Why can we not have aircon on the undergound system in london?

Question

Why can we not have aircon on the undergound system in london?

Answer 1

i can actually tell you why!

hehe

they dont have space for the air con machines in the deeper tunnels. Its true.

or because all the people on the tube are full of hot air and it would be pointless? i think my first anser is actually right

Answer 2

Who would pay for it?

The cost of both installing and running such a system would be high so they would either have to put up ticket prices or get the money elsewhere. Increase the council tax of anyone living in the London Area? I don't think either would go down well.

Answer 3

Due to the huge number of ventilation ducts, shafts and the tunnels themselves, the air is always changing in the underground system.  When you're standing on a platform and a train is approaching, you feel a stong wind - that's the air changing again.  This would make the underground system virtually impossible to air condition, as this would require sealed spaces where the air doesn't change.  Once the air is cooled by the conditioning system, it would be pushed out of the vent ducts, shafts and tunnels but the constant air changing going on.

If you could 'seal' the system somehow, the size of the air conditioning equipment would push costs way beyond the pocket of the average London commmuter.

Answer 4

Depends if you want to cool the actuall trains or the tunnels and platforms.

The air is always being moved around by the moving trains. This makes the airconditioning difficult. Millions of aircons would have to be installed. Some sort of sealing would have to be installed.Sliding doors at each entrance for example

The train's doors are constantly opening and closing, so unless the tunnels and platforms are cooled then there is no point. Also many aircon units would have to be installed on theindividual trains themselves.

It all comes down to how much london is willing to pay for the luxury and whether the commuter is willing to pay extra for the tickets.

The heat cant be that bad. I live in south africa where its always seriously hot. Its only hot in london a few weeks at a time.

Answer 5

Many reasons all of which boil down to a lack of national pride and toleration of rubbish

Answer 6

Cos then fares would go up even more than the £3 they are already ripping us off for a single tube journey in one zone

Answer 7

Interesting question, because if you look at the engineering problems of trying to put an AC unit onto a train or into an underground station, well, it can be intimidating. But there are new companies selling units that take air out of long holes that are drilled in the ground and use it to cool air in the summer and warm it in the winter. Simply put, a hundred feet down, it is alway 56 degrees, (8 c. for you Europeans, and South Americans, and Asians, and, well pretty much everyone but Americans) and so if it is hot outside, you blow air through a 12" pipe (0.31 m., ... never mind) for a few hundred feet and when that over heated air comes back into the underground station it is 60 degrees not 90 degrees. The odd thing is that in the winter when the air in the station is 33 degrees, the air blown through the system is about 50 degrees, which feels like a balmy spring morning... Or something...

Answer 8

because there's nowhere to vent the hot air to and limited space to install the equipment. the tunnels are very small, the trains only just fit in them.

they could probably do the sub-surface lines such as district/circle, but I read somewhere that the deep underground is a no no.

Answer 9

Given enough resources, air conditioning could be installed on the underground, but bear in mind that doing so would be an enormous undertaking. One of the major hurdles is carrying away the heat generated by air con units. They produce more heat than they extract, and that heat has to go somewhere. Tube tunnels are simply too confined to do this, so the heat would build up inside them. Although ventilation shafts exist in some places, there are not nearly enough of them. Even if these (and many other) problems can be overcome, the present lot of trains have no room for the necessary equipment.

The Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City, Circle and District lines will be receiving new trains in a few years, and these these will have air conditioning fitted, but it will only be switched on in open-air sections. The Victoria Line will get new trains from 2009, but these will not be air conditioned because the whole line is in tunnel, and it is already one of the worst for heat.

Most modern metros have been built with air con included from the start, with better ventilation, wider tunnels and plenty of room on the trains. For air con to be applied throughout the London Underground, we would need a huge increase in investment and the will to close down large parts of the network for months or years at a time. It would probably be easier to start from scratch.

Answer 10

The system is that rickety it is a wonder it's not watercooled - by the river Thames!