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Roula Khalaf, publisher of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The London underground transport network was strongly disturbed on Monday afternoon after a “failure” of the power grid caused an energy cutting, emphasizing the vulnerability of the National Infrastructure of Britain.
Thousands of passengers in the capital were affected, as several train lines, including Jubilee and Waterloo & City, were delayed or suspended during rush hour on Monday afternoon.
The interruption occurs less than two months after a fire in a substation in Hayes, west of London, led to a closure of Heathrow Airport for a day, causing a scrutiny of the resilience of British transport centers.
Claire Mann, Operational Director of Transport for LondonHe said that several lines had lost power due to a “brief interruption of the power source on our network”. London and Elizabeth Line railway services were also interrupted.
The short electrical interruption caused the strong interruption because many of the TFL computer systems are dated and they are blocked if they do not close properly, said a person who knew this topic.
Signaling systems are also not designed to disable them, so they had to be tried before restarting the trains, they added.
National Grid, the FTSE 100 company that owns the high voltage electric transmission network in England and Wales, said on Monday afternoon that an unspecified fault on its network was resolved “in a few seconds.”
He added that the fault “did not interrupt the supply of our network, but a subsequent immersion of tension may have briefly affected the power sources in the low voltage distribution network in the area.”
Power Networks of the United Kingdom, which manages the distribution networks in London, said that it had restored the supply to customers, including “less than a minute” and had offered more help.
TFL was still reporting strong delays on the lines of Jubilee and Piccadilly, among others, on Monday evening.
National Grid said that the cable fault caused a “small fire contained”, which had been under the control of the Firefighters. “We apologize for the inconvenience and the continuous interruption of the trip,” he added.