Silver train is a comin’
Think I’m gonna get on now, oh, yeah
Silver train is a comin’
Think I wanna get on now, oh, yeah, oh, yeah
Silver trains used to be fast, affordable, noisy but efficient. A few people would have to stand, but only in rush hour.
Think I wanna get on now, oh, yeah, oh, yeah
I started using the London Underground when smog masks were de rigeur, when the Piccadilly Line ended at Hatton Cross and before the Victoria and Jubilee Line tunnels were dug. My teeth are very long. Now, many more people have to find their way into, out from and across the country’s biggest magnet.
The capital’s population has multiplied faster than its transportation systems can cope with. As long ago as the 1920s and 1930s there were wonderful promotional posters by Graham Sutherland and others encouraging travellers to make their journeys in reverse. There were messages like ‘Go out into the Country’, and appeals to use the Underground between 10 and 4, to spread the load. Attempts aimed at getting the public to bond with a deteriorating service came in the form of more posters in the 1980s, but even if you remember the 1950s it’s possible that any serious good will you might have had has long since been eroded.
Every day I love you less and less
The occasional visitor notes that the city has everything necessary, including the best weather in Britain, for a huge metropolis to thrive:- square mile after square mile of Victorian terraces backed up close to the tracks, the Hanger Lane Gyratory System, the discretionary 12.5% service charge, the White Cube, but it’s possibly a bit short on affordable housing and sparrows. The one comforting aspect of London for me, when I started exploring it in my teens, was its Underground. It made sense of the place, or at least the map did.
Anyway, my Tardis landed me back in King’s Cross, where I was overcome by a sudden desire to Go out into the Country. Gritting my teeth, I scrutinised the map and counted only eight stops on the Northern Line to Oval, nine if you go the Euston route. Remember when The New Vaudeville Band immortalised the Underground in distinctly retro tones?
Finchley Central is two and sixpence from Golder’s Green on the Northern Line
That was in 1966. It’s gone up a bit since then. Some of us remember when you could get in to see Surrey for that, but admittedly the cushions and scorecards were extra.
I am the aforementioned occasional visitor and I had thought about doing a piece on the capital’s changing skyline – what I really think about gherkins as townscape etc. – but I changed my mind because it was beginning to feel more like a book, with reflections from too many different eras. After a moment’s contemplation I realised that London’s quiddity is actually its Underground and wherever I am in the world, its map is a constant companion.
So, does the system still offer the only sensible way to get around? Can it cope? Is it safe? Can I afford it? Crucially, do the escalators still move you past posters of nubile young women just a bit too quickly? So many questions. Four million people a day depend upon this city’s silver trains and they need the answers to these questions, except the last one, to be yes. I wanted to find a regenerated, clean, efficient transportation system fit for the Olympic Games, and where gentlemen offer their seats to ladies, and when the doors open you can hear the polite tones of “No, after you” up and down the carriage.
It’s not only the price of a ticket that’s changed. Where is David Niven when you need him?
I was once tempted to take the Subway from somewhere close to the World Trade Center to Midtown. That was twenty years ago and a lot can change in that time. I didn’t feel safe. It was all that graffiti on the carriages (which has gone now I believe, as has the WTC). It’s a long walk to Greenwich Village when the heat index is 94, but it felt like a safer option so I took it. In London there used to be a certain pride evident in the customisation of each station’s platforms (an unfamiliar concept in NYC) but there’s no time for that now. The Underground delivers a sweaty, claustrophobic nightmare in exchange for your £6.60 Day Travelcard valid in Zones 1 and 2. The alternative of walking from Mile End to South Bank simply isn’t a realistic option. I don’t do buses, by the way.
Key to using the Underground is, of course, an understanding of where all the trains come from and go to. Inside the back cover of my pocket diary is a reproduction of one of the finest pieces of graphic design ever conceived. It gets tweaked regularly, like the dashed black and white line between Kennington and Oval that has just appeared this year, and it gets more and more difficult to read despite my keeping on top of eye tests and prescription glasses. The essence of it holds good though.
Some other cities think so too but don’t always get the mix of graphic and geographic right. The Chicago Rapid Transit has Blue Line, Pink Line, Yellow Line etc., which, although lacking imagination, does at least make it easy for visitors. The Moscow Metro map is the most diagrammatic of all, eliminating all geography. Berlin puts its U and S bahn maps together making a frightening spider’s web dominated by very long words. The Paris Metro is cleaner, quieter and faster than London’s Underground but the plan is more difficult to read and is essentially user-unfriendly. New York’s Subway map looks like an indigestible bowl of spaghetti. It’s too big and there’s too much geography. One look at it and you think “There must be an easier way to get around.” Glasgow’s Subway (aka The Clockwork Orange) is a very simple circle or loop, the graphics for which are looking very tired, but at least it puts geography into the mix. The pedigree is clear to see, although you wouldn’t want to put the design on anything but a railway platform.
Going back to Moscow for a moment, I was in conversation recently with my new Russian friends. Elena said that when she arrived in London she found the London Underground map difficult to understand, at first. I threw back at her the geographic/graphics mix argument, explaining that it provides useful orientation, but she replied that in Moscow people only need to know and memorize two stations. Where they are in relation to others and to the city in general doesn’t matter because they only travel from home to work and back again, full stop. She also said that the Moscow system has to deal with 10 million passengers a day and that London is comparatively civilised by comparison. Vlad added that people are forced to use the overcrowded Metro because of the frequent 8 to 10 hour gridlocks on the roads. He laughed, in a ‘you don’t know you’re alive’ kind of way when I likened this to the M25.
The London Underground map is not without its problems. I’m sure I’m not alone in struggling to distinguish between the subtleties of colour used for the Bakerloo and Metropolitan lines, now exacerbated by the reduced scale necessary to fit DLR onto the page, the size of which (like jacket pockets) never changes. Never mind, it’s a great piece of design, mimicked across the world, and we’re proud of it – it’s there on T shirts, mugs, postcards, memorabilia. It’s the original and best, and it works.
It works rather better than the trains, as it happens. You still know where you want to go and how to get there, but can you afford it and will the service actually deliver? No fewer than six of the different lines had suspended services on the day I visited. I came looking for a silky-smooth, seamless system – an intricately woven fabric of multi-coloured strands promised by the map. In short, I wanted my Underground to be velvet. Instead I found that hessian is the new velvet.
Worse, it seems that Kaiser Chiefs are the new Stones.
