George Devo’s weekly column on life in the capital, published every Monday morning…
I barge my way into a mass of upright, silent bodies and find a crevice that’s socially acceptable to occupy. The floor rumbles and there’s a sudden jerk forwards. My right arm launches towards the nearest handle for support, and I grasp it tightly. My neck is awkwardly stooped and feet widely set apart. This is a movement replicated by many around me. It makes us look disorientated, but in reality, this isn’t a new experience, it’s a well-practised pattern. Repeated daily during two twenty-minute periods of physical limbo.
This is London’s underground, and I’ve chosen it as the subject of my first column about my year in the British capital.
I am now five months into my placement year, working in a to-remain-nameless City-of-London-based company’s comms department. I’ve had half a year to observe life in the city, so why do I choose the Tube as my first subject?
Put simply, because it’s unique.
A public transport network in Britain that’s punctual, extensive and frequent. I won’t have to dedicate too many words to convince most readers of how unusual that is.
For anyone born north of the M25, or even just outside of the South-East, its singularity is instantly obvious. As a Brummie, used to waiting thirty minutes for a bus and enduring pileups of cancellations, it’s shockingly effortless.
It’s a Victorian marvel, born of one solicitor’s burning ambition. Charles Pearson was a political radical who saw subterranean rail cutting through London as a way of improving social conditions for the masses; providing them with quick, cheap routes to-and-from work.
Pearson understood what public transport’s purpose should be; to make life easier and to share the weight of its passengers’ daily burdens. A vehicle to protect ordinary people’s paychecks and aid their mental wellbeing.
For too long, too many of those in command of our railways haven’t been able to see this. Scrapping and failing to meet minimum target levels, their lazy, short-termist timidity preventing them from achieving the delayed gratification that serious, strategic investment provides. The Sunak government’s decision to cancel HS2’s northern leg is a prime example of this, permanently stunting the project’s prospective benefits.
This approach has culminated in a multi-generational public policy failure where many are routinely stranded on the station platforms of regional towns and cities, unsure when their next service will arrive.
Away from the London Underground’s stellar 92% punctuality, the national average for rail services ails at 70%. Only 4 in 10 Avanti West Coast services are on time, and over 5% are cancelled. Cross Country’s timeliness stands at 51% and Northern Rail’s at 62%.
The reliable structure that public transport should provide, enabling people to organize their lives around it, is replaced by a cruel, warped chaos. This leaves many routinely stranded on station platforms in regional towns and cities, unsure of how or when they’ll get home. As a result, they are forced to make ad-hoc schedule adjustments, disrupting personal or social engagements and limiting time with family.
All told, the Underground is both spectacular and hideously depressing. Wonderful to experience, its absence outside of London makes you realise how much less deserving of joy the last hundred year’s politics has decided an average Brummie, Mancunian or Yorkshireman to be than a standard Londoner.
In short, my love for the Tube will always be tinged by a jealousy at what, growing up in the West-Midlands and attending university in Sheffield, I’ve been denied. And that’s a shame.
