It seems self-indulgent to regale readers of this blog with a personal gripe, but indulge me a moment. Like all too many Londoners, I usually have to take our Tube (subway) system to work. It is unpleasant. It is irregular. It is often extremely noisy and the air pollution is bad. In the summer months, it is incredibly hot (we Brits cannot figure out airconditioning without bleating about how vastly expensive it is). And it seems a cult of incompetence has gripped the organisation that runs it, like ivy creeping around the trunk of a tree.
This morning, on the Victoria line, all trains north and south were halted “owing to a signal failure in the Kings Cross area.” At least that is what I thought the announcer mumbled into the microphone, though the voice was so hushed and marked by embarrassed pauses that he or she could have been announcing something entirely different, such as last night’s football scores.
We gung-ho capitalists may hope that an injection of raw, competitive private enterprise will blast all this complacency and mule-headed uselessness away. Maybe. But sometimes I wonder whether if the country that built the first great railway network 150 or more years ago is capable of every again running big engineering projects with a modicum of talent.
Right, I’ll cheer up now.
Sorry, but I’ve got little sympathy for Londoners on this one. Yes, London transport is worse than it used to be. But it’s still a zillion times better than the transport in every other UK city or town I’ve been to. What Londoners fail to realise is that the crap service you despair of is what other cities aspire to.
(I used to be a Londoner. One thing I miss about the city, and really enjoy when I visit, is the public transport.)
Jonathan Pearce wrote:
But sometimes I wonder whether if the country that built the first great railway network 150 or more years ago is capable of every again running big engineering projects with a modicum of talent.
I thought the railroads were built by private individuals/businesses, not by a country. Perhaps the individuals that built the first railroads would be perfectly capable of running the Tube, and it’s just the bureaucrats today that can’t do it.
Squander Two, you may be right to say public transport in London is better than in the rest of the UK. That is what I call damning with faint praise. A bit like saying that the food is better in London than the Artic Circle.
Ted – well, there is always hope. A shame we did not get Isambard Kingdom Brunel cryogenically suspended and brought back to life. You caught me in a bad mood!
Nice article