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Nine months after the project was officially confirmed, the London Overground is now in the process of getting renamed and recoloured. All across the network, TfL has unveiled new signage for the rebranded lines.
Naturally, the process of rebranding the lines wasn’t cheap. Not only did every line name have to be found through research and then tested, but every TfL map in London has to be replaced and entire lines need gradually changing from orange to yellow, blue, red, maroon, green and grey. You can see a map of all the Overground lines here and the new TfL tube and transport map.
Information about the cost of renaming the Overground is public knowledge – TfL is, after all, a local government body. Here’s what we know about how much was spent on the rebrand.
💡 What all the London’s Overground line names mean.
How much will the London Overground renaming cost?
Responding to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request in March, TfL revealed how much would be spent on the rebrand from conception to completion (which is expected sometime in 2025). It also broke down the budget for different parts of the rebrand.
According to the FOI, TfL budgeted £1,149,209 for ‘customer information and research’, which includes changing all tube maps, and a further £2,322,544 on ‘design, signage and wayfinding’.
TfL then budgets £748,111 for updating digital systems, £870,000 for ‘fleet signage and on train updates’ and £717,172 on ‘customer awareness building and community engagement’. In smaller budgets, £377,364 was intended for additional resources in project management and ‘customer, marketing and operational readiness’, while £115,600 went towards an ‘engagement programme’ with branding agency DNCO.
In total, TfL says that comes to £6.3 million – which is slightly up on initial cost estimations. Back in March 2023 TfL said it had set aside £4 million for the rebranding project.
Who is paying?
The budget is provided by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and it is coming out of TfL’s budget split over two financial years, 2023/24 and 2024/25.
The GLA, in turn, is funded largely through grants from the national government, though it also gets some money through council tax and other means.
Reactions so far
Back when the rebranded lines were announced in February, the reaction was pretty positive.
A YouGov poll in March showed that Londoners’ reactions overall were a bit mixed – and that those reactions varied for each line. The Liberty line was most popular, while the Lioness line was most divisive (meaning it had as many ‘liking’ it as ‘disliking’ it).
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