Thursday 09 July 2026 5:18 am
| Updated:
Wednesday 08 July 2026 12:28 pm
(Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
You could be riding in new, air conditioned trains on the Piccadilly Line and DLR but City Hall has botched their introduction. James Ford is getting hot under the collar...Do you find the tube to be oppressively hot in the summer and unbearable in a heatwave? Ever found yourself sweating on the Central Line? Or perspiring on the Piccadilly line? Are you usually melting at Morden? Ever wished you had a fan at Farringdon, a bottle of water at Bank or were shirtless at St Paul’s? Chances are you have replied yes to one or more of these questions, especially in the past few weeks. Currently just 40 per cent of the tube network have airconditioned trains (192 out of 620 trains in fact), and none of them are on the deeper lines which suffer the most from the heat. That means there is no aircon on the Central, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Piccadilly, Northern, Victoria, and Waterloo & City lines. The Central Line is officially the hottest, reaching 39.4℃ during the peak of the recent heatwave. The peak heatwave temperature recorded in the capital was 35.1℃ during the past few weeks, which means that it was hotter on the tube than above ground not just on the Central line but also on the Jubilee (37.2℃) and Bakerloo (36.4℃) lines. No wonder then that one passenger told the Evening Standard that riding the escalator at Bank station is akin to “descending into hell”.And, if you think that it is ok that the trains don’t have aircon because, surely, the stations have air-conditioning (right?), I have further bad news for you. The station cooling systems at Oxford Street and Green Park broke down in 2017 and haven’t been repaired.
