James Cheshire
Lecturer
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
University College London
“
We’re interested in how cities work and particularly how London works, and the Tube is
a huge part of that – if you didn’t have the Tube, you’d have all kinds of problems. We map
data about the Tube because people respond well to maps, especially Tube maps. People
love any map related to the Tube and they trust maps.
“
We get the data that Transport for London (London’s transport governing body) uses
for departure boards and use that to run a live map showing an approximate position of
where every single train is on the system at any particular time. We also have that data on
every single individual journey taken in London. We use these to map large-scale flows of
people to find out which are the busiest stations. Then we can model specific situations –
such as what might happen if King’s Cross had to close. We are interested in what happens
when things don’t work so when we got the data from the (London 2012) Olympic Games
we were secretly hoping something would go wrong, but the network held up really well so
all you have is data showing everybody moving around easily.
“
We are working towards finding more sophisticated ways to model the data. At the
moment if there’s a problem on the Tube you find out too late and aren’t presented with
an alternative journey. We want to be able to tell people in advance about problems while
presenting useful alternatives.”
»
Ben Pedroche
Ghost station expert
“
Ever since I was young I was fascinated by the Tube. My
brother told me about the abandoned ‘ghost stations’ and the
more I read about them the more fascinated I became.
“
There are about 25 ghost stations. There are some great
ones on the Piccadilly line, where they built too many
stations. One of them, Down Street, has a great history: it was
used as a temporary cabinet war room during World War II.
The best known one is Aldwych, where the London Transport
Museum hosts occasional tours. Some have completely
disappeared, like British Museum – you can glimpse the
platforms on the Central line, but there’s no building. The
only people with a good idea of what infrastructure remains
are the urban explorers. These guys have explored every
abandoned station on the network. Sometimes they break in
or they slip in when engineers are working at night.
“
I decided to write a series of walks that take you past some
of the remaining parts of stations at street level, and I also
included some train rides where you can still see platforms.
The best train journey is the Metropolitan line from Finchley
Road to Liverpool Street, where you pass three ghost stations
and then a load of unused platforms. A lot of trains go through
these ghost stations, so hundreds of thousands of people pass
through them every day and don’t even know they are there.”
Ben Pedroche’s
Do Not Alight Here: Walking London’s Lost
Underground and Railway Stations
is published by Capital
Transport Publishing
“
The only
people with
a good idea
of what
infrastructure
remains are
the urban
explorers”
Know your Tube
The busiest station is
Waterloo, which serves 82
million passengers each year.
The length of the Tube
network is 402km, 45 per
cent of which is
in tunnels.
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