Which tube station is furthest from a non-tube station?
This would be a good question to ask on the day of a tube strike, indeed I had this post all lined up for such a day, but the unions then cruelly called off this week's action.
Nevertheless it's a great way to shine a spotlight on which parts of London would suffer most from a complete shutdown of the tube service because their nearest non-tube station is so far away.
I'd be fine here in Bow. Even if Bow Road and Bromley-by-Bow were trainless it'd only be a short walk to the DLR at Bow Church and only a mile to 'real' trains at Stratford or West Ham. I could get still get around, even without resorting to buses. But who'd suffer most?
Only one tube station in zone 1 is more than a mile from a non-tube station and that's South Kensington (1.1 miles). If you fancy a trip to the Museums during a tube strike, Victoria's the closest a non-tube train will get you. Mainline railways don't trouble the southern half of Kensington and Chelsea, nor stop in the northern half of the borough, the closest being the Overground which follows the western boundary. Notting Hill Gate is the second placed zone 1 station being just under a mile from Paddington.
Even in zone 2 only three tube stations are more than a mile from a non-tube station, that's how good inner London's railways are. On the District line Stamford Brook is 1.2 miles from South Acton and Ravenscourt Park is a tad over a mile from Shepherd's Bush. The third is North Greenwich which, although it's technically close-ish to the DLR across the river, in reality the nearest non-tube station is Westcombe Park 1.3 miles to the south.
Heading further out, there are six areas where tube stations are over 1½ miles from a non-tube station. In increasing order of remoteness, these are they.
Jubilee: Stanmore (2.3 miles), Canons Park (2.0), Queensbury (1.6)
Northern: Finchley Central (2.3 miles), East Finchley (2.1), West Finchley (2.0), Woodside Park (1.8), Mill Hill East (1.7)
Metropolitan/Piccadilly: Uxbridge (2.4 miles)
Central: Epping (6.1 miles), Theydon Bois (4.8), Grange Hill (3.4), Debden (3.3), Hainault (2.8), Chigwell (2.8), Fairlop (2.2), Loughton (2.0), Roding Valley (1.8), Buckhurst Hill (1.7), Barkingside (1.6), Redbridge (1.6).
And here are those stations on a tube map.
grey is 'over 1 mile from a non-tube station'
yellow is 'over 1½ miles'
orange is 'over 2 miles'
red is 'over 2½ miles'
purple is 'over 4 miles'
Bad places to live during a tube strike include Northwood, Stanmore, Finchley and Uxbridge where the tube monopoly is strong. But by far the worst place is the eastern end of the Central line. No railways compete with the tube in the slice of Outer London between the Chingford line and Crossrail, the Central line having swallowed up the only railway that ever did. Five tube stations here find themselves more than 2½ miles from a rail station, although of these only Hainault is in London and the other four are in Essex. And the really bad places to be are Theydon Bois and Epping because TfL don't run any buses here, only trains, so with only an Oyster card you're completely cut off.
But there isn't a tube strike today, so thankfully these issues don't arise.
