Transport in London is shit

It's not just tourists -- the commuters do an even more savage thing of walking on the left then *stopping* for the last few steps as it shallows out, holding up the entire escalator.

If just once they'd look back they'd see the stairs of rage glowering at them and surely never do it again.

i don't think i've had a single journey where i haven't thought "what is fucking WRONG with the tube" at least once.

bring a book

ha, that would drive me crazy, speeding up the left hand side of the escalator is great fun, also races w friends or gf when there are two escalators available. angel is esp good for that iirc

angel escalators are dope

Compared to Glasgow, London's transport is a quasi-mystical wonderland of cheap, frequent services that go where you want, btw.

don't try it stet! it just riles them up

"I had to wait NINETEEN SECONDS for a train the other day, it normally comes in seventeen, what the ACTUAL FUCK DO THEY THINK THEY'RE PLAYING AT"

Compared to Glasgow, London's transport is a quasi-mystical wonderland of cheap, frequent services that go where you want, btw.

Bus drivers are bigger wankers in Glasgow too, in my experience. London ones aren't that bad generally.

depends massively on the route ime

is there a journey planner that works better than the tfl one? it seems to enjoy adding 30 minutes and three legs to every actually-quite-simple journey.

http://walkit.com/cities/london/

seriously - I walk everywhere now unless it's raining very heavily.

google map the directions and choose public transport

xpost

walking in london is awesome, especially if you head off down the little streets and away from the main roads - you stumble on so much awesomeness

In my nearly two weeks here I've never used transit (except to get here from Heathrow). The city is made for walking.

I think I'm gonna walk to the Freud Museum, and then maybe down to Regent's park. Can anyone recommend anything otherwise notable in that area?

Keats' House at Hampstead Heath possibly worth a visit. London zoo, of course.

camden arts centre's v close to the freud museum but annoyingly between-exhibitions.

there are iirc a couple of nice japanese and korean delis off the finchley road where you could pick up something to have for lunch later.

Primrose Hill

yeah before i came here i walked everywhere and i don't want to give that up, but sometimes the practicality of getting places from hackney weighs down. also i am useless with directions and maps and such, so until i get smartphone and so lose the possibility of getting irredeemably lost, walking can be a bit scary.

(the google maps directions do indeed look a lot better, thanks!)

i still habitually carry an a-z around with me, seven years after moving to london (and regularly use it) (can't get maps to work on smartphones)

The first week for me consisted mostly of just a desire for a smartphone, then I learned the joy of getting lost. Now my feet just hurt, so the walks from paddington to shoreditch and back are going to have to wait (actually, it wasn't too fun overshooting my destination by 25 minutes yesterday).

I ordered an Oyster pass, so once I realize the weather isn't supposed to be like it is now, and once the weight of grad school work condenses my schedule, I'll have to learn to work around tfl.

Merdeyeux - re: TfL journey planner - have you played around with the options? The default setting is 'average' walk speed and a limit of 20 minutes walking - I always up this to half an hour and say that I walk quickly, otherwise it tends to make the journeys more complicated than they really need to be.

fiddling does make it a bit better, but still not entirely - the big one that really made me notice its faults is that it refused to point out to me the very easy overground route from my house in hackney to harringay.

while i'm talking about london i need to express this: holy shit what a bunch of cunts the old blue last has for clientele.

I have an 18+ Student Oyster Card, but when I try to put a travelcard on it on the Oyster website it tries to charge me at the regular rate. I'd call but I don't have a phone yet...

Anyone know what the deal with this is?

still never been to the old blue last

i love the palm tree

EDB - I have no idea, but if you find out can you post it here? (I'm trying to help a load of foreign students apply online for 18+ student cards)

So, when about to head out tonight I realised my oyster card had disappeared off the face of the planet, presumably dropped on a bus 2 or 3 weeks ago when I last used it. I set off moodily to the station expecting to have to fill in numerous forms, show various proofs of ID and address, and get a load of photos done. Apparently not. I got a replacement I about a minute without even giving my name.

Xpost: got a reply from tfl essentially saying "just pay at the machine, dude"
Also, I am writing this on a tfl bus. Appropriately meta.

http://citymapper.co.uk/

FUCKING HELL SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE LYING PIECE OF SHIT ON THE TFL WEBSITE

I like how they give you the prices.

