Tube geek (11)Overcrowding
Some tube lines are busier than others. Travel from Kensington Olympia to Earl's Court late in the evening and you'll probably have the whole carriage to yourself. But risk a trip southbound through King's Cross on the Victoria line in the early morning rush hour and you'll probably end up more squashed than the proverbial sardine. Here's a tubegeek guide to the busiest station-to-station journeys on the network at morning peak time (courtesy of Transport for London's stats department):
Busiest line: Victoria line southbound Finsbury Park → (10th busiest section) → Highbury & Islington → (3rd busiest) → King's Cross St Pancras → (4th busiest) → Euston → (busiest) → Warren Street → (2nd busiest) → Oxford Circus tubegeek comment: The most cramped conditions anywhere on the tube are to be found between Highbury & Islington and Oxford Circus, used by in excess of 42000 passengers every morning rush hour.
2nd busiest line: Central line westbound Leyton → (15th busiest) → Stratford → (14th busiest) → Mile End → (9th busiest) → Bethnal Green → (7th busiest) → Liverpool Street → (5th busiest) → Bank → (8th busiest) → St Paul's → (11th busiest) → Chancery Lane tubegeek comment: This explains why I never manage to open my newspaper on my morning commute into Central London
3rd busiest line: Victoria line northbound Victoria → (6th busiest) → Green Park → (13th busiest) → Oxford Circus
4th busiest line: Northern line northbound Clapham Common → (16th busiest) → Clapham North → (12th busiest) → Stockwell
TfL have definitions of what 'overcrowded' means, which I'll illustrate using a Victoria line train as an example:
• Seating Capacity means "the total number of Seat Spaces on a given Rolling Stock type" [304 seats per train]
• Crush Standing Capacity means "the maximum number of standing Customers that can be accommodated on a Train at a density of seven Customers per square metre" [one train has a standing area of 132¼m², so the Crush Standing Capaciity is 926]
• Crush Capacity means "the sum of Crush Standing Capacity and Seating Capacity" [926+304=1230, i.e. more than three times as many passengers standing as sitting]
• Fully Loaded Train means "a Train carrying a load which is equivalent to the Crush Capacity multiplied by 72kg" [1230×72kg = 88½ tons of passengers]
Time once again for diamond geezer to go totally tubular with another week devoted to the London Underground. Prepare for five days of quizzes, facts, commentary and obscure statistics. Two years ago I looked at average speeds, the busiest stations, the great north/south divide, picking the right carriage and journeys where it was quicker to walk. Last year I investigated the closest stations, the easiest interchanges, wheelchair accessible platforms, shortest possible journeys and the growth of the network (amongst other things). I wonder how much I'll manage to cram in this year. Mind the doors.
It's an act of faith placing your bank card into a cashpoint machine. You might scrutinise the machine's metal front for evidence of potential tampering, just for a split second, but generally there's no reason why your card shouldn't be completely entrusted to the mechanised interior. You push your small plastic rectangle into the little slot, watch it disappear, do your business and then expect your card to come back. I've been using cashpoints for twenty years (because they're bloody convenient and they save queueing inside the bank for hours) and nothing's gone wrong yet. Until yesterday, that is.
There's a pair of cashpoints on the landing halfway down the escalators at Cutty Sark DLR station. It's always struck me as a strange place for a financial facility, suspended in some artificial transport netherworld, but at least it's usually quiet. It was very quiet yesterday afternoon so I decided to stop off and withdraw some money. I didn't really need some, I could have survived a few more days on the cash content of my wallet, but the convenience of the opportunity attracted me. Drat. And I could have chosen the cashpoint on the right rather than the cashpoint on the left because they were both available, but I didn't. Double drat.
I didn't mean to ask for a balance enquiry on my account, I just pressed the wrong button. Never mind, I thought, I'll just go through the motions, wait a bit and then request a withdrawal. Alas no. It was at this point that the cashpoint's internal computer rebooted. I was no longer being presented with procedural options, just a screenful of technical processing commands - rather like watching a late 20th century PC spluttering back into life after some random internal glitch. The rebooting continued, very very slowly, with more techie gibberish followed by complete and utter blankness. Damn. I stood helplessly watching the empty slot from which it was becoming increasingly evident my card was never going to return. A succession of other travellers used the cashpoint to my right, successfully each time, probably wondering why on earth I was hanging around quite so suspiciously by their side. And finally the stark green words Temporarily Out Of Service flashed up on my screen, and my monetary bereavement was complete.
This is presumably where you expect me to tell you of my continued tale of woe. How I checked my online bank statement and discovered several mammoth withdrawals from a high street I've never visited. How I rang my bank's service centre and spent fifteen munutes struggling to explain to an illiterate foreigner that my card had mysteriously vanished. Or how I'm going to be left destitute for weeks before my replacement card arrives. But no. A human being with a friendly Scottish accent answered my call a split-second after I pressed the button for 'stolen or lost cards'. My replacement card and PIN number should be arriving separately in the post within the week. And if I need any money in the meantime all I have to do is pop into any Abbey branch with photo ID and a bank statement and they'll pay up. Not all UK customer service is yet crap. Hurrah! Although I do have this nagging doubt that as many as three important letters have disappeared on their way to my letterbox over the past few weeks, so I'll not start feeling too optimistic until my new card arrives. And damn, I used to know my 16-digit card number off by heart - now I'll need to learn a new one...
Hurricanefacts • Tropical cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific. • Hurricanes rotate anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. • For a hurricane to form, ocean temperature must be at least 26½°C down to a depth of at least 50m. • One third of Atlantic hurricanes form in September, and three quarters between August and October.
Hurricane force: Force 1 (minimal): 74-95mph [110 have hit the US since 1851, 1 of them this year] Force 2 (moderate): 96-110mph [72 have hit the US since 1851] Force 3 (extensive): 111-130mph [73 have hit the US since 1851, 2 of them this year] Force 4 (extreme): 131-155mph [19 have hit the US since 1851, 1 of them this year] Force 5 (catastrophic): 156+mph [3 have hit the US since 1851 - in 1935, 1969 and 1992]
• Hurricane Able was the first named hurricane, in 1950. • Only female names were used from 1953 until 1979 - now hurricanes alternate in gender. • A list of 21 names is picked for each hurricane season. Lists repeat every 6 years. • This year's list will be reused in 2011, but Katrina and Rita will almost certainly be retired. • There are only four names left on this year's list. If the names run out (which would be the first time ever) then Greek letters will be used instead.
Tube geek (11) Overcrowding
