New Xmas Tube "tradition"

Looks like last year's Camden Road graffiti on the London Underground's only shut down on Christmas Day has sparked off some copy cat "artists" this year.


Caledonian Road (above), Old Street, Arsenal, Holloway Road (below) and Angel (& here) all got their dose of graffiti as the taggers sent pretty deliberate messages to the British Transport Police & the Tube, taking advantage of the day's closure.





As ewpb who took some of the pictures said: "They must have packed turkey sandwiches and spent all of Christmas Day doing it."

Last year the clean up operation was very speedy and didn't take the "several weeks" initially predicted. However, with more stations targeted this year you may still see the remains up on your travels.

Happy Christmas Eve

Eerily quiet on the Tube today with most sensible people taking today as a holiday. Covent Garden station was virtually empty at 9.30 making it look like the set for 28 Days Later or some other apocalyptic end of the world film with Will Smith in it.


So instead of showing the ghostly platform (it was too miserable to be reminded that I'm working today) here's a reminder of the free travel for all you New Year's Eve Tube Revellers. Rather than the responsible drinking or irresponsible boozing sponsors of years gone by, Nat West again have the honour of giving us free travel from 23:45 on New Year's Eve to 04:30 on New Year's Day.

Happy Xmas to the Tube on Christmas Day - the one day in the year when there's no trains running (the last time they ran on Xmas Day was in 1979) and the time's ripe for the graffiti artists to have fun again.


And on that note, Merry Xmas to you all and here's to a peaceful 2008!

Tube refund taken to extremes

This year I've probably got around thirty quid back from making claims against the Tube under the Customer Charter Refund. A few of my colleagues are surprised I've got this much back, as they can never remember to fill in the form. I forget a lot of the time but one guy has not only been remembering but made 7,105 claims. However, this wasn't just a normal year on the Northern Line. He was running a scam which London Underground took some time to check.

Civil servant, Trushar Patel got his family to fill in thousands of the forms and managed to claim back £22,000. He's now been jailed for 18 months and some family members received shorter sentences. The prosecutor said the scheme's execution was a "shambles of Monty Pythonesque proportions" and Tube staff failed to check if there were delays.

The family claimed refunds averaging eight delays a day on the Jubilee Line. But it appears that no checks were carried out on the services claimed and some forms were incomplete.

Judge Peter Fingret said the case showed "a high level of incompetence on the part of Transport for London and London Underground ".

"I can only comment and hope that these sentences may deter other people from obtaining cash benefits out of public funds illegally," he said.

Many times I've wondered if London Underground actually check the delays and from this it appears they don't... or rather didn't.

However I'm surprised that the family were able to launder the money (according to the BBC £4,000 was laundered) as you only get paper vouchers for more travel. Although I have seen some vouchers for sale on e-bay, so perhaps this was the deal.

Tube bans blokey breast feeding

There's a joke here somewhere about breast feeding and Nanny state. An ad for bookmaker Paddy Power featuring a man looking as though he's about to breast feed a baby, has been banned from appearing on the London Underground:


A spokesperson for the company said that the poster, which uses the strapline "Where have all the women gone?", was banned on the grounds that it had the "potential to offend public decency".

Obviously Paddy Power's official stance on this is personal affront and they said to the press "We are completely astonished by the reaction of the London Underground to our advert. Fun is central to the Paddy Power brand and we strive to communicate this in all of our advertising."

However, they're well known for controversial ads and having a quick look at their blog (yes Paddy Power have a blog) they're less astonished and more aware of the extra publicity they'll get from the ban:

"The Man Boob ad seems to be causing particular offense with several companies, including Dublin Bus and the London Underground, refusing to run it in its uncensored hairy nippled glory.

"Of course all this fuss helps the ad to do exactly what it was intended to do by drawing attention to PP Bingo, so it's doing its job admirably.

"Is it all that offensive though? We show a bit of man boob and people begin to squirm in their seats. Unlike some previous ad campaigns which were run with the full awareness that they would cause controversy and debate, this new series was seen as being a bit cheeky but well within the modern scope of what is politically correct. Or so we thought."

