Tube Etiquette poster needed

Do you feel we need more signs on the London Underground which tell people how to get on and off trains? You'd think it would be simple, but when crowds are concerned, there are still some travellers that have no idea about letting people off the Tube first before they get in.

Toronto newspaper The National Post is also tired of this behaviour on the subway. They've produced a brilliant poster which they encourage people to follow and print.


"We here at the Toronto Transit Civility Commission are firm believers in foresight and its necessity in keeping the system running smoothly. That’s why today’s official TTCC, unofficial TTC poster is about planning for, and managing, your body as a train moves into a station. It may seem obvious, but some people only dimly recall their physics lessons about two objects being unable to occupy the same space at the same time."

I wonder how many people have printed it off and stuck it on the subway over there? Do you think we should have similar designs for the Tube? Something like the above would make a great cross platform London Underground ad.

The newspaper also ask for readers to send in other "transit peeves/grievances/peevances" for future campaigns and posters.

What posters like this do we need on the Tube? I definitely think people should be advised on how to travel with large rucksacks. It's long been a personal bugbear that travellers often forget they have these on their backs on the Tube.

Hat tip to Jamillah Knight for discovering this via Chip Zdarsky!

Tube Photo of the Week

Excellent capture by @webponce as the London Underground look for a modern day Cinderella:


Cinderella lives in Balham by webponce
As Matthew said it would have been lovely to have heard this over the Tube public announcement system "Will the lady who lost the slipper yesterday, please speak with the supervisor. Your Prince Charming awaits." Wonder if it fell down the gap?!

Update - There definitely seems to be a shoe issue at Balham Underground as last night, webponce saw another sign there.


Now, it's Ruby Slippers by webponce
He said "First there was Cinderella, now its Dorothy who has lost her footwear at Balham station. Tomorrow, I'm holding out hope for either Rapunzel's wig, a bail of straw left by some Porcine builders, or perhaps a trail of cookie crumbs all the way back to Morden.

More importantly, who loses a shoe and doesn't immediately report it?"

RMT vote for Tube Strike

More than 90 per cent of the RMT voted to strike over the “continued threat to jobs and safe working conditions and in support of a decent pay increase this year”. This follows the end of PPP (public-private partnership) where TfL took control of Tube Lines last month.

RMT Leader Bob Crow pictured on the Tube last month

No date for the strike has been announced as yet. Tube Lines are hoping that talks can avert the strike. A TfL spokesperson said "We have tabled an acceptable pay offer and we remain committed to continuing our negotiations and avert strike action which would cause unnecessary disruption to the travelling public."

An RMT spokesman told City A.M. that Boris Johnson could have stripped Tube Lines of its contract without buying shares. Shareholders were paid £310m for their equity & workers fear this will lead to delays in upgrades & pay freezes. The RMT believe that shares hadn't been bought the upgrade work could have been carried out at a fraction of the cost.

Looks like we're in for a summer of strikes as BT workers unanimously backed a strike ballot over pay after rejecting a two per cent rise. The British Airways cabin crew dispute continues as Unite has increased strike pay for staff on the picket lines, as talks between the two are postponed.

Update - Two Tube strike dates in June and July have now been set.

London Journeys - Value of Time

Art on the Underground held an excellent public discussion at City Hall about London Journeys. I went on the spur of the moment and there were some wonderful random nuggets of trivia, art, design and practical information about 'passenger flow'. It opened with David Lawrence who looked at the recent history of design on the London Underground.


Can you guess what the image above is?

He spent some time discussing the Real Time Sub Group at TfL which carries out research on London Underground announcements & what words aren't allowed. He joked that 'late' and 'delays' weren't permitted, but in reality you'll never hear the words, 'suicide' or 'bomb'. He felt that announcements were overly formal and actually said more than needed to be said. Have a listen when you're next on the Tube, to see if you think he's right. Do we really need so many – 'ladies and gentlemens' and ‘in operations’?

