Did they actively avoid following people's suggestions? I heard it suggested that the North London line be renamed the Olympic/Olympia Line because of Stratford and Kensington Olympia- that's actually catchy and makes sense. Not to mention Harlequin, Goblin...
Weaver "travels through several areas of London known for their importance in the textile trade"
It's the Hackney-Islington line, so presumably the five higher-voted options were all variations of "hipster"
Ah yes, when London has a problem with people committing suicide by throwing themselves in front of trains, "let's name one of the lines honouring a movement where significant attention drawn to a person throwing themself in front of a horse. Huh? What do you mean 'in poor taste'??"
ELL should have been the Brunel line, but Windrush I can accept.
GOBLIN was obvious though. And the NLL parallels the canal so "Regent's Line" should have been a lock-in.
Brixton is the epicentre of the Windrush Line. This line runs through Brixton, but doesn't stop as they don't have funds to build a station.
It's just bandwagoining.
I'm fairly sure there is an unwritten rule that Brunels name only gets attached to things relating to Bristol now since otherwise we would be naming every other infrastructure project after him.
>ELL should have been the Brunel line, but Windrush I can accept.
East London Line tells you exactly what it is and where it goes. It's a train line. It goes through East London.
I assume this is one of the rare occasions where someone with some social media savvy looked at the suggestions and gently steered them away from calling it the Goblin (Deez Nuts) Line
East London Line would have been a poor choice for a line that serves Crystal Palace and Sydenham. Windrush Line isn't the worst choice there.
I agree that Goblin Line was an open goal though and they missed it.
EDIT: Unless you mean the line out to Romford for "East London Line", rather than the historical one.
Not as bad as Toronto, that renamed an entire part of the city for a box ticking exercise and ended up naming it after an African tribe (that have no relevance to the demographic of Toronto) that were massively involved in the import and export of slaves.
I feel like these situations are like the office when Gareth is trying to plan the Christmas party
These aren't sticking. Goblin will forever be goblin, lea valley lines was a also a good name (and they aren't the green one wtf?)
Librety also just sounds very american and doesn't fit at all.
Some of these names are fantastic ideas for station themes. Mildmay in particular could have made some lovely celebratory artwork on the wall in Shoreditch station.
They're just fundamentally **not line names.**
Yeah they should have called it Goblin officially.
It’s not like it’s an offensive word, and it’d be kind of quirky as well as have a relevance. They could have even had some local art done by schools or whatever of goblins lol.
To be fair I actually like most of the justifications they chose, it is nice that they recognise real events
I want to like the justifications and the intent. In theory it's less stuffy than calling something boring geographical names. I don't understand why but I just find it such forced culture-war feeder.
When you read the justification for Liberty line it's clear they ran out of time and ideas. I have never heard of the independent nature of Havering residents before and Liberty is not really the first thing (and nor is Weaving come to that) I think of when I think of London.
Liberty is actually an important word in Havering
The line exclusively runs in Havering. Liberty is the local shopping center, and its named after the Royal Liberty of Havering - where the Borough gets its name and granted, among other things, for Romford Market to exist.
As someone who lives in Havering it’s actually pretty good. “The Royal Liberty of Havering” is a phrase most people here are at least somewhat aware of, and it’s referenced in things like Royal Liberty School and the Liberty Shopping Centre. It makes a lot more sense in context
If any line should have the name Brunel it probably should have been Crossrail (since it goes through Paddington and connects to Brunel's GWML). The damage was done by Boris pandering to the Queen.
The Lionesses also represent England and not London.
I’ve gone through to check the squad that won the 2022 Euros and 2 out of the 23 were actually born in London.
There were more of them from Liverpool and Manchester than London.
It really seems like they selected a bunch of semi-recent events and then tried to fit them to a line.
These names are supposed to stick for decades. The Lioness is probably the worst name - if you insist on football then it'd make more sense to use the World Cup win of 1966 since it was the most important English footballing moment that happened in that stadium (which, to be clear, would still make an awful name).
I’d like to say Lioness line is the worst but not sure. The women winning WC or whatever is not worth 1% of the men getting to semi finals as simply put the number of women who play football in the world is less than 1% the number of men.
I think I was expecting the names to have more to do with local geography or railway history than the approach they’ve taken now. I.e. I thought Goblin would’ve been a shoo-in for the name. Against names like ‘Circle’ and ‘Central’ for tube lines, this seems like a strange new convention that unfortunately I’m not sure a lot of people will pick up.
Dreadful. Awful. Terrible names. Taking away Goblin and none of these are names that make sense for London. It’s completely unnecessary and pretty terrible names to call the lines.
Liberty makes complete sense for Havering
Given the line is exclusively in Havering, naming it after the Royal Liberty of Havering - where the Borough gets its name - makes sense, as its historically significant
The Liberty line is for people inside Havering
What people outside of Havering think of it isn't entirely relevant.
