LUL recently presented your Trains, Health and Safety Council reps with a Change Assurance Plan,  which outlined proposals to progressively remove Tunnel Telephone wires from April 2017. The removal process would last 2 years with priority given to areas prone to breakages.

This is not the first time this proposal has been touted. We have consistently made clear that we believe the TT wires are an important piece of kit , which offer us a secondary means of traction current discharge should the need arise, without the need to request the actions of other staff.

In the Change Assurance Plan LUL acknowledge that the availability of two systems to discharge traction current is better than one, however they argue that the reliability of the Connect radio system makes TT wires obselete. Other justifications such as the levels of usage of the TT wires and incidents of breakages were offered for this change.

A further issue of concern for us was the insertion in the Change Assurance Plan that if the 99.9% reliable Connect radio was to fail then Train Operators could deploy an SCD onto live track.  We made it 100% clear that the RMT totally rejects the notion that LUL remove a perfectly good means of traction current discharge and replaces it with Train Operators laying SCD's on live track. We have told LUL that we want the laying of SCD's on live track removed from the Rule Book.

Whilst we feel that some of the justifications offered for the removal of the TT wires are valid the proposal to remove them is wrong. We feel that this proposal is primarily driven by monetary thinking rather than safety and as such we are still urging LUL to reconsider.

We have made a request for an urgent meeting with LUL to discuss this matter and are awaiting their response.