All-night services on London's Underground trains will be launched for the first time in August, the city's new mayor said Monday, despite union protests against the move.
The long-awaited 24-hour services will be launched on August 19 on two of the network’s 11 lines on Friday and Saturday nights before being rolled out more widely.
The London Underground, widely known as the Tube, dates back to 1863 and carries over one billion passengers every year.
"The Night Tube is absolutely vital to my plans to support and grow London's night-time economy – creating more jobs and opportunities for all Londoners," said Sadiq Khan, who was elected as London's mayor – the first Muslim to hold the position – this month.
“The constant delays under the previous mayor let Londoners down badly.”
Round-the-clock services were due to start last year but were delayed by disagreement between unions and transport authorities over pay and conditions for staff, prompting a wave of strikes.
Mick Cash, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said it still had “major concerns over the safe running of the Night Tube”.
He added that, while the union supported the introduction of all-night trains, the service “cannot be delivered on the cheap”.
The first all-night services will come on the Central and Victoria lines and will be extended to the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines later this year.
A 2014 study by economic consultancy Volterra Partners for London’s transport authority and London First, a business campaign group, estimated that 1,965 permanent jobs would be supported by the Night Tube.
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What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
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