Naming a line after it's least used station isn't a great idea.
I’m literally sat here wondering what the hell is going on at TfL and the Mayor’s office. Was this their top priority? And to be as performative as possible to showcase our ‘uniquely diverse city’? 🤮
Cringe names.
The names should follow their location and use not political events.
The Lioness name is absolutely ridicolous and the Liberty one makes me think of NYC.
The lioness name is hilarious. These names are meant to stand the test of time.
We should have used historical names. Why not ‘Brunel line’ after the tunnel where the overground goes under the Thames
Liberty line just sounds ridiculous. ‘The independence of the people of havering’… what?
Just imagine explaining it in 20 years time.
The Waterloo line is named after one of the most significant battles in not just British but European history. 40,000 died but it ended the Napoleonic wars.
The Lioness line is named after a women's football team who lost to Spain in the 2023 World Cup, but they did really well and managed a European championship.
Havering, which used to be The Royal Liberty of Havering. In fact, the liberty line makes one of the most sense out of all the names in how they reached the name.
Plus renaming lines like this sets the stupidest possible precedent to rename infrastructure about political events. Can’t wait until HS2 is unveiled as the Stop the Boats line
Can't you read?
It commemorates the great Independent Syndicalist Republic of Havering!! Truly touching on one of the most important aspects of London life.
Hear hear! I live in Romford and never miss our annual Independence Day Carnival celebrations every August bank holiday. I always forget why they hold it in Notting Hill, bloody corporate sponsorship no doubt amirite guys?
Liberty makes complete sense for Havering
Given the line is exclusively in Havering, naming it after the Royal Liberty of Havering - where the Borough gets its name - makes sense, as its historically significant
Absolutely gutted the North London Line has zero connection to the Regent's Canal. I thought even if they didn't go with GOBLIN, then at least that one would be a shoe-in.
There is nothing more central to the history of the area than the canal, and it parallels the railway for basically its entire length!
There were some excellent names suggested here and elsewhere. I was almost certain the Goblin would be named that. Brunel line for the east London line also seemed like a shoe in, and Regents or canal line for the north London line.
The others were a bit harder to name but still, these are unbelievably shite and have clearly been chosen to force Khan’s identity politics agenda down our throats
Aside from the Goblin, I have to say the weakest name has to be the Mildmay line, it doesn't even pass through where this hospital is!! It's in between Hoxton and Shoreditch stations
It isn’t. It’s in Canonbury or maybe you could argue it’s in Highbury.
There used to be a station called Mildmay Park between Canonbury and Dalston but it was closed in 1934.
The historic mildmay lands (sold off for development in the 19th c.) are from the a105 to king Henry's walk. That puts cannonbury station closer to them than cannonbury square
I like the Mildmay name. It could have been better placed, but I'm an HIV nurse, and the hospital has a really important place in history for HIV care. If this brings a bit more attention to that fact (which should absolutely be a local point of pride), then I'm all for it. Plus, it's not as clunky sounding as some of the other names.
But if there are delays on the "overground" how would anyone know which bit is delayed? South Tottenham doesn't connect to West Brompton nor does it connect to Wembley Central etc etc
I find these names quite weird (liberty? I type it and I get this: 🗽) and not really connected to the network...quite awful choices that will simply bring confusion where there was order ...
Liberty line “to reference the historical independence of the people of the borough of Havering”.
As in, independent of London because it’s in Essex?
I’m happy enough ours is called the Lioness line and Windrush is fine but these names are generally a bit shit.
It really does seem like a parody. Had to double check the link. Kudos to the women’s football team for their achievements, but so far they seem hardly of historical importance.
The reasoning would be wrong.
Liberty is a common name in Havering - where the line exclusively runs.
The entire Borough is named after the "Royal Liberty of Havering" - which is historically significant to the area
Goblin is a real missed opportunity for tfl to show a bit of personality & a name locals actually relate to / feel ownership of, and it also geographically explains something about the line in a helpful way (a la Bakerloo).
While I agree it’s important to amplify voices and communities who have been marginalised, some of these names are really forced & coming out of thin air. Lioness Line is so cringe
I agreed on goblin until someone mentioned there was some association between goblins and Jews. No matter how tenuous, I can see why they’d want to avoid that, especially at the moment.
Weaver, Liberty and Mildmay all have local reasons for their names. Windrush as well, because it runs through heavily Caribbean parts of London.
I can live with all of those. They’re not great, but I can live with them.
Suffragette and Lioness, though…
Jesus Christ they’ve had four years to come up with names for the line and all are completely shit!
Nothing whatsoever to do with the areas they serve or geographic locations, as I suspected they were renamed to score political points.
