Night tube dream, finally a reality
No, for real this time! Promise!
Remember last summer when London was oh-so close to having a 24 hour tube service on the weekend? Well it’s here, it’s finally bloody here.
After delays due to striking unions and arguments over pay and working conditions, the whole of the Victoria line and a good chunk of the Central line (Ealing Broadway to Loughton/Hainault) are now running all night on Friday and all night on Saturday.
Transport for London (TfL) have also set a start date for the Jubilee line of October 7th but the Northern and Piccadilly lines are merely touted as “coming this autumn”. Whether further delays from unions will bump this later on who’s to say.
The service will run at least every 20 minutes and every 10 minutes within central London and depending on where you’re going to and coming from and at what time, you might save a massive amount of time on getting home.
So what actually is the Night Tube like? felix sent me out to find out/I got drunk one night and Citymapper told me to use it. Long story short, it’s just like the normal tube but with a lot more police presence and slightly more rowdy people.
felix sent me out to find out/I got drunk one night and Citymapper told me to use it
British Transport Police have promised uniformed officers patrolling every station and I also, between naps, saw them walking through the carriages. Word to the wise, make sure that those little naps don’t turn into one giant one that ends when you reach the end of the line in deep dark zone 6 unless you fancy riding the tube all night that is.
The horrific prophecies of drunken brawls and projectile vomiting everywhere didn’t become a reality on that 2am-ish Victoria line train but I imagine at one time or another it’s bound to happen. TfL have already anticipated this though and have been running drills on cleaning up a “soiled train”. How reassuring.
Just how much is this going to affect people’s lives remains to be seen, 50,000 people did use the service in the first night alone though. There are plans to extend it onto the Metropolitan, Circle, District, and Hammersmith & City lines once modernisation programmes are complete, but that might be something for our great-grandchildren to enjoy.