Personally, I think they're right. The ad stopped me in my tracks for a few seconds when I originally saw it in Metro or londonpaper. It's got minor shock value. But I completely forgot about it and didn't have a compulsion to rush out and play bingo or call the decency watchdogs.

How it could offend public decency is beyond me. But then again quite a lot could "potentially" offend public decency, especially as far as the Tube is concerned.

Santas on the Tube

More Santae having fun on the Tube in the annual London Santacon on Saturday. Where hoards of Santae zoom around central London and give parents nightmares trying to explain how "there's really only one true Santa Claus and the people taking pictures of each other on escalators and cramming themselves into phone boxes, are only pretend Santas"







Not quite sure what the bondaged Santa on the Tube was up too in that last picture, but he or she seems too tired or bashful to face the camera.

Many more London Santae on the Flickr stream for the event.

Madness Tube Map

Clare who's a Madness fan told me that the "nutty boys" had used a graphic for their current Transport From London tour. I'd been sent a version of it before and initially thought "yeah it's alright, seen better though". However my virtual ears pricked up when she wrote the following: "after their Belfast concert this weekend I got a goody bag which had a fly-poster with a mischievously altered map inside, it looks great and harks back to their use of the roundel back in the day."

Mmm, a mischievous map from the Nutty Boys? Clare kindly got the poster photographed and sent to me and it rocks!


It's not been totally altered which works well, as you look out for slightly altered stations like "Wemberley", "Yellow City" & "Green City" where White City should be, "Busker" and "Sax Solo" around Baker Street, "German Mansion" near Swiss Cottage, "Gettingonour Wick" next to Hackney Wick, "Abba" replacing Waterloo and I sure you'll spot loads of others.


They've obviously had permission from Transport for London to do this, and they've done a great job. Wonder if Madness would sell them after their tour - or if we'll see a few on ebay?

Thanks again to Clare for the heads up and sending the picture.

Bombed Tube trains to go back in service

A Hammersmith & City Line Tube train wrecked in the 7/7 London bombings is being rebuilt in Budapest, apparently because there are no facilities to carry out the work in Britain.


Six people died in the bombing when the train passed a tunnel close to Edgware Road station on July 7th 2005. It was one of four attacks on Tube trains and a bus that killed 52.

The repairs will cost about £9 million and the train is due to go back into service in May 2008. One of the survivors of the attack is upset about this decision and told Heart FM she would never get back on those trains.

A London Underground spokesperson said: "None of the Tube carriages in which the bombs exploded will be used again in passenger service. They have been scrapped and disposed of securely. Other carriages and parts will be brought back into use."

An industry source added: "They will be virtually new carriages. In an ideal world this train would also have been scrapped but they don't make them like this any more and we desperately need the stock back. We cancel on average six trains a day on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines and need every train possible."

The Evening Standard has the full story on this.

Tube PR sacked over Mind-The-Gap-gate

The Mind the Gap announcer "sacking" saga continues, as the head of news at Transport for London has reportedly been sacked following his response to the Evening Standard. Most of you know the story, Emma Clarke, the former voice of the London Underground "Mind the Gap" announcements, was relieved of her post after the Tube didn't see the funny side of spoof announcements and supposed critcism of the system.


Dan Hodges told the Evening Standard that Emma could be "experiencing severe delays" in getting more work out of TfL. It appears that this wasn't the best way to announce the news about Emma and now he's been put on "gardening leave".

Emma Clarke herself feels sorry for him and said to Metro "Ye Gods, that's awful. I think he misjudged it. I was quite surprised that in their statement they had chosen to draw attention to arguably a negative to their service. Poor Dan."

Personally I wouldn't feel too sorry for him as it appears that he's now in line for a nice pay off, even though he'd only been in the role for a few months and is on a six figure salary.

