Fiona MacLeod’s indispensable guide to tube etiquette, Oyster cards, the difference between the District and Circle lines, and the specific crime of stopping at the top of the escalator
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The London Underground is, from the visitor’s perspective, a system of extraordinary reach and reliability that will get you almost anywhere in central London and inner suburbs within twenty to thirty minutes and that costs significantly less than a taxi. From the Londoner’s perspective, it is also a shared social space with norms of behaviour whose violation produces the specific kind of contained British fury that is expressed not through confrontation but through the quality of the silence directed at the violator, which is cold and precise and very much felt. Visitors who understand these norms will have a better tube experience and will contribute less to the ambient frustration of the commuters around them. This guide attempts to convey them without condescension.
The Escalator
Stand on the right. Walk on the left. This rule applies on every escalator in every station in the London Underground. It is not a guideline. It is a social contract enforced by the glances of everyone standing on the right at anyone obstructing the left. If you are travelling with a companion and wish to talk to each other on the escalator, stand on the right and let the people who need to walk past do so. Do not stop at the top or bottom of the escalator. Move. The people behind you are still moving and will be directly behind you within approximately one second and there is nowhere for them to go if you are standing there consulting your phone.
These rules seem strict. They are enforced socially rather than legally. Their enforcement is effective precisely because the British form of social enforcement — the pointed avoidance of eye contact combined with the communicated awareness of your failure — is more uncomfortable than anything the actual law could impose. Follow the escalator rules and you will be invisible in the best possible way.
The Carriage
Do not make phone calls on the tube. Use headphones for audio content. Do not eat hot food with strong smells. Move down inside the carriage when it is full, rather than standing near the doors and preventing entry. Offer your seat to anyone who is pregnant, elderly, visibly disabled, or carrying a young child; the TfL “Baby on Board” badges worn by pregnant women are explicitly for this purpose and responding to them is the right thing to do. If you are standing near a person wearing a Baby on Board badge and are not certain whether the seat you are occupying is a priority seat, offer it anyway. The cost is standing for a few stops. The benefit to the recipient may be significant.
The District line and the Circle line share tracks and stations in central London in a way that confuses visitors who assumed they were separate. They are not always separate. Check the destination display on the front of the train and the platform indicator before boarding to confirm the train is going where you think it is going. The Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City, and Circle lines share tracks between Baker Street and Aldgate in a configuration that is entirely logical once explained and genuinely confusing before it is. The TfL Journey Planner app, which is free and excellent, handles this complexity for you and is worth installing before you arrive.
The Oyster Card
Get one. Load it with enough credit for your stay — £10 per person per day is a conservative estimate for moderate travel within zones 1 and 2, which covers the central tourist areas — and tap in and out of every journey. The daily cap on pay-as-you-go travel means that once your travel exceeds a fixed daily amount, subsequent journeys are free for the rest of the day. You will not overpay by using Oyster, because the cap prevents it. You will overpay if you buy individual paper tickets, which cost more per journey than Oyster and which require queuing at machines that are slower than the tap-in barriers that Oyster uses. The Visitor Oyster Card is available for purchase in advance online or at Heathrow and Gatwick. The standard Oyster Card is available at every underground station. The difference between them is largely irrelevant for a short visit; get either.
The Zones
London’s tube network is divided into nine fare zones radiating outward from the centre. Most tourist destinations are in zones 1 and 2. The airports are in zones 3 (Heathrow is zone 6), 4, and beyond. Travel within zones 1 and 2 is cheaper than travel that crosses zone boundaries. If your hotel is in zone 3 or beyond, your daily travel cost will be higher than if it is in zones 1 or 2, and this is worth factoring into accommodation decisions alongside the headline room rate. Zones 1 and 2 cover, between them, the entirety of central London including all major tourist sites, all major mainline stations, and the majority of areas visitors want to be in. Unless you have a specific reason to stay in zone 3 or beyond, zone 1 or 2 accommodation simplifies your travel considerably.
The tube map is a design classic but a geographic distortion: the map represents the network topology clearly but does not represent actual geographic distances. Distances between central London stations that appear far apart on the map are sometimes walkable in ten to fifteen minutes, which is often faster than the tube. The TfL Walk London initiative and the standard mapping apps both provide walking directions that regularly reveal that your next destination is a more pleasant walk than tube journey.
Fiona MacLeod writes about London travel for The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Her homepage is at prat.uk/author/fiona-macleod.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/how-to-use-london-underground-without-making-everyone-furious-fiona/
