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Much as I might gripe about the Tube (and boy, do I love to gripe), it’s still an awesome machine and an incredible achievement — 270 stations, 402 kilometres of track and an insane 1.2 billion journeys per year. And today it turns 150! Do you think trains like birthday cake?
Here’s a brief history of the big old brute:
- First line was the Metropolitan, running between Farringdon and King’s Cross. Opened for business 9th January 1863.
- First truly Underground (not “cut and cover” like the current-day District lines) branch was the City and South London Railway, linking Monument Station and Stockwell.
- All the competing railway lines were bought up, unified and electrified by an American in the early 1900s.
- The first TfL-style organisation was created in 1933 to organise all the buses, trams and tubes (and 80 years later, they still haven’t managed to do this…).
- Famously, the stations were used as giant bomb shelters during WWII (though they weren’t always bomb-proof, sadly).
- London Transport, including all the tubes, buses and trams in London, was nationalised in 1948.
- Electrification was finished only in 1961, with the Metropolitan line being the last to have steam locomotives running passenger services.
- Jubilee line opened in 1979, with the largest stations on the Underground — North Greenwich station is apparently big enough to hold an ocean liner or 3,000 double-decker buses.
- WiFi was introduced into the network in June 2012, just in time for the Olympics.
All in all, it’s a pretty damn impressive achievement by anyone’s measure. What do you reckon though: is the Tube a national treasure, or a woefully terrible, over-priced source of embarrassment for the whole country? Let us know below.
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“First line was the Metropolitan, running between Farringdon and King’s Cross. Opened for business 9th January 1963″ I think you mean 1863
Just beat me to it!
Ah, well done, you spotted the deliberate mistake
Is there a competition on to spot the mistakes, as this is my second today? What’s the prize?
You get to change your screen-name to “Resident Pedant”
Excellent, finally a prize worth winning, I hope I get it
Metropolitan line opened in 1863 not 1963….just saying!
The London Underground is an impressive and complex engineering wonder, especially when you consider the age of it and the technology available at the time of construction.
Yes it has its flaws and prices keep going up, but some of the infrastructure is very very old and costs a lot to maintain/replace.
Definitely something to be proud of!
From a historical perspective, it’s definitely something to be proud of; as a modern transport infrastructure, I think less so.
The thing is, It’s very difficult to maintain the tube while at the same time keeping it running. If they shut the tube for a year and fixed everything it would be perfect, but TFL would run out of money and people would be even more pissed off then they are now.
Yes, this is true, but other networks do manage to do it; and before you beg off pointing out that the Tube’s very old, remember that even the super-modern lines like the Jubilee suffer frequent breakdowns.
To be fair on TFL, the tube is great when it’s running ok. Generally it’s “other commuters” that makes the “experience suck”.
I find there’s a massive difference in perception between commuting and day-outing.
Wholeheartedly agree, a lot of moaning does come from the ‘day trippers’ quoting in the standard – “this one time, when I was on the tube…”.
This sort of thing is exasperated by the fact that most day trippers use the tube on the weekend when most people have no clue about the standard etiquette and there are large closures for maintenance.
Sometimes wonder if they do it all on purpose…
The age is impressive, but I really do think that they somehow screwed up the whole maintenance issue due to neglecting the system for far too long (especially in the 80s and 90s).
There are other networks around the world, some also 100 years old (so maybe not 150 but 100 is still old and means that they were updated over and over again) and they keep a 24h service, they don’t have signal failures all the time, the trains are nicer and bigger (why are newer lines such as the Jubilee line still stuck with those dreadful small diameter tunnels and hence cramped trains), many have TV screens in the trains and you can walk through the train (which also enhances safety) and most other systems are much cheaper!
It’s the best metro style system I have used in any city across the world, simple to understand and use. And for a non-londoner has been very reliable every time I have sued it, with simple diversions for any lines suffering problems.
Agreed. I regularly use the New York subway, and also Munich and Paris. London is light years ahead of New York. Munich is better, but they have a lot more space as it’s a far newer system. Overall I don’t think Londoners have any idea how good they have it.
I’m with you on the simple to understand thing — the original designer of the Tube map was an absolute dude.
Harry Beck. The Man, the Dude. An icon of modern industrial design whose concepts were adopted by transport networks across the globe.
How was this guy not an OBE or something?
Amazing that they have continued to keep it running in the state it is now for quite so long. Happy Birthday, tube!
Another tube fact: you could take the tube to witness the last public hanging in Britain.
I think the tube is amazing and a bit of a victim of its own success. A lot of the trouble comes from the fact that it runs at capacity and this makes small problems cause delays. Plus I hate commuting into work with my face in someone’s armpit.
I think the tube needs improved capcity more than it needs improved reliability.
Doesn’t Glasgow have an underground railway…