Iain Huston from passenger space modelling, followed with an insightful talk on how the London Underground use computerised models to help our journeys. Although you might not think it, Tfl do value our time. In fact they've even measured how various travellers value time. I imagined that Tube commuters thought their time was most valuable. But they only value their time at £8 an hour, whereas a taxi passenger values theirs at a massive £31 an hour.

Good levels of service are also measured by how much space a person has to themselves. Your journey is actually perceived as better or faster, if there is less congestion, even if in reality it takes longer to complete.

London Underground study people's movement through Tube stations and can work out how to slow things down if certain stations get overly congested. Placement of ticket gates can make a big difference to passenger flow. The images below show how the ticket hall layouts at Euston were improved to stop congestion.


Passenger flow before the new layout - green dots are people entering


And the flow afterwards, with less congestion.

We learnt that unreasonable behaviour is also taken into account. Tourists going the wrong way, people finding short cuts are all put into the models to work out the best flow. Some stations are lucky as they have more 'trained commuters'. The ticket gates at Bank at the Waterloo & City line are used by 'model commuters' who are amongst the fastest travellers on the system, have their Oyster cards ready in advance, know where the best exits are & walk quickly.

The final part of the talk featured artist Dryden Goodwin whose line drawings of 60 Jubilee Line staff you've probably seen on the network.


However, the website has an animated film of Dryden sketching the staff while they chat about their time on the Tube, hobbies, family, music or anything that enters their head at the time. Dryden said 'it was important that something was held back, so you never get to see the real individual being drawn. It's like our attitude to staff on the Tube. They're like furniture. You don't see staff unless you really want or need to'.


Check out the stories when you have some spare time. I particularly liked Tracey, who described her experience of holding the hand of a man who'd had a heart attack 'I wanted his family to know that there was someone looking after him. That he didn't just die alone on a crowded platform'. Alone in the crowd. Nice juxtaposition that kind of reflects a lot of people's attitudes of Tube travel.

The second part of the series is on Tuesday 8th June at 6.30pm. I've no idea who's speaking but hopefully it will be as varied and surprising as this one.

Manhattan grows in new New York Subway map

We often have "tweaks" to the London Underground map (some are major changes like the loss & re-emergence of the Thames). However, the New York subway map is about to have its first overhaul in more than ten years. It's all to do with clarfying Manhattan, which will become bulkier, taller & 30 per cent wider.


Manhattan Subway Map by Guillermo Esteves
"Staten Island, meanwhile, will shrink by half. The spreadsheetlike “service guide,” along the map's bottom border, will be eliminated, and the other three boroughs will grow to fill the space." said the New York Times

Like our Tube map, the locals are finding that their subway map has become overcrowded over time. "In its desire to be complete and provide a great deal of information, it took away from some of the clarity you would have with a simpler map," said Jay H. Walder, the Metropolitan Transport Authority’s chairman.

Walder felt that service guide which showed the weekend schedule, was theoretical at best. This will be removed along with a growing list of handicapped-accessible stations that had begun to dominate the bottom right corner. As with our London map small wheelchair symbols will continue to denote those stops.


I wonder if TfL were consulted over this project? Map expert Maxwell Roberts has long been arguing that our Tube map has lost its way and needs simplification.

He "believes we've now got to the state with the map trying so desperately to please everyone (wheelchair access, station closures, partial station closures, zones, future extensions), that it has become a bit of mess. The network has grown so much that even Harry (or rather Henry) Beck would have tearing out his hair.

Now more than ever we can see the tension between the map's need to be legible, usable, attractive and simple and its counter need to convey information. The addition of Cross Rail and the Olympic Line will only make matters worse."

Will there come a time when we see certain parts of London expanded on the Tube map? Will other parts be reduced? How do you balance humanity & familiarity with the complexity of the system?

Hat tip to Jemimah Knight for finding this.