Naked Train Drivers Calendar

Perfect Christmas gift for any train fans:


Forget the Women's Institute, 13 train drivers (12 men and a woman) from First Capital Connect's Bedford depot decided to strip off for a calendar to raise money for children at the Ahotokurom Centre in Ghana and the Railway Children’s platform appeal.


Elaine Holt, Managing Director, said: "Let me tell you the final product makes for very interesting viewing. No month is quite the same! We are very proud of these drivers who have bared all. I hope that people will dig deep into their pockets for these two fantastic causes. I'm sure that people will have a giggle or two when they turn over the pages each month, all the time remembering just how brave they all were to bare all at our train depots."

Just as long as they don't drive the trains naked and then take pictures of themselves otherwise they might be in trouble. Perhaps the drivers here should have said they were posing for a calendar shoot and they might have got away with it.

To buy Drivers in The Buff - visit First Capital Connect's site and remember there's a discount for bulk orders.

Alternatively you can order the calendar from any First Capital Connect stations. Must be fun at the ticket office at the moment with choruses of "I'll have a return to Luton Airport and some naked blokes please."

Lego Tube Map

Some people's devotion to Lego never ceases to amaze me:




It's a laudable London Underground map made from lego by Duncan Titchmarsh. Yeah he seems to have a few problems spelling or perhaps he's run out of Dynamo. But otherwise it rocks!

If only he could make a mini version to go with The Schla La La's breakdancing animated Lego Tube Lego commuters:

Tube Ambience ruined by freesheets

Apparently London Underground commuters leave behind nine and half tonnes of free newspapers behind every day and that's just on the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee lines.


Yesterday, maintenance contractor Tube Lines blamed the growth of freesheets as one of the reasons for narrowly missing its "ambience target". Ambience measures things like the cleanliness of carriages, levels of customer information and how secure passengers feel during journeys.

"There has been a huge increase in the numbers of free newspapers being left on trains; typically 9.5 tonnes are picked off trains each day now, compared with three tonnes in the past," a spokesperson at Tube Lines said.


Even though there are a number of cleaners who sweep up the morning Metros and then clear out the evening londonpapers and London Lites, it's putting a strain on resources. Tube Lines has hired an extra 23 cleaners to put the papers into recycling bags at the end of each journey.

"There is very little that we can do other than ask London Underground to encourage people to take their papers with them," the Tube Lines spokeswoman said.

I must admit that I often add to the freesheet "mountain" in the mornings as I think it's a public service to leave behind papers for people. About 50% of the time I leave my Metro on the little ledge behind the seats, but for the other half I take it into work with me and throw it away there.

In the evenings I can't say I always take freesheets home with me, although I feel there's less of a public service leaving them behind, mainly because it's hard not to get on a Tube in zone one without getting past the over zealous distributors. One woman used to give me several copies, such was her enthusiasm to get rid of the papers and I always gave them back saying "one's enough thanks".

A spokeswoman for Associated Newspapers said: "London Lite is committed to acting in an environmentally responsible manner and seeks to actively encourage readers to recycle their copy once it has been read. London Lite is working closely with Westminster council and transport partners to try to address concerns regarding litter." It'll be interesting to see how they do this as they messages in the papers themselves clearly aren't doing enough. Perhaps we can have some more "Big Brother" style public announcements by LU reminding us to take our papers off the trains with us along with all of our personal belongings.

London Transport Awards - your vote counts

It's the X Factor for London Underground staff. Your chance to vote for station staff that go the extra mile, put in 150%, give the public what they want, look like a diva, sound like a diva - sorry getting to carried away with X-Factorness now.

You have until December 13th to vote for the station that has the best customer service and you could win an Oyster card with £100 worth of free travel for your trouble:


Just pop along to TfL's site who say : "If you think the staff at your Tube station have provided you with extra special care, now's your chance to let them know, by nominating them in our annual online vote. The winning team will be presented with their award at the London Transport Awards in February 2008....

When deciding which station to vote for, you might like to think about the helpfulness of staff – do they go out of their way to help you in both everyday situations and out of the ordinary circumstances? Do staff keep you well informed? Are they well presented and the station clean and tidy, with up to date information on display?"

