Our weekly “New Starts” roundup of new and newsworthy transportation projects worldwide.

Londoners Take to All-Night Tube Trains
Last weekend, London joined the small but gradually growing number of cities around the world that operate subway service around the clock — at least on the weekends.

Transport for London launched its Night Tube service on Aug. 19 with overnight trains on the Central and Victoria lines. The International Railway Journal reports that 50,000 Londoners rode the trains that are operating from 12:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays. London Mayor Sadiq Khan took the inaugural trip from Brixton station on the Victoria Line to mark the launch.

The new service is expected to shave anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour off travel times across London in the wee small hours. The service is expected to boost the London economy by £77 million ($101.2 million U.S.) annually and expand employment by 2,000 permanent jobs, 500 of them directly related to providing the Night Tube service.

Six trains per hour will operate in each direction on every Night Tube line. TfL has already announced that the service will be extended to the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines in the fall, with more being added as the London Underground modernization program advances.

Sound Transit Phase One “On Time and Under Budget”? Not So Fast, Reports Say
Back in March, I reported on Sound Transit’s (ST) opening of a new extension of Seattle’s first light metro line to the University of Washington, a project ST officials said came in ahead of schedule and under budget.

That claim needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt, according to recent reports.

An article on MyNorthwest.com states that ST’s claim is true only if one ignores the cost of building the entire first phase of the agency’s light-rail project, a task that won’t be completed until 2021. That’s when the final tunnel segment from the University of Washington station to the University District station will open, five years after the line reaches its south end at Angle Lake next month.

The Seattle Times’ analysis of the project concludes that the total price tag for the entire line from the University District to Angle Lake will come in at $4.95 billion, or $3.1 billion in 1995 dollars, a figure 86 percent above the initial cost estimate of $1.67 billion ST officials gave back in that year.

Some of the problems that contributed to the overruns included breaking the project down into smaller pieces, turning a 10-year project into a 25-year one, a tunnel that cost $1 billion more than expected, and rerouting one segment of the line.

Sound Transit’s new CEO, Peter Rogoff, told the Times that “no one at Sound Transit has denied the troubled history of the late 1990s and early 2000s,” but the agency’s track record on costs and timely completion remain a relevant subject with a vote looming on a third round of light metro extensions this fall.

Some comfort might be taken in the performance of ST’s second-phase projects to date, which are running at about 97 percent of the budgeted figure. ST critic John Niles, however, said that the $54 billion ST3 package to be voted on in November is “larded” so that the agency won’t be caught going over budget again.

Nigerians Ready to Ride Country’s First Monorail
The Premium Times news site in Nigeria reports that the country’s first monorail line is all ready to go — as soon as President Muhammadu Buhari figures out what the official inauguration date will be.

The new monorail, located in the seaport city of Calabar, will serve the resort district of Tinapa, with three stations serving Tinapa, the Tinapa Lakeside Hotel and the Calabar International Conference Centre.

The line’s one 12-car train has 10 passenger cars capable of carrying about 80 passengers total. When it enters service, it will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But even though Gov. Ben Ayade of Cross River State has said that the line is all ready for service, it will not officially begin running until an inauguration date is set by the presidency.

That hasn’t stopped curious Nigerians from showing up at stations asking to ride the train, though.

“Tourists troop here on daily basis to take a ride. But they were disappointed as they were turned back,” said the line’s electrical engineer. “We always give the excuse that although services are ready, they can only have their way when it is officially inaugurated. School children on excursions, families and other curious residents, who have not seen this kind of train before, have been coming to feed their eyes and seeking to take a ride.’’

Ayade said that Buhari would inaugurate the line to mark his first year in office.

Know of a project that should be featured in this column? Send a Tweet with links to @MarketStEl using the hashtag #newstarts.

Next City contributor Sandy Smith is the home and real estate editor at Philadelphia magazine. Over the years, his work has appeared in Hidden City Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other local and regional publications. His interest in cities stretches back to his youth in Kansas City, and his career in journalism and media relations extends back that far as well.

Follow Sandy .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)