London’s creaking transport network jammed up just four days before the Olympics on Monday with severe disruption hitting the key rail links to the park where the Games will be staged.
Tailbacks also built up on several main roads into the capital, frustrating thousands of commuters and reviving worries about transport that have dogged the city’s build-up to the Olympics.
During the Monday morning rush hour, delays hit two lines on the Underground railway system — the Jubilee and Central lines — while a key overground rail link and the elevated Docklands light railway system also had problems.
All four lines go to Stratford, the station in east London where the Olympic Park is located and where hundreds of thousands of passengers will be disembarking over the coming days.
“I think the Tube might struggle a bit during the Games to be honest,” said Steve Claxton, 55, a passenger at Liverpool Street rail station in central London, a key hub for lines heading to the Olympic Park.
“I’ve just flown in from Bangkok and the network there seems a lot more efficient. They have a train called a Skytrain from the airport to the centre and there are no delays on it,” Claxton said.
The transport network is expecting 15 million journeys to be made on each of the busiest days of the Games compared with 12 million normally, according to Transport for London.
The Central Line was suspended for part of its length on Monday morning “due to a person under a train”, passenger announcements said.
It was later reopened before being suspended again in the evening due to track problems at St Paul’s.
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