District line riders have logged over 130 hours of delays, campaigners say

Passengers on the District line have logged more than 130 hours lost to delays and poor service, according to the Fix the District campaign.

The campaign set up a website in February where commuters can record bad journeys on the line. Most of the complaints come from people who travel between Wimbledon and East Putney. They say trains are too infrequent and signalling faults at stations happen so often that they have become a daily frustration. Some say the service is so unreliable that people have changed jobs to avoid using the line.

Southfields commuters and the Wimbledon branch

The campaign is led by Max Barber, who lives in Southfields. The station is on the south-western branch, which runs from Wimbledon towards central London. “People have said they won’t move to Southfields because of the District Line,” he said. He added that he knows one person who switched jobs because of the unreliable service.

Barber now often takes a Lime bike to Earlsfield and catches a National Rail train to Waterloo from there. He says that route is more dependable.

Commuters also complain about the departure boards along the line, which they say often show the wrong information. Barber said friends who visit are told to check what is shown on the train itself rather than trust the board.

What TfL says about District line signalling

TfL said roughly £500,000 had gone into upgrading signalling equipment. Richard Jones, London Underground’s director of asset performance delivery, said the spending had “made a positive difference”. He accepted that passengers in the area had had problems with the service in the past. London Underground would keep working with Network Rail to make it as good as it could, he said.