaborate on what this “assurance to the Government” might imply for passengers.

The line is expected to take six years in construction. Work on an experimental section of underground tunnel – a double tube a mile long between Finsbury Park and Netherton Road, Tottenham – was begun early in 1960, and, using new techniques of tunnelling, was completed in record time. It will be incorporated in the new Victoria Line.

On one length of 934ft. a pace of 3 1/2ft. per working hour was achieved. In fact it seems likely that the major time-consuming factor in the construction of the Victoria Line will not be the tunnelling but the building and conversion of stations. At Oxford Street for example, the new line will mean the reconstruction of the entire station.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A section of the new Victoria Line tunnel in 1965. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

The advantages of the Victoria Line foreseen by the London Travel Committee in 1959 would reach considerably beyond the immediate convenience of its passengers. It could, for example, draw as many as five million passengers annually away from Liverpool Street and the suburban services, relieve road and underground congestion (on the District Line between Victoria and Charing Cross traffic should fall by about one third), and make for faster travel in Central London.

No date has yet been fixed for work to start on the line, but Mr A. B. B. Valentine, chairman of London Transport said yesterday: “London Transport only needed the Government’s approval to go straight into action on building the Victoria Line.”