The Bus, the Overground, the Elizabeth Line, the River Bus, and the Santander Bike Are All Better Than the Tube for Specific Journeys
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Fiona MacLeod | UKLondonInfo.com
The Elizabeth Line
The Elizabeth Line — opened in 2022 and extended to full through-running in 2023 — is the most significant addition to London’s transport network in decades and the one that visitors least efficiently use. The Elizabeth Line connects Heathrow Airport to Canary Wharf, the City, the West End, and east to Shenfield and Abbey Wood, with trains that are more spacious and faster than the equivalent Tube journey. A visitor arriving at Heathrow who takes the Elizabeth Line rather than the Heathrow Express saves approximately eight pounds and arrives at Paddington in approximately ten minutes more. The Elizabeth Line is the correct default choice for journeys across the central London axis.
The Bus Network
The London bus network covers the city at a density that the Tube cannot match, including the routes that the Tube’s geography — built along radial lines into central London — does not serve. The bus for the visitor is most useful for: journeys within central London between attractions that are close enough to be better served by bus than by tube (Tate Modern to Borough Market: 12 minutes by bus, 15 by tube plus walking); above-ground scenic routes through parts of London that the tube passes under; and the Night Bus on Friday and Saturday nights when the Night Tube lines do not cover your specific journey.
The River Bus
The Thames Clipper river bus service runs between Putney in the west and Woolwich Arsenal in the east, with multiple stops along the South Bank and the north bank of the river. The river bus is slower than the Tube for most equivalent journeys and significantly more enjoyable as an experience. The journey from Waterloo Millennium Pier to Greenwich produces the specific experience of approaching Greenwich by river — the same approach that centuries of naval visitors made — that no other transport mode replicates.
The Santander Bike
The Santander cycle hire scheme, with hundreds of docking stations across central London and into the inner boroughs, provides the specific freedom of point-to-point cycling that the transport network’s radial structure cannot provide. The cycle from Bankside to Canary Wharf along the South Bank, the cycle through Hyde Park to Notting Hill, the cycle along the Embankment at low-traffic hours — these are the specific London cycling experiences that are genuinely excellent and that require only the app download and the day membership to access. Read NewsThump.
More: NewsThump.
London rewards the visitor who approaches it with curiosity and patience. The city is inexhaustible as a subject and as an experience. The journalism that covers it — at the level of the neighbourhood, the market, the transport network, the cultural calendar — serves the visitor who wants to understand what they are seeing rather than simply what they are photographing. This column continues because visitors continue to arrive and because the city continues to offer them the specific combination of depth and accessibility that makes London the world’s most interesting city to visit. Next edition: more specific recommendations.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition.