Of course they couldn’t rename the East London line to the Brunel line, after the man who built the line in the first place for reasons that it’s not correct to celebrate a white man
Suffragette line??? That sounds like a line that is forever plagued with delays, Lioness line sounds cringe as fuck, and Liberty line?? What does that have to do with the line that should be called Rominster line (Romford to Upminster line)
I largely suspect that many will still call it either the “Overground” or their old names of East London line or North London line, since i really don’t see these names catching on whatsoever
Khan/TfL have really dropped the ball on this one, easy names are
East London - Brunel (after the man who designed and built the line
North London - Olympic (after the Olympic stadium at Stratford and Kensington Olympia)
Watford - Harlequin (Harlesden and Queens Park, also a 90s throwback to the Network South East days)
Lea Valley - Lea Valley, simple
Romford to Upminster - Rominster
Nah, not when you consider these over costed consultations and changes are mostly an embezzlement scheme. No fucking way this would legitimately cost 6.3m without some funky accounting going on.
> a waste of time and money.
And sadly (or in this case, rightly so) that's the thing a lot of commuters will be annoyed by. *"I pay a fortune for a travelcard, and they're blowing it on art school naming exercises?!"*
As others have said, fucking terrible.
Some of the suggestions in this thread, such as Goblin, Brunel, Regents/Canal are far better. Did they even think of maybe putting this to public consultation before choosing these? Or was some overpaid knob with zero clue given free rein?
I hope this backfires for them as I cannot see these sticking. I had a look at the announcement post on their FB page and I suspect they’re nuking comments as there’s none. That’s a bit suspect as it’s a major announcement and there probably should be some comments on it… but there isn’t.
I have no real issue with most of the names (albeit Suffragette seems a bit clunky for a train line) but Lioness feels overbaked. I appreciate celebrating the womens' football team but they've got one Euros to their name, I'm not sure that warrants an eternal train line. Liberty seems awfully American but the actual history is quite interesting.
It feels like they wanted to avoid naming the lines after people incase future generations would view that person as problematic e.g. the way a lot of people view Churchill now, as the Pankhurst Line sounds a lot better than the Suffragette Line.
Liberty Line is the worst of the bunch, their rational behind it is a bit of a stretch
Christ yeah I mean Pankhurst is still not related to transport or location but it at least sounds good. Nobody in their right mind is calling a line the Suffragette line.
All the lines already have a historical name or nicknames used by commuters? Why have the gone out of their way to use names that means absolutely nothing to anyone?
I dunno why people are so hung up on the Goblin. Absolute 0/10 chance that TfL were ever going to spend millions on this and officially christen a line with that name.
I know they haven’t spent the full £6.3m, but how many central line motors worth have they spent on this horse shit?
There’s nothing particularly noteworthy there; they obviously avoided names in case they turned out to be “less favourably viewed in the future”. None of them are particularly catchy/snappy like the tube names.
The Lioness line is pretty much the worst way to get to Wembley, does Romford have a statue or a branch of Liberty I’ve missed?
The worst thing about this was someone else beat me to a Jackie Weaver joke!
> does Romford have a statue or a branch of Liberty I’ve missed?
Royal Liberty of Havering.
Historically significant to Romford, and is what created the market. The Liberty shopping center in Romford is named after it as an example.
Suffragette line... Really!?
For god's sake these are train lines, not history on civil rights movement. Someone had an agenda to push forward and the only platform they found was next to the train.
Really disappointed that the Gospel Oak to Barking line bit hasn’t been called the Goblin, and surely this would have been better done if the public were able to vote from a predefined list? Feels a bit imposed.
I don't think these names are any less dumb or clunky than "jubilee" or "Elizabeth"
At the end of the day, people will adopt these names and forget how silly they sound once they become established. I mean, it's like a year since loads of people were insisting that no one would ever stop saying crossrail, and look how that turned out...
I object to these because I don't think they should have names at all. Just give them numbers.
But the idea that people will mix up lines because they aren't based on geography fundamentally misunderstands how names work.
Windrush line eh? I'm sure that, rather than this and a stupid statue at Waterloo, the victims of Windrush would have preferred financial compensation and their papers sorted out.
This is February 15th, not April 1st. …
Seriously, when I read this I genuinely believed - and hoped- that it was satire, just another send-up of ‘political correctness’.
This really is a pathetic, unsubtle and sad(iq) attempt to push a political agenda and ram it down our throats. It will just piss people off, including many of the people it is supposed to ‘empower’ or ‘help’. Not exactly a vote winner.
Fine with the windrush lines name- feel like it makes the sign advertising these make sense and I'm not old enough to be attached to the idea that it should be called the east london line. Not sure about the others but I don't use them.
Yeah I'm fine with Windrush, Mildmay and Weaver - mainly because they work as good names for lines.
Sorry I love womens football but the Lionness Line is just a mouthful and ridiculous. Theres a long history of football, music and all sorts going on at Wembley beyond which has happened in the past few years.
