How long should Londoners expect to wait?

From an ITAR-TASS wire report, Feb. 7, 2004

Moscow metro stations Paveletskaya and Avtozavodskaya reopened for normal traffic at 05:30 Moscow time (02:30 GMT) Saturday, slightly less than a day after a bomb had ripped through a busy train in the tunnel between them.

A duty officer of the Moscow Metropolitan System said there were no delays in the traffic schedules after the opening Saturday.

The Friday explosion in the second front coach of the train killed 39 people and wounded 134 others.

The power of the fuse, supposedly set off by a male suicide bomber, was equivalent of two kilograms of the TNT, and firefighters said later the ensuing fire on the train had the highest category of complexity.

The explosion cut off huge densely populated bedroom communities and transport centers in southeast Moscow from the city's metro system.

Until 22:00 Moscow time (19:00 GMT) Friday, only a half of the damaged line was open for passengers, who could take the trains from Novokuznetskaya station in downtown Moscow through to Rechnoi Vokzal in the northwest outskirts.

Traffic at the rest of the line was substituted for by buses.

Also, the Russian railways rushed in more suburban trains to take commuters between the Paveletsky and Kursky major railway stations and the densely populated districts of Biriulyovo, Tsaritsyno and Orekhovo.

The tunnel between Paveletskaya and Avtozavodskay metro stations was opened for traffic after 18:00 Moscow time Friday. (emphasis mine)

Obviously, Moscow and London have different subway systems of different ages and different technical specifications. In addition, there are still lingering questions about the quality of the investigations that took place in the immidiate wake of the Moscow Metro bombings.

Damage on the Tube is more widespread, but one may be surprised at the structural integrity of subway tunnels, which have to withstand a daily barrage of vibrations, pressure and groundwater. Of course, London offers its own counterexample in the 11-month closure of the Central Line following a derailment. That might be the worst-case scenario for recovery from today's attack.

UPDATE: The E train terminal at the World Trade Center in New York City did not open until February of 2002, a little less than six months after the bombing that shut it down. Cortland Street station on the N and R lines and South Ferry on the 1 and 9 reopened in September of 2002, a year after they were shut down.

From the Daily News, Sept. 16, 2002:

To get the trains running again, about 1,400 feet of damaged or destroyed tunnel had to be excavated and rebuilt - a process originally estimated to take as long as two years. 'Symbol of our strength' Gov. Pataki, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Peter Kalikow and other officials rode the train yesterday and took part in a ceremonial ribbon-cutting at South Ferry.

They praised construction workers and the Transit Authority's in-house technical staffers - who drew the designs for the rebuilding - for getting the approximately $100 million job done so quickly. Work went on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they said.