Editing Waterloo & City line (section)

==Extension proposals==
There have been proposals to extend the Waterloo & City line for over a century. After acquiring the Great Northern & City Railway (GN&C) in 1913 (the current [[Northern City Line]]), the Metropolitan Railway considered proposals to join the GN&C to the Waterloo & City or to the [[Circle line (London Underground)|Circle line]], but these never came to fruition. Any extension of the line north would be difficult because of the complex web of tube lines around Bank, and an extension south would be unlikely to provide demand that matched the cost. The narrow tunnels and short train lengths of the current route make any extension less cost-effective than larger projects such as [[Crossrail 2]], which cost more but start with modern tunnels and promise far greater benefits.

The London Plan Working Party Report of 1949 envisaged as its Route G the electrification of the [[London, Tilbury & Southend Railway]] (LTS), and its diversion away from Fenchurch Street to Bank and on through the Waterloo & City tunnels to Waterloo and its suburban lines.<ref>J. Glover, "London's Underground", 7th edition, Shepperton, Ian Allan, 1991, pp.61–62.</ref> The Waterloo & City tunnels would have had to be bored out to main line size to enable this, at prohibitive cost. In the event, only the electrification of the LTS took place, though the [[Docklands Light Railway]] tunnel from Minories to the Bank follows part of the envisaged route.

The revised Working Party Report of 1965 did not mention the Route G proposal, though it does conclude that "[t]he possibility of extending the Waterloo & City line northwards to Liverpool Street has been examined, but found to be physically impracticable."<ref>British Railways and London Transport Joint Working Party, ''A Railway Plan for London'', 4.32 p.31 [http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BRLT_RailwayPlanForLondon1965.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120131073554/http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/BRLT_RailwayPlanForLondon1965.pdf|date=31 January 2012}}</ref> 

Around 2009, the [[Green Party of England and Wales|Green Party]] revived the Metropolitan's plan of connecting the Northern City and Waterloo & City lines as a Crossrail route.<ref>"Green Party response to East Coast Main Line Route Utilisation Strategy Consultation". The Green Party. 2007–09. See ''Green Party Proposal'' under [[Northern City Line]].</ref>