It doesn't seem to understand that I might want to use the bus AND the tube

or that there are trains. Fastest time it has for my 28-min commute to work is 1h.

Looks good for short journeys, TFL Journey Planner is shit

It's ideal for Hackney, which has no Tube and barely has trains

It's certainly shit at weekends. Reduced to near fire-bombing rage yesterday and today when I'm
forced to travel beyond my walking range.

The hours of sunlight are so precious at this time of year in the Uk- and wasting time today with Victoria Line collapse which buses seem completely unprepared for.

It is virtually impossible to get a bus westward across the City nowadays, everything gets ridiculously snarled up around Cannon Street. Seriously got to the point where walking is the best way from getting from London Bridge to Holborn.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ofP0oDbML-w/TTNMdvneJSI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/nrbP4i3JSFc/s1600/walking-man-i.jpg

It’s a combination of Boris not really wanting Londoners in central London at the weekend, just rich tourists who can afford to stay at the Savoy, walk around town and attend Boris’ Big Events (you think this is bad? Wait until the Olympics, when presumably we’ll be shot if we try to venture beyond, say, Hyde Park Corner) and the underlying and insoluble problem with London transport which is that the roads are too narrow; the place was built for horse-drawn carriages and in the hugely irritating old-school Viennese style which means lots of sloping streets converging at one big junction, rather than a more sensible grid system. Short of knocking down the entire city and rebuilding from scratch, though, I don’t really see what could be done to solve the problem.

Well for one they could work on the lines at night, rather than on the weekend, which just inconveniences several thousands more.

I'm just in a bad mood after being so painfully scorned by tfl headaches yesterday.

30 minute snarl up on the way to work today thanx to some piddling little piece of nondescript roadmending. Don't know why the economy's so bad, there appear to be tens of thousands of guys working on digging up virtually every street in London.

Their excuse for not doing night work is "complaints from local residents."

They've been working on Holloway Road at night for a while, hundreds of the buggers swarming all over it.

you sure that's not the Joe Meek Appreciation Society?

I've noticed that the presence of suicidal landlady murderer Joe Meek's former studio isn't exactly advertised round here. For the first few years after I moved here the (I think it's green, from memory) plaque was obscured by a To Let sign.

You know what happens a lot here that I just can't imagine ever being acceptable anywhere, is when buses abruptly change their destination mid-journey. I'd say this happens on the 341 at least once every couple of weeks in the morning: the bus will be going to waterloo, then all of a sudden (usually around the angel, but sometimes not until holborn) it just announces that it'll terminate at the aldwych. I always get off before that anyway, but I still get indignant on behalf of the (possibly imagined) people on my bus who have been on it since Tottenham and need to actually get to waterloo. Like, why don't they just pick a fucking destination and stick to it?!

Also cosign every road being dug up everywhere, always. Or at least that's what it feels like.

although now that I've got that off my chest I feel like I should say that transport in london is still pretty fucking amazing.

in my experience, the route changes are mostly to do with drivers hours - they can't drive passengers after a certain number of hours. i once got on a bus which turned us all out *1 stop* later (and then proceeded past where i was going and onto the depot empty).

but yes, anyone who's ever lived anywhere where the buses stop at 18:00 and there are no buses at all on a sunday would never complain at london transport.

Seriously. I moved here from a city with pretty much 2 and a half subway lines (for over 3 million people).

but yes, anyone who's ever lived anywhere where the buses stop at 18:00 and there are no buses at all on a sunday would never complain at london transport.

the village up the hill from where i grew up had one bus a WEEK and i still complain about london transport's permanent guerrilla campaign to ruin people's lives

buses abruptly terminating mid-journey is one of the worst things it does. especially if it's a pretty packed bus, the one behind that everyone has to try to cram on to is also packed, and for the entire miserable experience you get to pay the overpriced fare twice

in my experience, the route changes are mostly to do with drivers hours - they can't drive passengers after a certain number of hours.

seems what the problem is, is failing to plan adequately so that drivers can actually get to the end of the route within their hours (ie including taking into account mental traffic jams which mean it takes 45 minutes to drive round holborn circus FOR EXAMPLE) (cuz in practice, that's when it most often happens - ie when all the passengers are at their most stressed/late/grumpy anyway)

Barclays bikes are definitely my favourite thing about transport in London these days. Use them all the time for quick trips into town etc, much more convenient than taking my own bike.