Resignalling Tube 'like running a marathon during open-heart surgery'

Resignalling London Underground's (LUL) Jubilee and Northern lines has been described as "like running a marathon while someone is doing open-heart surgery on you", by Tube Lines chief executive Terry Morgan.

The boss of LUL's only remaining private sector infrastructure contractor used the analogy to describe the process of replacing the traditional colour-light signals with new equipment, while keeping the lines running.

The £600m project will allow trains to run faster and closer together, and increase peak capacity to 30 trains an hour.

Morgan told the Financial Times the Jubilee Line should switch over to the new system by the end of 2009, but that the older Northern Line would take much longer.