Here's a few that could be in the running:







Have fun voting.

Signs of Xmas on the Tube - Part Two

It's certainly beginning to look a lot like Xmas on the Tube. I came across an excellent picture by Niamheen of two gentle looking ladies who looked like their "revelling" had left them a little worse for wear


Niamheen didn't just take the picture but adds "I did try to wake them to see if they'd missed their stop at Finsbury Park but they were conked out and like statues."

She's a brave lady to try to wake them in my opinion. They're perfect candidates for the "wake me up at X station" stickers which are still a bobby bargain at four quid.





Thanks again to Niamheen for a great shot. Look out for more signs of Xmas on the Tube (like the busking Santa) over the coming weeks.

Win a month's free Oysterness

The nice guys and gals over at the local review site Qype.com let me know about a top new competition that gives you the chance to travel around London for free, for the whole of January (handy time for a prize as we'll all be counting the pennies).

I like Qype and you'll find the odd review on it from me from time to time. You can give your opinions on your local haunts - pubs, clubs, shops, parks, museums and even Tube stations.

To enter their Oyster competition, you need to be a member of Facebook and then become a "fan" of Qype. This doesn't mean having to wear a Qype T-shirt or stalk them when they're shopping. Just click the "Be a fan" link / button on the Qype Facebook page and they'll enter you into the prize draw. On Boxing Day - all the names go into hat and every 100th name pulled out gets a month's worth of free Oyster payment covering Zones 1-3!

The competition closes on 25th December and full Ts and Cs can be found at point 9 here.

World Metro Map

To mark the paperback & US edition of his great book Transit Maps of the World (formerly called Metro Maps of the World) Mark Ovenden has a special offer for the first 50 people who buy a new copy of the book through amazon (.co.uk or .com) - a signed copy of the World Metro Map promotional poster for the book.


To qualify for the signed poster simply email a copy of your amazon sales confirmation to poster@markovenden.com and remember to give your postal address.

The poster which is the opening page of Mark's book about the graphic design of worldwide subway, metro, underground and U-Bahn system maps and diagrams. He calls it a "playful diagram" showing "all the cities which have, are building or are planning to construct an urban rail system.".

Thanks to Jon Allen for reminding me about the map and also to Mark for giving me a sneak preview of the map last year!

The New York Times gave the following review of Transit Maps of the World earlier this week as one of their top Xmas books:

"While navigating this jampacked book can be a tad confusing, the overall effect is more than impressive. Ovenden does what no other design history book has ever done: he visually chronicles the evolution of the New York subway (plus other major subways including the Tube) - the world's largest - from its 1905 map, with only a few train lines, to the intricate 1948 version, which is barely legible, to the much-criticized 1972 Massimo Vignelli diagram map, which evolved into the current version. For this alone, 'Transit Maps of the World' is a must-have."

Mark's also let us in on a little secret in that there's a tiny spelling mistake on one of the cities on the world map above. I'm sure someone here will spot it, although no prizes for finding the correct, or rather incorrect one.

Signs of Xmas on the Tube - Part One

Coming home from the Juno blogger's film screening I knew that Christmas had arrived on the Tube with my first sighting of a busking Santa at Leicester Square:


I don't think he was even playing anything Xmassy, but was certainly bouncing around his spot with great gusto and with a number of people stopping to watch.

Look out for more Santa Tube spots particularly when hundreds of them invade London on December 15th for the annual Santacon UK.

Most expensive Tube Line for Property

I wonder if Kirsty, Phil or Sarah or anyone else from the growing portfolio of TV shows dedicated to helping us find better homes would make the correct guess of the most expensive London Underground Line to buy a house on. I would have put money on it being the District Line - as its got Richmond, Wimbledon, Fulham, South Kensington and Sloane Square on it. But I'd have been wrong. The Circle Line is the most expensive Tube line with property prices averaging around £1.2 million.

