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Night Tube begins in London as police reassure passengers on safety

The British Transport Police has said around 100 officers will be on patrol.

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A spokeswoman for the force said it had been called to just four incidents on the first run of the Night Tube, which was “in line with what we would expect to see on a Friday night”.

Starting Friday night, the “Night Tube” will see two major lines run through until 5:30 a.m.at weekends, creating an nearly 24-hour service on Friday and Saturday night.

The service was meant to begin in September 2015, but strikes over pay delayed the start by almost another year.

Eventually, there will be five lines available for overnight service, the BBC reported.

London mayor Sadiq Khan claimed the move would help people, including theatre audiences, get home “quickly, safely and affordably”.

There are six trains per hour through central London between 12.30am and 5.30am.

British pub chain Greene King is hosting special late-night happy hours over the next few weeks to toast the new service.

He added that it would provide a boost to London’s economy.

Berlin’s U-bahn runs all hours at the weekend, Barcelona metro runs all night on Saturdays, New York’s subway runs 24 hours a day every day, and Stockholm’s metro runs all hours at the weekend.

One late night traveller tweeted: “Night tube experience – singing along to Copa Cabana on the iPod whilst drunk boys tried to pole dance”.

It will also go some way to catching up with train services in other major centres: the NY subway already runs throughout the night and the Paris metro operates late on weekends.

It said the problem was engineering: metro networks like NY operate four tracks on most routes, allowing fix and maintenance work to take place on two lines while running trains on the other two. With trains roughly every 10 minutes through the night, Transport for London (TfL) said nocturnal journeys would be 20 minutes quicker on average, with many passengers saving more than an hour. But even with the Night Tube up and running, just where is Sadiq hoping these clubbers will be going?

“What’s important is we got the detail and the planning right”. The London Underground, also known as the Tube which is the oldest of its kind in the world.

“I’m pleased and proud that we’re here”.

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“A night service is long overdue from London’s perspective and from an worldwide one”, said David Lutton of the business lobby group London First, which co-authored a report into the impact of the service. It’s for the night-time economy – people working in hospitality, shift workers, nurses.

A London Underground train arrives at Oxford Circus station in central London