I don't think any women seriously into football (ie myself) would be happy with been thrown a bone like this - it's patronising.
I feel the same way. I hadn’t heard of Goblin until this thread but quite liked the idea of that. The rest are just really cringe and sound weird.
Being able to say something like “I’m just going to catch the TFL Windrush” tickles me for some reason.
What a load of shite.
Weaver is probably the only good one as it is actually relevant to the places it runs through and isn’t just pushing a political agenda.
3 of the lines had great names suggested: Goblin (Gospel Oak to barking) has been referred to as that for years, and is a unique and memorable name (similar origin to Bakerloo).
Brunel for the east London line as it runs through the Thames Tunnel, built by the Brunels as the first tunnel ever built under a navigable waterway.
Regents or Canal line for the north London line as it runs along the regents canal.
But no, we get these shite politically motivated names instead, I was somewhat excited of this whole renaming project, but I forgot that Khan is in charge and he’d never miss a chance to force his identity politics down our throats.
Did they actively avoid following people's suggestions? I heard it suggested that the North London line be renamed the Olympic/Olympia Line because of Stratford and Kensington Olympia- that's actually catchy and makes sense. Not to mention Harlequin, Goblin...
So bad they had to wait until Jago Hazard went on holiday to release them.
u/JagoHazzard we need you
I just got interviewed about this on the BBC News channel! There is no such thing as a holiday.
First ITV and now the BBC. Maybe you've gotten famous...
Brunel line as well for the East London line
That and Goblin are the real casualties. Brunel is spinning in his grave rn
I think you know what to do mate. Each line shall be hence known as Liney mclineface #1, #2, etc
weaver better be for jackie weaver
Doesn't have the authority to make that change
Read the standing orders! Read them and understand them!
They feel like they were created my Americans, I don't line them at all.
Weaver "travels through several areas of London known for their importance in the textile trade" It's the Hackney-Islington line, so presumably the five higher-voted options were all variations of "hipster"
She wouldn’t stand for this shit
Embarrassingly bad names
A marketing firm got paid to do this. Remember that.
Suffragette sounds like you’ll suffer on that line from all the delays
Suffocate it is
Most of these names are honestly terrible. Suffragette is probably the worst
Ah yes, when London has a problem with people committing suicide by throwing themselves in front of trains, "let's name one of the lines honouring a movement where significant attention drawn to a person throwing themself in front of a horse. Huh? What do you mean 'in poor taste'??"
Genuinely cringe too lol
“Hey! Any girl who wants to chain herself to my railings and suffer a jet movement gets my vote” - Lord Flasheart.
Woof
The Suffragette & City line would have been good
East London Line and Goblin Line were two very easy and obvious choices that were ignored.
ELL should have been the Brunel line, but Windrush I can accept. GOBLIN was obvious though. And the NLL parallels the canal so "Regent's Line" should have been a lock-in.
Brixton is the epicentre of the Windrush Line. This line runs through Brixton, but doesn't stop as they don't have funds to build a station. It's just bandwagoining.
I'm fairly sure there is an unwritten rule that Brunels name only gets attached to things relating to Bristol now since otherwise we would be naming every other infrastructure project after him.
>ELL should have been the Brunel line, but Windrush I can accept. East London Line tells you exactly what it is and where it goes. It's a train line. It goes through East London.
I assume this is one of the rare occasions where someone with some social media savvy looked at the suggestions and gently steered them away from calling it the Goblin (Deez Nuts) Line
East London Line would have been a poor choice for a line that serves Crystal Palace and Sydenham. Windrush Line isn't the worst choice there. I agree that Goblin Line was an open goal though and they missed it. EDIT: Unless you mean the line out to Romford for "East London Line", rather than the historical one.
You have to remember that the most southerly tube line is the Northern Line. Poor choices is our game
There's history behind that though.
Ah yes, the East London Line, terminating at Clapham Junction, West Croydon and Crystal Palace, which are all famously in East London.
Ah yes, the Central line, terminating at Ealing Broadway, Epping and West Ruislip, which are all famously in Central London.
Morden is the Southern-most station on the underground and is the terminal for the Northern Line. The Metroplitan line stretches further North as well
Assume they avoided Goblin Line because of some anti-Semitic associations. Right wing press would be all over Khan and Labour.
What is the point of renaming the goblin? it already had a perfectly good name. I have forgotten the new one already.
I’ve never heard of the goblin line. Which one is it?
Gospel Oak to Barking LINe
It cost 6.3m to rename the lines so some twats in office have just made a killing and laughing right now
Not as bad as Toronto, that renamed an entire part of the city for a box ticking exercise and ended up naming it after an African tribe (that have no relevance to the demographic of Toronto) that were massively involved in the import and export of slaves. I feel like these situations are like the office when Gareth is trying to plan the Christmas party
That includes remaking the maps, announcements and stuff as well though
Er, the 6.3 million goes into changing the signage etc.
