London Overground to be split into separate lines

During the launch of his election manifesto, he said that "TfL's London Overground network has grown considerably over recent years, and to reflect this I'll launch a programme to name individual routes, giving each its own identity."

The Overground has become increasingly unwieldy as a single named monolith, and there have been occasional half-hearted calls for the line to be broken up into separate names.

That Transport for London (TfL) was working on the project was confirmed in a Freedom of Information request back in January, where they said that "work on this project is in the first stages of development which includes determining the budget required and potential timescales for delivery."

TfL's annual budget, which has just been released, has now reserved £4 million for "LO renaming", which is the project to rename the London Overground lines. The cost is for printing all the new maps and in-train diagrams, new station signs, and recording new automated voice messages for stations and trains. There will also likely be costs for consultation work to agree on what the new names will be.

A Transport for London spokesperson, said: "The Mayor's manifesto set out his intention to explore renaming routes on London Overground, to give each individual route its own name and make the network easier to navigate. Following the pandemic we are able to take this work forward and are currently assessing the options. Money has been set aside in the budget to take this work forward."

At the moment, the TfL style guide for referring to the various bits of the London Overground says:

• North London line is now 'Overground Richmond/Clapham Junction - Stratford'
• West London line is now 'Overground Willesden Junction - Clapham Junction'
• DC line/Watford Euston DC is now 'Overground Watford Junction - Euston'
• Gospel Oak to Barking is now 'Overground Gospel Oak - Barking'
• East London line is now 'Overground Dalston/Highbury & Islington - West Croydon/Crystal Palace/New Cross'

The style guide hasn't been updated to include the former Greater Anglia lines added in 2015.

Overground train at Battersea Park station

It's not that the lines will be physically broken up, more that the Overground will have a naming convention similar to the sub-surface lines on the London Underground, where the same trains can run on the Circle, District and H&C lines showing shared maps, but separate tube line names.

The decision to split the London Overground up does make a lot of sense though, as it has become a victim of its own success, having grown from a small bit of former Silverlink service into a huge part of the London transport network. Although it's unlikely that each renamed section would be differently coloured, as TfL would quickly run out of colours to use, the breaking up of the lines will make it much easier to know what part of the London Overground is affected by engineering works or disruptions.

No more will people using, for example, the East London line be told there's disruptions on the London Overground when the problem is over in Watford and doesn't affect them at all.

Breaking the line up into separate sections also makes it easier to add more lines in the future, say if TfL were to take over more national rail services. Adding, for a random example, a load of Southeastern lines onto the London Overground would have made it even more unwieldy than it currently is. But once the principle that mainline trains can operate as individual lines, bolting more lines on later is less of a headache.

However, renaming anything is always contentious, and you only have to look at the fuss when Marathon become Snickers, or Crossrail became the Elizabeth line to see how entrenched views can become about a brand name.

The splitting of the London Overground into separately named sections is going to be one of those common-sense decisions that will lead to an exceptional amount of heat and bad tempers as people squabble over the names to be chosen.

Most London Overground users will likely just shrug, and get on with the changes as interesting and maybe useful, but not that big an issue in the grand scheme of things.

But some people will HATE whatever is done, and will be exceptionally vocal in making sure as many people as possible know how utterly outraged they are that their personal choice wasn't used.

It's going to be the fight over the Sir Nigel Gresley duck statue all over again.

Breaking up the London Overground into separate lines is sensible, wise and long overdue.

But I feel so very sorry for the people who will do it.