02.10.04
Tube tales
I’m as guilty as the next man of taking a pop at the London Underground. It struck me this evening, however, as I waited two minutes for the next train to arrive, that it’s the victim of its own success.
Two minutes is a trivial amount of time to wait for a train. It’s difficult to see how tube trains could arrive more frequently than this on a planned basis. Increasing the length of the trains, or making them double deckers, is hardly a viable option.
Travelling by tube is, for most journeys, measurably faster than any other means of transport. Granted, in central London, you do have to trudge underground to get on the tube, but that rather comes with the territory, I think.
Of course there are delays. The only rail systems I have encountered without delays are continental systems which either have simple toytown layouts (like the Swiss) or very, very slow trains (like the Italians).
I like to think that there is a time penalty attached to any type of journey. For Italian trains, for instance, you tend to pay the time penalty in advance of each journey, when you try to buy a ticket. In this misshapen country, where we don’t like to plan in advance, you pay the time penalty for several journeys all at once, at a randomly chosen point in a randomly chosen journey.
No, the tube’s not that bad. Could you do better?
–*–
Leaving the station today, the homeless bloke had a copy of a book called ‘Leeds United’ beside him. A cruel gift, a message of sympathy, or a badge of the fallen? (sorry Andy)
Pat said,
February 10, 2004 at 11:37 pm
Having visited Japan a number of times now I’m always struck by how reliable the trains (over and underground) are there. None of this ‘train arriving in 4 minutes if you’re very lucky’ malarkey. The time it will arrive is stated…and it does…to the second.
grumpy young woman said,
April 22, 2005 at 8:40 pm
there is such a thing as tube time… it works in several ways. one is that when a monitor says ‘Kennington, via Bank….1min’ the 1min showing on the display bears little relation to real time. But there is also the ‘tube time’ of expectation. The fact that waiting six minutes (six minutes!) for a tube in rush hour is untenable… so untenable in fact that it makes me leave the station, walk to a bus stop (just missed one) walk to another bus stop (more buses, quicker route) get a bus all the way and end up being half an hour late. of course I’ll never know how far away that six minute tube-train really was…