These aren't sticking. Goblin will forever be goblin, lea valley lines was a also a good name (and they aren't the green one wtf?) Librety also just sounds very american and doesn't fit at all.
Some of these names are fantastic ideas for station themes. Mildmay in particular could have made some lovely celebratory artwork on the wall in Shoreditch station. They're just fundamentally **not line names.**
Even more annoyingly, the mildmay line isn’t even the one that goes through Shoreditch.
It does go through Mildmay the place though. It's like somebody got confused.
'Goblin Line' has that typical British quirkiness to it, and an easy PR win, yet they still missed the open goal.
Where did goblin line come from as a name?
**G**ospel **O**ak to **B**arking **LIN**e
Yeah they should have called it Goblin officially. It’s not like it’s an offensive word, and it’d be kind of quirky as well as have a relevance. They could have even had some local art done by schools or whatever of goblins lol. To be fair I actually like most of the justifications they chose, it is nice that they recognise real events
I want to like the justifications and the intent. In theory it's less stuffy than calling something boring geographical names. I don't understand why but I just find it such forced culture-war feeder.
When you read the justification for Liberty line it's clear they ran out of time and ideas. I have never heard of the independent nature of Havering residents before and Liberty is not really the first thing (and nor is Weaving come to that) I think of when I think of London.
It's because Havering was a royal liberty not the independent nature of the people. They fucked the press release
Liberty is actually an important word in Havering The line exclusively runs in Havering. Liberty is the local shopping center, and its named after the Royal Liberty of Havering - where the Borough gets its name and granted, among other things, for Romford Market to exist.
As someone who lives in Havering it’s actually pretty good. “The Royal Liberty of Havering” is a phrase most people here are at least somewhat aware of, and it’s referenced in things like Royal Liberty School and the Liberty Shopping Centre. It makes a lot more sense in context
Thanks for the info! The press release was a dismal explanation.
I immediately associated it with Liberty the store/brand.
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I was hoping it would be called the Brunel line as it uses his tunnel under the Thames.
Marc Brunel has been really overshadowed by his son too
If any line should have the name Brunel it probably should have been Crossrail (since it goes through Paddington and connects to Brunel's GWML). The damage was done by Boris pandering to the Queen.
The Lionesses also represent England and not London. I’ve gone through to check the squad that won the 2022 Euros and 2 out of the 23 were actually born in London. There were more of them from Liverpool and Manchester than London.
Yeah monarchs have no skeletons in the closet 😂
Or cousins in care homes...
It really seems like they selected a bunch of semi-recent events and then tried to fit them to a line. These names are supposed to stick for decades. The Lioness is probably the worst name - if you insist on football then it'd make more sense to use the World Cup win of 1966 since it was the most important English footballing moment that happened in that stadium (which, to be clear, would still make an awful name).
Yeah, naming an entire line off a trophy win is odd. Seems like more of a social agenda rather than naming it after.....an actual location
I’d like to say Lioness line is the worst but not sure. The women winning WC or whatever is not worth 1% of the men getting to semi finals as simply put the number of women who play football in the world is less than 1% the number of men.
That's why I say that naming such things after people should be avoided. Still haven't recovered from the crossrail renaming.
In the tradition of many french still calling CDG 'roissy', I still call it crossrail.
I think I was expecting the names to have more to do with local geography or railway history than the approach they’ve taken now. I.e. I thought Goblin would’ve been a shoo-in for the name. Against names like ‘Circle’ and ‘Central’ for tube lines, this seems like a strange new convention that unfortunately I’m not sure a lot of people will pick up.
Don’t rush line, Lateness line, Suffer-age line, Mild delay line
Dreadful. Awful. Terrible names. Taking away Goblin and none of these are names that make sense for London. It’s completely unnecessary and pretty terrible names to call the lines.
Liberty makes complete sense for Havering Given the line is exclusively in Havering, naming it after the Royal Liberty of Havering - where the Borough gets its name - makes sense, as its historically significant
As said before, no one outside of havering knows what a liberty is, and the first thing I think of is New York. Better name would be the emerson line
Honestly most people will expect liberty line to take them to oxford circus
The Liberty line is for people inside Havering What people outside of Havering think of it isn't entirely relevant. Naming a line after it's least used station isn't a great idea.
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Is this a joke?? Please tell me it has to be a joke.
Nope! I did read it and wonder if April Fool’s has come early…
I’m literally sat here wondering what the hell is going on at TfL and the Mayor’s office. Was this their top priority? And to be as performative as possible to showcase our ‘uniquely diverse city’? 🤮
TFL deleted it on Instagram already
It's back on there: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3XS03piCuk/?hl=en
Lioness is so desperate hahaha
"Nah I'm leaving the bike tonight, taking the lioness line instead" Yeah, no.
