Quieter times on the Victoria line

[towerman]

Seeing how intense the service on the Victoria Line is now had me thinking about the service when the Brixton extension opened.After the AM peak there was a train stabled in Brixton Sdgs and after the PM peak the first stabler in Walthamstow Sdgs was at around 18:30.The between the peaks service along with evening,Saturday & Sunday service consisted of a Walthamstow- Brixton service and a Seven Sisters-Victoria- Kings Cross-Brixton- Seven Sisters service.

[jimbo]

I recall trains being pretty quiet in those days, not many in each car.

[stapler]

This was before Walthamstow became the Shangri-La of all London yuppies and dinks.

[castlebar]

@ stapler

"Cause and effect"

Perhaps the Victoria Line is the reason house prices increased and thus the population changed
Quite common now for local children no longer to be able to afford to buy in the locality they grew up in. Not just a London problem.

[stapler]

Aug 15, 2022 9:28:09 GMT castlebar said:

Perhaps the Victoria Line is the reason house prices increased and thus the population changed

And perhaps not...E17 prices were reasonable long after 1968, Gentrification didn't set in, nor stratification of social housing, till the 90s..

[towerman]

Think the 2012 Olympics started the Gentrification of Waltham Forest & parts of Newham.When I got my first house in 87(3 bed off Forest. Road)it was £55,000,looked up similar properties in the area now £600,000!!!

[theblackferret]

As far as I remember,London & Greater London was hardly affected by the 1988-90 recession vide house prices.

Wasn't that also around the time that Tube passenger usage started to increase again? Including on the Victoria Line?

[towerman]

When they ran reduced services in the early 70s due to staff shortages the only line not affected was the Victoria,there was no problem staffing that line drivers had to have 25 years seniority and were on around £ 10 a week more than drivers on conventional lines which was a lot of money in those days.It was always a bone of contention with the rolling stock staff qualified to work on 67TS,they had to do a four week course & pass an exam with 80% plus,all for an extra 10/-(50p)a week.

[notverydeep]

Aug 15, 2022 20:29:18 GMT theblackferret said:

As far as I remember,London & Greater London was hardly affected by the 1988-90 recession vide house prices.

Wasn't that also around the time that Tube passenger usage started to increase again? Including on the Victoria Line?

According to this (rather random) commodities analyst website: London House Price graph 1971 to 2019, London prices did fall from an average of around £250,000 in 1989 to £150,000 in around 1994 before rising from 1996, a 43% drop which certainly left many low and middle income borrowers financially distressed. The losses had been regained by around 2000, when the average reached £250,000 once more and of course they have risen far beyond that level since.

London Underground traffic peaked in 1988 and then fell by around 11% by 1992 before growing again. Since 1992, LU demand has fallen from the previous year in 1996, 2001-02, 2005, 2009 and 2017 and 2019 (after which the pandemic effects are evident). The 12 months to last week, still impacted by the pandemic have seen demand roughly equivalent to the total for 1999.

Aside from service frequency, London's population has been a key driver of demand fell almost continuously from 1950 (the start of my data series) to 1988, when it reached a low of 6.729 million. It then resumed growth and grew to 8,674 million by 2015.

[capitalomnibus]

There are times you can still ride the Victoria line from Walthamstow to Finsbury Park and be the only person in the carriage, especially after the peaks.