London Undergrounds history dates back to 1863 when the world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway, opened between Paddington and Farringdon serving six intermediate stations. Since then the Underground network, affectionately nicknamed the Tube by generations of Londoners, has grown to 270 stations and 11 lines stretching deep into the Capital's suburbs, and beyond. The development of London into the preeminent world city during the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries would not have been possible without the mobility provided by the Underground. Much of the central London network was completed in the first 50 years, all through private development. In this period the first group of routes were built in shallow cut-and-cover tunnels along existing thoroughfares and needed plenty of vents to allow smoke and steam from the engines to escape. Around the turn of the twentieth century the development of electric traction allowed much deeper tunnels to penetrate the heart of the city, leading to a second wave of construction.
In the subsequent 50 years the focus turned to extending lines ever further into London's suburbs. Indeed, many suburbs were created by the coming of the Underground, and were even developed by the railway companies themselves, becoming known famously as Metroland. In 1933, the various private companies running different lines were nationalised and integrated into a single body, the London Passenger Transport Board. It wasnâ€Öâ€ÿt until 1968 that the first new line across central London for more than 60 years - the Victoria line - opened, followed in 1979 by the Jubilee line. In 1999 the Jubilee line was extended to London's Docklands, facilitating regeneration and the growth of the Canary Wharf business district. In 2003, London Underground became a wholly owned subsidiary of Transport for London. For the past decade we have been implementing a comprehensive Tube Improvement Plan. This has involved refurbishing hundreds of stations, upgrading lines to provide faster, more frequent and more reliable services, installing step free access at many locations, and entirely rebuilding some central London stations that have become too small to deal with the number of people passing through every day. The Tube Improvement Plan has many years still to run, but the extra capacity it is delivering is badly needed: in 2013/14 1.265 billion journeys were made, almost two and a half times the post war low of 0.498 billion journeys made in 1982.
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