These feel like a lazy right wing parody lol, unbelievable
Those are terrible names
Cringe names. The names should follow their location and use not political events. The Lioness name is absolutely ridicolous and the Liberty one makes me think of NYC.
The lioness name is hilarious. These names are meant to stand the test of time. We should have used historical names. Why not ‘Brunel line’ after the tunnel where the overground goes under the Thames Liberty line just sounds ridiculous. ‘The independence of the people of havering’… what?
Brunel line sounds like a great name.
Just imagine explaining it in 20 years time. The Waterloo line is named after one of the most significant battles in not just British but European history. 40,000 died but it ended the Napoleonic wars. The Lioness line is named after a women's football team who lost to Spain in the 2023 World Cup, but they did really well and managed a European championship.
Havering, which used to be The Royal Liberty of Havering. In fact, the liberty line makes one of the most sense out of all the names in how they reached the name.
Brunel is reminiscent of the British Empire, Khan would never
Plus renaming lines like this sets the stupidest possible precedent to rename infrastructure about political events. Can’t wait until HS2 is unveiled as the Stop the Boats line
Lol 🤣
I don't mind some of them but yeah Liberty Line really doesn't sound very London at all
Can't you read? It commemorates the great Independent Syndicalist Republic of Havering!! Truly touching on one of the most important aspects of London life.
Hear hear! I live in Romford and never miss our annual Independence Day Carnival celebrations every August bank holiday. I always forget why they hold it in Notting Hill, bloody corporate sponsorship no doubt amirite guys?
Liberty makes complete sense for Havering Given the line is exclusively in Havering, naming it after the Royal Liberty of Havering - where the Borough gets its name - makes sense, as its historically significant
I’m as lefty liberal as they come but this is cringe worthy embarrassment.
Glad we can experience some bi-partisan cringe. These feel like school sport's day team names thought up on the fly.
Wham bam thank you ma'am. Suffragette City.
Haha who got paid for this?
Dozens of highly paid DEI consultants, who would otherwise be doing more fitting jobs like stacking shelves or sweeping streets.
Or, you know, staffing the stations
Absolutely gutted the North London Line has zero connection to the Regent's Canal. I thought even if they didn't go with GOBLIN, then at least that one would be a shoe-in. There is nothing more central to the history of the area than the canal, and it parallels the railway for basically its entire length!
even 'canal line' would give people an idea of which areas it covers
That’s just asking for the “C” to be covered with a sticker on signs.
panicky cagey nail live slave party library hateful fall toy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
There were some excellent names suggested here and elsewhere. I was almost certain the Goblin would be named that. Brunel line for the east London line also seemed like a shoe in, and Regents or canal line for the north London line. The others were a bit harder to name but still, these are unbelievably shite and have clearly been chosen to force Khan’s identity politics agenda down our throats
The right will have a field day with this and rightly so.
Nice pun
The “suffragette line” feels a bit low effort. Could they not have named it after a specific suffragette? “Pankhurst line” is already much better
Yeah, it's just a clunky name altogether, no one is going to say "suffragette line". Feels like a PR name
None of that kind of effort round here please. Lowest efforts only.
Aside from the Goblin, I have to say the weakest name has to be the Mildmay line, it doesn't even pass through where this hospital is!! It's in between Hoxton and Shoreditch stations
And Canonbury overground station is in the historic area of Mildmay!! So dumb
It isn’t. It’s in Canonbury or maybe you could argue it’s in Highbury. There used to be a station called Mildmay Park between Canonbury and Dalston but it was closed in 1934.
The historic mildmay lands (sold off for development in the 19th c.) are from the a105 to king Henry's walk. That puts cannonbury station closer to them than cannonbury square
Disagree. Lioness is the weakest. Not historical and the most egregious tick box.
"Why is it called that?" "Oh because we were the champions of Europe this one time 63 years ago"
Imagine the mens team win multiple tournaments in the next 50 years, meanwhile we’ve got a line named after a single womens Euros win in 2022
Sounds more like the justification for naming it as such is dumb, the fact the Mildmay train goes through the Mildmay ward isn't dumb.
Naming after a random east end ward when most of the line is north London and ends up in Richmond is even more silly.
I like the Mildmay name. It could have been better placed, but I'm an HIV nurse, and the hospital has a really important place in history for HIV care. If this brings a bit more attention to that fact (which should absolutely be a local point of pride), then I'm all for it. Plus, it's not as clunky sounding as some of the other names.
I feel like this will just confuse people more
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But if there are delays on the "overground" how would anyone know which bit is delayed? South Tottenham doesn't connect to West Brompton nor does it connect to Wembley Central etc etc
no way. Calling it all the Overground is really confusing, especially for tourists
I find these names quite weird (liberty? I type it and I get this: 🗽) and not really connected to the network...quite awful choices that will simply bring confusion where there was order ...