The research came from over 3,500 estate agents listing London properties with FindaProperty.com.


As the Circle line runs exclusively in Zone 1, I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised about the result. The least expensive stop on the Circle Line is Aldgate, with average property values hovering around £396,000.

The Victoria Line came as the next most expensive line to buy property on, with average prices reaching £1,109,107. Green Park was most expensive stop for property on the Victoria Line with average house prices above £2 million. The least expensive stop was Tottenham Hale.

"We were somewhat surprised to find the District Line appear in the seventh position, given it includes areas such as Fulham, Richmond and Wimbledon and follows the Circle Line through many parts of Central London. It would be interesting to see where the East London Line would rank today if the 2010 extension was already in place." said Michael O’Flynn, from FindaProperty. Apparently the Essex parts of the District Line weakened its overall average.

The Waterloo & City Line came in at last place as there are "minimal residential pockets" around Waterloo and Bank stations.

In other research, I had always thought that it was a benefit to live walking distance from a Tube station. Apparently not if you're after a quick sale as one in eight buyers would consider a property 30 minute's walk, (the equivalent of one and a half miles), away from a Tube station purely because it's cheaper.

Research released by HotProperty.co.uk found that property within a five minute walk of Tube station can be up to 21% (or £80,000) more expensive than a similar property 30 minutes away. The research shows just how much location affects property prices in London; for every five minutes closer to a Tube, house prices increase by 4%.

HotProperty MD Shawn Luetchens said: "Walking an hour to get a to a Tube station seems an extreme measure, however with mortgage affordability at an all time low and little relief in sight, people are having to make compromises."

However there is some balancing argument as he continued: "Interestingly, however, one in four people were still not willing to buy property that was more than five minutes walk to a Tube. Maybe they would change their minds if they considered that just walking an extra five minutes could save them up to £29,000 on the price of a property?"

Tube Ads are good

The previous post was on the subject of ad free Tube carriages, which I actually think are a bad idea. I think it's pretty clear that those ads saying "there would be no ads" weren't endorsed by TfL.

I like looking at ads on the Tube and that's not just because I have a marketing background. I agree with a study by TNS which "discovered" that Tube Car advertising provides the traditionally reserved British public somewhere to direct one's gaze, so as not to risk catching the eye of a fellow passenger. A further study 'The London Commuter' found that a third of commuters think that advertising on the London Underground brightens up their journeys.


And whatever you think about them - they DO work.

Admittedly I don't go off and buy all the products that are on the ads, but I can usually remember the brands that I see on the way into work and coming home. In previous jobs, I've run Tube ad campaigns and we got a fairly high product/brand recall and referral rate from people who said they saw our ad on the Tube.

TfL would lose millions in revenue if we didn't have them and we all know where that lost revenue would end up. So if I get slightly cheaper fares as a result of having ads that I don't have to look at, I'd rather have them than not. Plus I believe most people think the same or certainly aren't prepared to put their money where their good intentions are.

An art-not-ads pledge campaign failed to reach its target of getting enough "anti Tube advertisement" people to raise funds to buy just one ad that could be replaced with art. 350 people needed to cough up a tenner for this pledge to work and they only managed to get 172 people to say they'd do it.

On the way home last night, I saw one of those ads with loads of copy in it. Basically, CBS Outdoor, the company that sell all the ads on the London Underground have launched a competition for advertising people to create a Tube advert that explores an interesting and involving concept in more depth. They used a picture of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs (underground writers - you can see where they're going with this) to promote new underground writers.


It said "Tube cards can tell a proper story to a captive audience of people travelling on the Underground. They provide a unique and one to one relationship, on average; people spend around 13 minutes reading Tube cards."

If you work for an ad agency or are part of a freelance copywriting & design team, check out the competition and you could win a free Tube campaign & a trip to New York.

Adless Tube Carriages?

