Why are there Underground zones 7-9?

But I'm not sure that the original question has been answered...

What's the point in LU paying for all that track & service when it's not serving 'greater London'?  If the Met wanted to be separate, wouldn't it have beneficial to all to be classed as main line and not waste London taxpayers' money on service that serves such low numbers outside of the GLA?

Yeah, but parts of the line are very much London.  Decisions of our fathers visited upon us, I would say.

But I'm not sure that the original question has been answered...

What's the point in LU paying for all that track & service when it's not serving 'greater London'?  If the Met wanted to be separate, wouldn't it have beneficial to all to be classed as main line and not waste London taxpayers' money on service that serves such low numbers outside of the GLA?

Relatively few people use the outer Met to get from (say) Chesham to Amersham. They tend to go into London, and thus the line is serving "Greater London" (a famously slippery concept).

To the extent that Zone 7-9 services require subsidy, they don't use London taxpayer's money; they use Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire taxpayer's money, and there are operational advantages in not having to turn around trains at Moor Park or Harrow On The Hill that would be (very) costly to give up. The line is electrified on LU's 4-rail system, so it would not make sense to break part it off and operate it separately.

Yeah, but parts of the line are very much London.  Decisions of our fathers visited upon us, I would say.

Met services run onto the northern half of the Circle as far as Aldgate and thus are an integral part of the Underground. The Met is part of the Underground. That's it. Period.

Well, that shot was taken when the stock was about 30 years old, and the unpainted aluminium cladding that was so trendy in 1961 didn't age well. Especially after graffiti has been applied and removed lots of times. Some NY Subway stock of that era has aged equally badly.

I think they've mostly been replaced now, but when I started riding the subway regularly in 1993, the D line and the 4,5,6 lines still had the aluminium cladding stock from the 70s almost exclusively and their condition was rather rough. Structurally, they were sound, but aesthetically quite ugly. Funny enough, the replacements have metal siding too, but the look is different. The metal seems darker maybe due to the anti-graphitti coating.

The Met always was a rule unto itself, and before the LPTB was set up they used to argue fiercely with other companies.

Back in the very early part of the 20th century when the Metropolitan was to be electrified I know that caused a big furore with the Metropolitan District Railway (what was to become the District line of LU later).   The District had already been taken over by the Yerkes group and was to be electrified by the standard LU 4-rail system while the Metropolitan favored adoption of a 3-phase A.C. system with two overhead lines.   Imagine the "fun" that would have created with trying to form the Circle line out of the two systems! 

Even when the Metropolitan was forced to adopt 4-rail D.C. apparently they managed to use different conductor rail and shoe tolerances at first, and Metropolitan trains couldn't run onto the District side of the Circle until their shoe gear had been modified.

Relatively few people use the outer Met to get from (say) Chesham to Amersham. They tend to go into London, and thus the line is serving "Greater London" (a famously slippery concept).

I guess the need to turn around trains and pop them into sidings is necessary and that facility is readily available at Amersham.  Perhaps that's the sole reason to extend Met services to there?  Everything beyond Moor Park is no longer part of Greater London, you exit Hillingdon Borough (the most westerly borough) around Moor Park station.  Interesting that Great Missenden to Aylesbury are not part of the Met Line yet use the same track in through Amersham on into London.  Commuters from these stations, I'm sure are 90%+ London Commuters or using them to travel into London (there are no stations beyond Aylesbury all tracks lead to London, whether via Amersham or High Wycombe.

To the extent that Zone 7-9 services require subsidy, they don't use London taxpayer's money; they use Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire taxpayer's money

I didn't realize that Herts and Bucks taxpayers pay for it.  You get the low fares along the Met Line out to Amersham, you'll pay less than a tenner for travelcard to London, however from High Wycombe or Maidenhead you'll pay about £15 and I reckon they are almost exactly the same distant to central London.   So the taxpayers must be footing quite a bill.

Until 1936, the "Met" went even further - taking passengers to Verney Junction. The line remained open for freight for about 20 more years. See http://underground-history.co.uk/verney.php and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verney_Junction_railway_station .

Here's the trackbed at the final level crossing into Verney Junction - the Met was in the foreground, and the track in the back is from the Oxford - Cambridge line which was 'mothballed' in 1967.



The question "why run trains all that way out as part of TfL" is an interesting one ... and why (in contrast) stop the Victoria line at Brixton rather than extending it?".   The answer (which I learned from a TfL Director is an intersting one - basically, lines were extended outwards into the 'burbs until there were enough stations along the line to give each of the trains through the centre a full load in the peak time. Stop the lines short of that point, and you have an expensive, underutilised line in the centre when you can build it out in relatively cheap land areas using that as leverage to bring more passengers and income on the bits that were expensive to build ... but run the lines out to far and you'll simply generate traffic you can't handle.

I can't help feeling that even this answer was somewhat simplified, but the point about "milking" the outer areas to fill the trains on the inner sections is a good one and not unique to the underground, but that's a whole other story.

The question "why run trains all that way out as part of TfL" is an interesting one ... and why (in contrast) stop the Victoria line at Brixton rather than extending it?".

I read in a recent article in Modern Railways that TfL would dearly like to extend the Victoria Line to Herne Hill and have a terminal loop there so that southbound arriving trains would simply go round the loop and return north, thus removing a lot of operating problems associated with the current arrangements at Brixton. However the money isn't there, at least at the moment.

I suppose they believed they'd get far too many passengers from suburbs beyond Brixton than they would those beyond Moor Park?  Possibly true, you'd probably get tons of passengers who probably don't have as much vehicular transport in South London areas leading down to Croydon than you would in what is probably quite affluent areas in Northwest Herts and South Bucks.  But then you could probably say the latter about areas beyond the end of the district line at Wimbledon.  Does seem rather simplistic but perhaps there is some truth in it.

Interesting that there was an Oxford - Cambridge line.  You could imagine the students taking the train to either place to shout insults at each other from learned textbooks.  I wouldn't be surprised if one day a year they had 1 way traffic on both lines so they could see which University was intellectually superior in building the best locomotive.

I always wondered why Chiltern Railways didn't have a link to Oxford via Bicester North or this part of the old Met Line but I guess they did in the 1800s.

Hmm, seems Chiltern Railways is floating the idea of connecting Oxford to Bicester North for 2012 Olympics with the potential to run on to Milton Keynes, very interesting:
http://www.rmtbristol.org.uk/2008/08/new_oxfordlondon_rail_link_is.html