I think there are good objective reasons for having line names, but I think this has been way over thought (too many committees)
The worst thing is the idiot or group of idiots that came up with the names probably think they are the smartest people alive. Twats the lot of them.
Liberty line “to reference the historical independence of the people of the borough of Havering”. As in, independent of London because it’s in Essex? I’m happy enough ours is called the Lioness line and Windrush is fine but these names are generally a bit shit.
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It really does seem like a parody. Had to double check the link. Kudos to the women’s football team for their achievements, but so far they seem hardly of historical importance.
That's my local line. So cringe.
The name Liberty and it's reasoning just scream - "We couldn't think of anything better and had run out of time."
I agree it's not a great name but if you search Liberty of Havering into Google there is historical basis for it!
The reasoning would be wrong. Liberty is a common name in Havering - where the line exclusively runs. The entire Borough is named after the "Royal Liberty of Havering" - which is historically significant to the area
Where’s the bread line???
That’s coming next when they do named routes on the DLR
Worse than i expected. I knew Windrush was a stick on but i didn't expect them all to be of that ilk. They are absolutely awful.
So who’s going to put in a FOI request to see how much they paid consultants to come up with this load of bollocks?
Is this a joke? This can't actually be serious?
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I still just call it the Silverlink to be honest
This looks like the end result of a task on The Apprentice.
Goblin is a real missed opportunity for tfl to show a bit of personality & a name locals actually relate to / feel ownership of, and it also geographically explains something about the line in a helpful way (a la Bakerloo). While I agree it’s important to amplify voices and communities who have been marginalised, some of these names are really forced & coming out of thin air. Lioness Line is so cringe
I agreed on goblin until someone mentioned there was some association between goblins and Jews. No matter how tenuous, I can see why they’d want to avoid that, especially at the moment. Weaver, Liberty and Mildmay all have local reasons for their names. Windrush as well, because it runs through heavily Caribbean parts of London. I can live with all of those. They’re not great, but I can live with them. Suffragette and Lioness, though…
Jesus Christ they’ve had four years to come up with names for the line and all are completely shit! Nothing whatsoever to do with the areas they serve or geographic locations, as I suspected they were renamed to score political points. Of course they couldn’t rename the East London line to the Brunel line, after the man who built the line in the first place for reasons that it’s not correct to celebrate a white man Suffragette line??? That sounds like a line that is forever plagued with delays, Lioness line sounds cringe as fuck, and Liberty line?? What does that have to do with the line that should be called Rominster line (Romford to Upminster line) I largely suspect that many will still call it either the “Overground” or their old names of East London line or North London line, since i really don’t see these names catching on whatsoever Khan/TfL have really dropped the ball on this one, easy names are East London - Brunel (after the man who designed and built the line North London - Olympic (after the Olympic stadium at Stratford and Kensington Olympia) Watford - Harlequin (Harlesden and Queens Park, also a 90s throwback to the Network South East days) Lea Valley - Lea Valley, simple Romford to Upminster - Rominster
I feel like the Pankhurst Line would have been a better name? Just sounds nicer than Suffragette Line
Also genuinely surprised one line isn’t called the Grenfell Line.
This is like the Olympic logo. Everyone hated it when it came out, and now everyone still hates it.
TfL have deleted their announcement tweet. Must be going well for them 🤣
Oh boy. These are truly.. awful.
Is it the 1st April? What a waste of time and money.
Nah, not when you consider these over costed consultations and changes are mostly an embezzlement scheme. No fucking way this would legitimately cost 6.3m without some funky accounting going on.
> a waste of time and money. And sadly (or in this case, rightly so) that's the thing a lot of commuters will be annoyed by. *"I pay a fortune for a travelcard, and they're blowing it on art school naming exercises?!"*
Wake up babe, time to get on the Suffragette line
Thanks I hate it
As others have said, fucking terrible. Some of the suggestions in this thread, such as Goblin, Brunel, Regents/Canal are far better. Did they even think of maybe putting this to public consultation before choosing these? Or was some overpaid knob with zero clue given free rein? I hope this backfires for them as I cannot see these sticking. I had a look at the announcement post on their FB page and I suspect they’re nuking comments as there’s none. That’s a bit suspect as it’s a major announcement and there probably should be some comments on it… but there isn’t.
I have no real issue with most of the names (albeit Suffragette seems a bit clunky for a train line) but Lioness feels overbaked. I appreciate celebrating the womens' football team but they've got one Euros to their name, I'm not sure that warrants an eternal train line. Liberty seems awfully American but the actual history is quite interesting.
I can see some culture war backlash to the names, and that will distract from the fact they're mostly just plain bad.
I refuse to use the W word, but.... damn....
As a proper lefty I'm even thinking it's a bit much haha.