OK, who's the joker on the District Line? This morning I got onto a surprisingly ad-free carriage and just assumed that the ads were being replaced. With a closer look there was a sticker on every other space with a message supposedly from TfL:


"As part of TfL's £10 billion investment program London Underground are removing all adverts from trains to improve the ambience of carriages and the overall travelling experience of passengers"
It's a good spoof, but it's a spoof for the following reasons:

1. Although the tone has that bland corporate "announcement" feel, I think it's unlikely that TfL would refer to the ads as "adverts" in this case - I'm sure they would say "advertisements".
2. When would TfL turn down the opportunity to receive so much cash? £61.3 million from advertising revenue in 2006/7 - although what proportion is from Tube carriages I've no idea.
3. When have TfL ever cared about ambience in Tube carriages? We'd have piped musak, mood lighting and free cocktails if they did.
4. TfL putting a greater overall travelling experience over profit beggers belief.
5. I changed onto a Piccadilly line train which was full of the usual ads.

However, perhaps TfL were responsible. With a bit of searching it seemed to be part of the "Buy Nothing Day" - which took place on Saturday apparently. A team of people turned all the ads in District Line carriages the other way around and stuck stickers on them. "The team we saw doing it were very quick, managing to swap around entire carriages of adverts in less than the time it took the train to travel one stop." said a Space Hijacker.


Although the Indy Media report suggests it was endorsed by TfL I'm not so sure. Would the TfL decoration team really look like the bunch of students above? Any other thoughts and theories most welcome.

Oystercard payments with your mobile

Only a few months after Barclaycard was combined with Oystercard, looks like we'll soon be able to buy our Oystercard with e-cash on a mobile phone.

Transport for London is reported by the Independent to be close to reaching a deal with representatives from Nokia and O2 in order to produce a handset with a built-in Oyster card.

So you'd simply be able to swipe a compatible mobile phone across the Oystercard readers. The cost of the ticket would either be be added to the customer's monthly phone bill or deducted from a top-up account linked to the phone, similar to pay-as-you-go mobile phone services. The Register said it's "likely centre around the Nokia 6131-NFC handset, as that's the only model with the technology currently built in.

Oyster is based on Phillips' MiFare technology, otherwise known as ISO14443 Type A, which these days is a subset of NFC. So the Nokia handsets should already be compatible with the Oyster readers on the ticket gates."

If you're a Barclaycard customer you might have already been selected to trial this. As early next year several hundred Barclaycard customers will receive the Nokia handsets that will work in around 1,000 London shops - they need only to be waved at RFID reader terminals to carry out the transaction. Small payments go through instantly, while anything over ten quid requires a PIN.

Miss Mind The Gap Sacked

Just when my earlier post of today shows that London Underground staff have a sense of humour, Transport for London go and ruin it all by sacking Emma Clarke. Last week, I blogged that Emma who is the voice of the majority of the pre-recorded announcements on the Tube had produced a series of spoof announcements. Well TfL didn't take too kindly to the announcements, calling them "silly" and cutting all future contracts with her.


Not sure how much irony was in the following TfL announcement from a spokesperson: "Some of the spoof announcements are very funny. But Emma is a bit silly to go around slagging off her client's services. London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays."

Most of the announcements on Emma's site actually poke fun at commuters rather than her "client's services". (UPDATE: For a while Emma's site was overloaded with people trying to listen to the mp3's. But it's up and running again)

If "crammed in a sweaty carriage" is considered a "slagging off" rather than a statement of fact, TfL ought to spend a bit less time being kill-joys and a bit more time sorting out the mess that Metronet have left us in and do something to improve the sweatiness and the err... cramminess.

Tube Photo of the Week

Just to show that Thanksgiving even has "some" influence on the Tube:


Taken by STML at Warwick Avenue station. Thanks to Rob for the heads up.

By the way, does anyone know if the guys at Oval station are still doing their "Thought of the day" on the white boards there?


Or have they run out of thoughts?

London Transport Museum Re-opens

After a two year closure and investment of £22.4 million, the London Transport Museum re-opens on the 22nd November. As it's not a million miles away from where I work, I'm sure I'll be dropping in to see what's what. We're promised state-of-the-art recreations, interactives and stunning exhibits. There's an extra floor, more space on the ground floor and a newly constructed basement theatre.


