While studying abroad, I took a trip to London, England. While there I realized one thing that is so true about the city, they sure do know public transportation! After my time in London I don't understand why every other major city in the world doesn't have such an amazing transportation system. Everywhere in London that I wanted to go, the Tube was able to get me within a few blocks, so I grew to have much respect for it. I'm sure living there and experiencing the foot traffic the Tube experiences daily wouldn't make me like the Tube as much as I do as an outside, but as a traveler with limited time and no car access (Not to mention the fact that I probably wouldn't even be able to drive it on the left side of the road! It would throw me off so much!), the Tube was total perfection.
So I thought I'd do a little background information on the Tube. Wikipedia has to say about the London Underground:
The London Underground (often shortened to the Underground) is a rapid transit system in England, serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex. It incorporates the oldest section of underground railway in the world, which opened in 1863 and now forms part of the Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines; and the first line to operate electric trains, in 1890, now part of the Northern line.
The Underground system is also colloquially called the Tube.The Underground serves 270 stations and has 402 kilometres (250 mi) of track, making it the second largest metro system in the world in terms of route miles, after the Shanghai Metro. It also has one of the largest numbers of stations. In 2007, more than onebillion passenger journeys were recorded, making it the third busiest metro system in Europe, after Moscow and Paris. The tube is an international icon for London, with the tube map, considered a design classic, having influenced many other transport maps worldwide. Currently, 86% of operational expenditure on the London Underground is covered by passenger fares. Almost all London Underground trains currently lack air-conditioning, which leads to the network getting very hot in the summer, although plans are under way to mitigate this problem with new air-conditioned trains and other schemes.
So, admittingly it does get quite hot inside of the Tube (even when I was there in the winter, I was sweating because of how many people are crammed into such a limited underground area), but even with the heat and the sweat I still think it's an amazing feat of the modern day. So on that note I'd thought I'd find some awesome pictures on Flickr and share them with this post, not to mention my own photos from my trip.
My photos:
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| From November 2010. |
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| From one Victoria to another. |
How Flickr got the Tube right!:
