Sadiq Khan’s renaming of the London Overground’s six lines has prompted fury after it was revealed it cost £6.3m.
Each line on the train network is being given a separate colour and new name in honour of significant groups from history. The line names will be the Liberty Line, Lioness Line, Mildmay Line, Suffragette Line, Weaver Line and Windrush Line.
The whopping cost will be paid for from the mayor’s Greater London Authority budget, after a freedom of information request from MailOnline also revealed Transport for London (TfL) paid a branding agency more than £115,000 to carry out research into which groups to name the lines after.
Khan hailed the new names as “brilliant”, adding that they would save passengers from “nightmare” journeys as a result of the Overground network’s current system under which all lines have the same name and colour making it difficult for newcomers to the city to tell them apart.
But Conservative critics have described it as “nonsense” and accused TfL of “wasting money left, right and centre”, with Khan himself admitting “not everybody is going to be happy”.
Khan’s Tory opponent in May’s mayoral election, Susan Hall told MailOnline: “Sadiq Khan is only interested in this virtue signalling nonsense. The only surprise from today’s announcement is that he hasn’t named one of them the Sadiq line.
“The Central line is in a terrible state, TfL is wasting money left, right and centre, crime on the Tube is soaring, and Sadiq Khan is ignoring all of this to focus on his own PR. I will listen to Londoners, fix the problems with TfL and get a grip of crime.”
Speaking to Sky News after the plans were unveiled today, Khan said the money for the rebranding was already set aside in the TfL budget, adding that customers had issues with the messy maps “every day”.
He said: “You’ll recognise from this great city of ours, we’ve got 12 Tube lines with distinct names, distinct colours.
“But these six particular lines are quite confusing – how do you get from Liverpool Street to White Hart Lane. How do you get from Croydon to Enfield? It’s the same colour line, 113 stations, and it’s a nightmare.
“So what we’ve done is, we’ve engaged with customers, with local communities, with industry experts, with historians, and announced today six brilliant new names for these six distinct lines that will make it much easier for commuters to get across our great city.”
He said the new plans would also help “those who are visually impaired to get themselves around our city”.
Paul Scully, Conservative MP for Sutton and Cheam in South London said the mayor should have looked at sponsorship for each line in order to boost the TfL budget.
He told MailOnline: “If he insists on renaming lines, he could have looked at sponsorship which would inject much-needed investment.
“But either way, at a time that we’re hearing about TfL’s delays to replacing old train stock, he’s just putting a new lick of paint over a creaking transport system rather than doing the job Londoners expect.”
