London’s transport network buckled on Tuesday as the city sweltered through the hottest May day on record, with commuters packed into sauna-like Underground carriages and severe delays hitting the Central and Jubilee lines.
Outside, the mercury climbed as high as 35C in Kew Gardens. But the heat felt even worse underground, where commuters endured temperatures of up to 34.3C, recorded on trains and platforms across the city on Tuesday afternoon.
The worst reading came at Oxford Circus, where the Central Line platform reached 34.3C, according to temperatures recorded across the network. On the District and Circle lines, where air conditioning is available, trains still hit 28.7C, showing how quickly the heat spread through the system.
For many passengers, the disruption was less a summer inconvenience than a daily frustration made more intense by the record-breaking heat. Tom Brown, one commuter caught up in the conditions, said: “It’s like a sauna down here. Every year it gets worse, I can’t understand why they haven’t sorted it yet.”
The anger reflects a problem London has struggled with for years: much of the Underground was built long before modern cooling systems became standard, and every heat surge exposes the limits of the network. Tuesday’s temperatures turned that long-running weakness into a visible breakdown, with delays, crowded platforms and hot carriages combining into a miserable commute for thousands.
Nick Dent, speaking for Transport for London, said work was continuing to make the network “remain resilient in the face of more extreme and frequent hot weather events.” He said TfL was investing millions as part of its continuous work to improve the network, including new trains designed to meet growing customer numbers while making journeys more comfortable. Dent added that energy efficient solutions on new trains were meant to reduce the heat generated.
TfL says more than 190 Tube trains already have air conditioning, covering 40 per cent of the Underground network, while all London Overground and Elizabeth line trains are cooled. New trains on the Piccadilly line and the DLR are also expected to bring air-conditioned travel to more passengers, and TfL says it is looking at more innovative solutions to keep summer journeys cooler.
But Tuesday showed how incomplete that protection still is. Even with cooling on some lines, heat remained intense enough to push platform temperatures well into the high 20s and low 30s, leaving much of the network exposed just as the city faced its hottest May day on record. For commuters, the answer to whether the system could cope came fast: not yet, and not everywhere.
