London Calling…

As someone who has always lived in cities with a shitty infrastructure, I once listed the tube/ metro/ underground rail system of choice, as one of the greatest inventions of mankind. To an extent, this is true. There have been many times even in the few short weeks that I have been here, at which the ability to travel the city quickly and directly, with easy to follow routes, has been invaluable. However in just those few short weeks, I have learned that I will very soon despise the experience of the sprawling subterranean monster that is The London Underground.

What is wrong with the tube? Allow me to supply a list. Firstly, between the hours of 07.30 and 08.30, and 17.30 – 19.00, the tube is like an attempt to squeeze a Live Aid audience into the Point. The aim of the game is to get out as quickly as possible, while still arriving at your correct destination intact. A balance must be struck between the unpleasantness of squishing oneself onto a bursting at the seams train, and the inefficiency of standing on the platform, going nowhere, while others endure this unpleasantness.

Secondly it is blatantly unreliable. Because there are so many trains running so frequently, different bits of it break down with an amusing regularity. At least, it is mildly amusing for me, because now I know how to get a bus home. During the first week of my stay the lack of a tube would have been a disaster of phenomenal proportions. Several lines run slower than others, several lines are just plain crap. Until you have to use the damn thing every day this seems totally irrelevant.

Thirdly, though public transportation is a fine thing, and I wholeheartedly support anything that reduces the number of superfluous cars in this world, it encourages blatant ignorance of basic geography. For the first time in my life, I do not actually know where I live. If public transport went belly-up tomorrow, I would have to embark on a fantastic adventure in order to figure out how to get to work. And it would take me the best part of an hour, if not more with all the wrong turns I would undoubtedly make.

Then there is the sheer disgustingness of the tube itself, the dirt, the smell, the reprocessed air made of farts and BO, the stale taste and smell of the breeze pumped through the walkways, the knowledge that touching anything will mean you have to wash immediately you find a bathroom. And the fact that there is no phone reception. Yes, I realise it is underground, it would be perfectly possible. If my phone works on the Stockholm underground it can work here.

All these points however, seem fairly normal. Why am I so bitter about the hardships of using such a brilliant facility? Squishing into a train? Fine, they’re fast, lots of people want to use them, fair enough. Ignorance of my surroundings? A fair trade-off for such efficient public transport, and my own fault to boot. Unreliability? Just get up a little earlier so you can take the bus if necessary. Dirt and smelliness is normal for an underground railway used by millions But there is one crucial point about the tube that if altered, could negate the potency of all the drawbacks I have mentioned. It is the one thing I just cannot get over.

It costs a bloody fortune.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.