The soaring temperatures on the London
Tube over the summer months have been a problem for some years now. A
London Underground team has attempted to come up with some
engineering solutions to the problem by creating a groundwater
cooling
system. The trial, which starts this
summer, aims to make it cooler for passengers on platforms and will
be tested at Victoria station which is so deep that it is effectively
under water and pumps out 35 litres (eight gallons) a second, to stop
it coming through the walls. The idea of the new system is to push
the water through a network of pipes into heat exchange units on the
platforms, which will suck in warm air and pump out cooler air. The
heat could be used to power homes and offices above and this way the
temperature will be brought down.
But this is only a trial to be tested
this year and it is far from being put into work as well as new
trains with air cooling systems that are promised for Circle,
District, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines.
Meanwhile the temperatures in the
deepest tunnels, reach 30C (86F) in summer.
These changes might affect the London
Tube in a drastic way. Some of the Tube lines might be closed
especially on the hot summer days. London Underground assures that
there are no plans to close any Tube Lines during the summer but in
the future years it might get to the point "where the
underground will become literally intolerable and you could face the
prospect of loss of life" as Mr Livingstone from LU advised.
About 1,000 London Tube passengers were
trapped for nearly two hours when three trains were held up in a
tunnel. The Central Line closed after signal failures stopped the
trains between Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate. The trains have been
evacuated and three people were treated for the effects of heat.
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