I'm most interested in the promise of transport related cocktails on the Upper Deck café bar. You can lounge around on Northern Line upholstered seats and sip the tantalisingly named The Anorak & Metropolitan Mixture drinks. One can only guess what delights they might hold. I'd imagine The Anorak is made out of cold tea. The Metropolitan Mixture was initially a medicine devised by a pharmacist in Gower Street in 1879 "to ease the plight of persons emerging in distress from the nearby station". Victorian Londoners clearly needed to recover from the early steaming and smoking underground tunnels. So perhaps this cocktail will have a medicinal "pick-me-up" kick to it.

The museum sounds like it's getting very 21st century and is already embracing of Web 2.0 marketing tactics. Apparently they used Facebook to get video clips of commuters' journeys from five ‘global cities’ – New York, Paris, Delhi, Shanghai and Tokyo. Not quite sure why London wasn't included - perhaps no one wanted to watch exhibits of crowded carriages with everyone looking miserable.

The museum also has its own Flickr set and was kind enough to add me as a friend a few weeks ago.

In the "Mystery Objects set" I found the rather strange device above, which they are asking people to guess what it might be. The only clue is that it's from 1990 and I only hope it's not as fetishy as it looks.

Feel free to make a guess in the comments below. Plus if you visit the museum it would be interesting to hear your thoughts. It's always been swarming with kids whenever I've gone in the past and if I went as an adult on my own, I used to feel a bit uncomfortable, but with a few Anorak cocktails inside me, I'd probably be beyond caring.

Update 22nd November - Mike from Trusted Places has written post based on his trip on the morning it opened with some good shots on Flickr.

Goodbye to the promise of cooler Tubes

We're beginning to learn the practical effects of Metronet's collapse. The much trumpeted 150 million quid "cooling" system is now on hold (ie scrapped). The fact that this announcement was made in the middle of November on a wet and cold day, didn't stop it making front page news in The London Paper.



A new mechanical chiller was installed at Oxford Circus Station to cool the main ticket hall at the end of May this year. Similar projects at Euston & Waterloo station will now be shelved.

But it's not just cooler Tubes that are in for the chop. Plans to install lifts where there are none at present will also be delayed - with existing lifts and escalators being repaired rather than replaced. Many new stairways, entrances and exits will also be put on hold. There will also be cutbacks on plans to improve accessibility for disabled passengers.

Transport for London will take over maintenance of the lines early in 2008 after Metronet went into administration in July. Tim O'Toole, London Undergound's MD, said rather obviously: "It is not possible to have a collapse on the scale of Metronet without it having major implications."

However, TfL have to prioritise improvements to the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines - leaving other projects (like cooling the system & improving accessibility) struggling for money. I was shocked to hear that Metronet's collapse is apparently still costing us £13m a week.

Brian Cooke, from the passenger group London TravelWatch reckons the Government should step in and supply the extra funds.

He said: "We still believe that it was central Government which caused the mess of the public-private partnership. They got us into the mess so they should get us out of it. It should pay for any additional costs which LU has to suffer."

As passenger numbers and global warming increase it is more important than ever that measures are taken to keep the Tube cool - though we recognise this is not an easy project."

So remember to follow the wise advice from TfL of carrying a bottle of water and getting off the Tube earlier if you feel a bit too hot.

Miss Mind The Gap Outtakes

Ever wondered what the in-carriage Tube announcements would sound like if the voice-over woman was having a bad day? Or decided to say what was really on her mind? Wonder no more as you enter the mind of Emma Clarke also nicknamed "Sonia" (her voice gets on yer nerves) the woman behind the pre-recorded announcements on almost all of the London Underground lines (she doesn't do the Jubilee Line, the Northern Line and Docklands Light Railway).

She says "You've got the microphone. It's a Monday morning. There are hundreds of bored commuters listening. The temptation is simply too much....."

