Signal failure
There's an interesting read in this week's New Yorker about Robert Kiley, the man hired to manage and/or save the London Underground subway system (The Tube). While the article mainly focusses on the political machinations behind recent efforts to right the listing Tube, it also offers a sobering and, in my experience, accurate depiction of the current troubles of the system. I lived in London in the spring of 1999 and spent a lot of time on The Tube doing the sorts of things Tube riders do: jockeying for optimal ingress and egress positions; standing on the right, walking on the left; ogling platform sweets dispensers; and cursing the despised "signal failure" (I note that the phrase has two meanings).
When I lived in London there were already efforts underway to improve aspects of its operation: the decaying Northern Line trains were in the process of being replaced, the Westminster station renovation was progressing (slowly) apace, and Jubilee Line stations were variously rent apart as part of the continuing line extension. Still, problems were hard to ignore. Leaving aside the bomb scares (real and threatened) that were common at the time, traveling by Tube could be an uncomfortable ordeal and near the end of my initial stay I often found myself walking rather than going Underground.
Irrespective of its faults, I love The Tube, or at least the idea of it. When will the reality match the ideal? Many aspects of The Tube seem impossible to change: the depth and limited girth of the tunnels would be prohibitively expensive and dangerous to modify, and the system's reliance on people movers in stations comes as a given. My occasional returns to London have offered encouraging signs, but it's hard to honestly say that monies have been spent where they were most needed. The Jubilee extension, for example, was completed at a fabulous cost but has done little to relieve the groaning intra-Circle Line system of any burdens, and its gleaming crystalline stations were often deserted when I journeyed to them. As the article points out, though, there is much hope to be found in the abandonment of the dreadful public-private partnership (P.P.P.) originally envisioned. Cheers, Underground.
Posted by ned at February 8, 2004 02:04 PM