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Boris, we have a proposition for you...
So the London Assembly's Transport Committee, in its new report 'Too Close for Comfort' [pdf], has concluded that using the Underground can often be a grim experience.
The report says that crowding can even lead to a suspension of normal codes of behaviour, with people “going after a seat regardless of who else might want it, ignoring pregnant women and people carrying babies”. There's a “dog-eat-dog or survival of the fittest attitude”.
Sound familiar?
It states, slightly obviously, that people should be provided with information so they can make more informed choices about the alternatives to the tube. They even provide a little mock-up of the sort of signage that may help at specific pinch-points:
Nice effort. But yes, we agree that “the map would need to be enhanced to indicate specific walking…routes”. We can help you there Boris/TfL.
The depressing thing about the report is that it seems to presume that a huge rise in tube passenger numbers is inevitable, and therefore we have no option but to spend 10s of billions of pounds increasing the network's capacity (by 30% by 2020).
Yes, good public transport is intrinsic to any city's economic, social and environmental well-being, but at what point do you say enough is enough? The wonderfully-named Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA) produced a report back in 1994 that, for the first time, gave some official recognition to the notion of 'induced' traffic. You have a congestion problem, so you widen a road or build a bypass, and lo and behold, this just encourages more people to get in their cars and you're back to where you started.
Surely what's true for roads is also true for tube systems?
So we're spending 10s of billions of pounds on something that will get worse!
Surely we've got to start addressing this challenge in a radically different way? As a nation we (literally) can't afford not to. Who can defend the economic models that state that the extra mobility offered by a 30% larger tube system justifies the vast expense in building that extra capacity?
What would happen if TfL and its political masters were up-front with us and said, 'right, that's it, the tube's big enough, we're going to carry on investing in it to make it run as smoothly as possible, but sorry folks, no more capacity'? Would we all have an attack of the vapours? London would turn into an economically unproductive third world city? Or would human ingenuity and innovation kick in? More flexible-working to avoid rush hour congestion, more working from home, more tele-conferencing, more cycling, and yes, more walking.
When the country is up to its neck in debt wouldn't it be little short of criminal to commit vast amounts of taxpayers' money to a tube expansion project without first having taken a long hard look at how that extra mobility (or to be more precise, accessibility) could be provided in much cheaper and more efficient ways?
Here's a proposition Boris:
Let's take one of your tube pinch-point areas as a pilot. We can produce a customised poster or leaflet with a map centred on each and every home and business in that area, with isochrones that highlight exactly how far you can walk within, say, 10, 20, 30 and 40 minutes. We can also produce similar maps centred on train stations, tube stations or bus stops, which could be handed out in rush hour. So basically we're talking about a saturation campaign to help everyone – residents, workers, visitors – understand the 'walkability' of their area.
Can we guarantee a dramatic decrease in tube congestion in the area? No. Is it worth a try given that it would cost a fraction (in the realms of rounding errors) of the sums of money being committed to Underground upgrades? We think so.
Boris, give us a call and we can discuss further.