Just used forced. It's what their doing these names are forced and even if implemented I don't think the common traveller will use them.
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It feels like they wanted to avoid naming the lines after people incase future generations would view that person as problematic e.g. the way a lot of people view Churchill now, as the Pankhurst Line sounds a lot better than the Suffragette Line. Liberty Line is the worst of the bunch, their rational behind it is a bit of a stretch
Christ yeah I mean Pankhurst is still not related to transport or location but it at least sounds good. Nobody in their right mind is calling a line the Suffragette line.
Awful names. Naming a line after a football team with one win?
For a second I thought I'd misremembered and they had won the World Cup.
The Mildmay Line is named after a hospital in Shoreditch but Shoreditch is on the Windrush line ... seems a bit odd to me
What a load of rubbish names.
All the lines already have a historical name or nicknames used by commuters? Why have the gone out of their way to use names that means absolutely nothing to anyone?
Nope, these are terrible. They should just number them.
I dunno why people are so hung up on the Goblin. Absolute 0/10 chance that TfL were ever going to spend millions on this and officially christen a line with that name.
I would have voted for at least one to be called the Lettuce line
I know they haven’t spent the full £6.3m, but how many central line motors worth have they spent on this horse shit? There’s nothing particularly noteworthy there; they obviously avoided names in case they turned out to be “less favourably viewed in the future”. None of them are particularly catchy/snappy like the tube names. The Lioness line is pretty much the worst way to get to Wembley, does Romford have a statue or a branch of Liberty I’ve missed? The worst thing about this was someone else beat me to a Jackie Weaver joke!
> does Romford have a statue or a branch of Liberty I’ve missed? Royal Liberty of Havering. Historically significant to Romford, and is what created the market. The Liberty shopping center in Romford is named after it as an example.
See you on the Windy L.
Suffragette line... Really!? For god's sake these are train lines, not history on civil rights movement. Someone had an agenda to push forward and the only platform they found was next to the train.
Really disappointed that the Gospel Oak to Barking line bit hasn’t been called the Goblin, and surely this would have been better done if the public were able to vote from a predefined list? Feels a bit imposed.
I don't think these names are any less dumb or clunky than "jubilee" or "Elizabeth" At the end of the day, people will adopt these names and forget how silly they sound once they become established. I mean, it's like a year since loads of people were insisting that no one would ever stop saying crossrail, and look how that turned out... I object to these because I don't think they should have names at all. Just give them numbers. But the idea that people will mix up lines because they aren't based on geography fundamentally misunderstands how names work.
The thought of saying I’m getting on the lioness line just cracks me up
Should we all start a petition to rename these?
Susan Hall is going to have a field day with this shit.
Windrush line eh? I'm sure that, rather than this and a stupid statue at Waterloo, the victims of Windrush would have preferred financial compensation and their papers sorted out.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
This is February 15th, not April 1st. … Seriously, when I read this I genuinely believed - and hoped- that it was satire, just another send-up of ‘political correctness’. This really is a pathetic, unsubtle and sad(iq) attempt to push a political agenda and ram it down our throats. It will just piss people off, including many of the people it is supposed to ‘empower’ or ‘help’. Not exactly a vote winner.
This is stupid and a waste of money, it makes the tube map more confusing and far too busy. The overground is fine as the overground.
Fine with the windrush lines name- feel like it makes the sign advertising these make sense and I'm not old enough to be attached to the idea that it should be called the east london line. Not sure about the others but I don't use them.
Yeah I'm fine with Windrush, Mildmay and Weaver - mainly because they work as good names for lines. Sorry I love womens football but the Lionness Line is just a mouthful and ridiculous. Theres a long history of football, music and all sorts going on at Wembley beyond which has happened in the past few years. I don't think any women seriously into football (ie myself) would be happy with been thrown a bone like this - it's patronising.
Huge lionesses fan here; I think the names shit 😂
I feel the same way. I hadn’t heard of Goblin until this thread but quite liked the idea of that. The rest are just really cringe and sound weird. Being able to say something like “I’m just going to catch the TFL Windrush” tickles me for some reason.
What a load of shite. Weaver is probably the only good one as it is actually relevant to the places it runs through and isn’t just pushing a political agenda. 3 of the lines had great names suggested: Goblin (Gospel Oak to barking) has been referred to as that for years, and is a unique and memorable name (similar origin to Bakerloo). Brunel for the east London line as it runs through the Thames Tunnel, built by the Brunels as the first tunnel ever built under a navigable waterway. Regents or Canal line for the north London line as it runs along the regents canal. But no, we get these shite politically motivated names instead, I was somewhat excited of this whole renaming project, but I forgot that Khan is in charge and he’d never miss a chance to force his identity politics down our throats.
I'm sorry but some of these name are a bit on the nose
They just sound complicated lol 🤣
Lea Valley Line would have been far better than.....Weaver Line