The following are my favourites:

Emergency Warning

Passengers should note...

Would the gentleman...

With Residents of London.... really showing signs of a woman about to jack in the whole job.

There's lots more on Emma's site and many thanks to Nik Fox for alerting me to them in the first place.

UPDATE - Emma's now been sacked - as TfL didn't find the announcements funny - see this post for more.

Children in Need Tube Challenge

In a few hours around 20 people will be leaving Amersham when the Tube system opens to take part in Tube Challenge for Children in Need.

James, who's a regular reader of this blog said:

"We're going all out. The whole entire map. Yes, we intend to visit every single Tube station on the map, from zone 1 to zone D, from Acton Central to Willesden Green, all 274 open Tube stations in one single day.

It's going to be hard. We're starting at just after 5, when the first train departs from deepest darkest Middlesex towards Central London. We'll see the sun rise, and then set again, in the course of our challenge (assuming we're not underground that is). We'll probably finish around 20 hours after we started, having run the equivalent of 10km each, travelled many miles across London and used transport as diverse as Tubes, buses, trains, trams and light railways.

We want to raise as much money as possible, and get press coverage for the whole Tube challenge group as well.

Now, you may be asking yourselves "well, how can I help? I'm not running all that, I'm not that insane, but I want to contribute." Well, the obvious answer is to sponsor us at http://www.justgiving.com/cintubechallenge07 - it's what most people will be doing, and certainly the easiest way to do it. You can sponsor us on completion, or for the number of commuters we knock out of the way, or the number of trains we just miss the connection for."

To see how they get on, check out their blog which James will be updating by text along the way.

Three of a kind game

You've probably seen the set of ads in Tube carriages from the online casino company 888.com. One of my favourites and that I've been meaning to snap for a while is about trying to predict the next "three of a kind" who sit opposite you. "Three of a kind" in this case being men or women.


Weird thing is that I rarely seem to sit opposite three men or three women in a row. Certainly not on the way into work. Coming home, I'm more likely to get the 'lads' or 'girls' night out there's something about a morning commute which means sexes are "shuffled" a bit more. Particularly when random strangers are concerned.

But perhaps it's just me. It's difficult to "prove" my theory, but I had a look at the Tube Eye Pool on flickr - which is the closest thing to vaguely regular photographic view of commuters I could think of. Of the last twenty pictures which had three or more people sitting in a row (with no spaces) only seven were "three of a kind". There were only two sets of three women amongst them, so even with my rubbish maths, that's fairly low odds of getting "three of a kind" made up of women.


Try it on the way into work and, if you're lucky enough to get a seat, - see if you a) actually get to sit opposite a three in a row, and b) can correctly predict the sex of the next three in a row you get. If there are a lot three women in a row, my random control group above is completely bogus.

TfL did consider radical redesign of Tube Map

There's been a lot of discussion about the new Tube map that's coming out this Sunday, 11th November. I've just received heads up from the guys at iPM at BBC Radio 4 that they will be talking to the Curator of the London Transport Museum and also to a person from Transport for London about the new map.

Apparently TfL will tell that they did consider a radical redesign - but then dismissed the idea as it was a step too far for now. They're continually being sent ideas for new designs but apparently none fit the bill. Interestingly they see the map as being quite "socialist" - ie equal measure is being given to each line. They have an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" approach. This is all very well, but considering there will definitely be more changes in 2012, have we really now got to the stage where something simpler should be produced?


Max Roberts alternative "curvy Tube map" is certainly pleasing on the eye. Would the extra lines and stations work on this?

Check out the piece on Radio 4 on Saturday 10th November at 5.30pm. Sounds like it will be a good one. You'll also be able to download the podcast from BBC iPM if you miss it. There will also be much more on the blog in terms of longer interviews, plus elements that didn't make the final "on-air" item, so check out their blog on Saturday evening. As a preview there's an audio piece on this post with TfL's Group Design Manager Innes Ferguson who was asked in the past if other designs were considered.