Londoners are very possessive about their drinking. They like to drink in pubs; they like to drink at home; and they like to drink on the Tubes on the way home from pubs. That is, they liked to drink on the Tubes until midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning a new ban on alcohol on the Tubes took effect.

The ban is the product of new Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Johnson, the Conservative candidate, recently beat incumbent Ken Livingstone in what Calvin Trillin called an entertaining election in The New Yorker. Part of Johnson’s campaign was a drive to make London’s public transit system cleaner and safer for employees and non-drunk travelers.

As you could imagine, the general public was not too accepting of the ban when it went into effect late Saturday night. At a party called Last Round on the Underground to commemorate the last chance to drink on the Tubes, revelers went a bit overboard. The BBC reports:

Six London Underground stations were closed as trouble flared when thousands of people marked the banning of alcohol on London transport with a party.

Four tube drivers, three other staff members, and two police officers were assaulted, and there were 17 arrests. Several trains were damaged and withdrawn from service, which led to suspended services.

Drinkers gathered on Tube trains and station concourses for a last drink before the ban came in at midnight. Police said what should have been a fun event came to an “unfortunate” end.

The finger-pointing started pretty early on Sunday morning with union leaders blaming Mayor Johnson. They said the ban was hastily put into place and enforcement measures are not up to par.

In fact, London does not plan to increase patrols in the Tubes. Rather, they are relying on what the BBC has termed a “softly, softly” approach. Other riders and alert Transport for London staffers are supposed to police the ban as best they can. That sounds about as efficient as our beloved MTA.

Now, I’m fairly entertained by this story. During my first trip to London in the spring of 2001, I remember being struck by the prevalence of discarded alcohol containers. There were empty beer bottles all over the Tubes and I didn’t realize during that first trip that it was actually fine to drink on their subways. Here, in New York, people sneak drinks into brown bags and Nalgene bottles.

During a few of my subsequent trips to London, I was always entertained to see how the passengers were on the those final Tube trips as people rushed home from their nights out to catch the last trains back to wherever they’re heading — perhaps to some amusingly named suburbs. People just took the parties with them underground. Imagine that one in New York.

As the MTA prepares to raise our fares, 3000 miles away, a fare drama of a different sort is playing out. Let’s leave behind our tales of Webinars and rising fares and journey for a few paragraphs to the City of Angels where the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is coming to grips with its fare reality.

Here in New York, we hear tales of the Los Angeles County urban sprawl. It runs for miles and miles with roads - clogged roads with cars spewing smog-inducing pollutants into the air - weaving in and around whatever passes for a city out there. By any stretch, the LA freeways are a disaster.

So that would lead you to believe that LA has a vibrant public transportation system, right? Get those cars off the road and away from the headaches of congestion, right? Not quite. The LA railways consist of some light rail lines and a few subways with the oldest dating from the dark ages of 1990. With just 73 miles of track and some 62 stations, the system is hardly worth much in the eyes of the residents of LA. It’s daily ridership is some 274,344 or about 7 million less than what our subways see in a day.

What’s surprising about this low number is that the subways are, in effect, free. There are no turnstiles and riders have to show passes to conductors if those conductors happen to pass through and ask. The LA MTA wants to end this ridiculous practice, and not everyone in Los Angeles is on board. Randal Archibold writes:

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board voted [two weeks ago] to take the first step toward installing 275 ticket gates on the entire 17.4-mile subway and at many light-rail stations.

The move came after a study given to the board in October found that some 5 percent of people who rode the subway, light rail and a new rapid bus line on weekdays did so without paying the fare, $1.25 one way or $5 for a daily pass. As a result, the report said, the authority lost about $5.5 million in revenue annually.

Fare-collecting gates, which could cost $30 million to install and $1 million a year to maintain, would yield an extra $6.77 million in recovered fares and other savings, according to the report.

So how about that? No more free rides. What a concept.

What’s more surprising about this decision is that the MTA in LA didn’t bother to install turnstiles or other fare-capture devices from the get-go. The folks on the West Coast claim they wanted to try something else. A subway fare honor system is so California.

While most folks in Los Angeles understand the environmental need for a viable subway and know that fare capture will aid the LA MTA’s expansion plans, some MTA board members are saying the darndest things. One board member expressed his concerns that the turnstiles would hinder emergency evacuation efforts. Does that even make sense?

So as everyone in New York gears up for a fare hike and our MTA readies itself for more criticism, enjoy this laugh at the expense of Los Angeles. At least we’re not trying to figure out how to capture the fare.

Londoners, coping with a transit worker strike, walk home from work on Tuesday. (Photo by flickr user Orhan*)

As New York sits on the brink of a taxi strike that, as SUBWAYblogger accurately notes, won’t be noticeable in the morning, our London brethren across the Atlantic spent Tuesday coping with day one of a potential three-day transit strike. Well, much like the over-hyped taxi strike, the London transit strike won’t turn out to be as bad as expected.

While Wednesday’s rush-hour commute for Londoners will still be rife with problems, the strike — or at least this week’s strike — has been halted after productive talks between the two sides. The workers still have the option to walk out of the job next Monday as originally planned, but by Wednesday afternoon, things should be back to normal in London.

Lucky them. Our transit strike lasted a legitimate three days. The Guardian has more:

Millions of London commuters are facing further travel misery this morning, even though the RMT union last night suspended its strike which brought the bulk of London’s tube network to a halt …

Sources said the breakthrough in the negotiations had come too late to prevent further disruption during today’s morning rush hour, though a deal could see services improve later in the day. The latest development came as the RMT was under increasing political pressure to halt a dispute which had led to the suspension of nine of the 12 tube lines.

As I noted yesterday, the maintenance workers are concerned about securing guaranteed pensions after Metronet, one of the public-private partnerships tasked with running nine of the 12 tube lines, entered bankruptcy. While Transport for London, the other PPP, is trying to assume control of those nine lines, for now, the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union workers want Metronet to secure their futures.

London, a more frequent victim of transit strikes and 24-hour worker industrial actions, will be relieved to see things return to some semblance of normalcy this week. And I’ll return to the MTA and New York (and mislabeled subway stations) now that the fun in London appears to be over.

Remember back in the dark ages of December 2005 when TWU workers struck for three days? Remember when New Yorkers had to walk for miles and miles to get to work and many of them simply telecommuted for a few days? Remember how the middle of winter sure seemed like a terrible time for a transit strike?

Well, think back fondly on those three days and be thankful you’re not in London. At 6 p.m. British Standard Time this evening, 2300 maintenance workers employed by Metronet, the bankrupt public-private partnership tasked with running nine of the 12 London Underground lines, went on strike. With no workers around to maintain the system, Transport for London shut down those nine lines, and they will remain inactive until Friday morning. The New York Times has more:

London’s subway network virtually shut down at the height of the rush hour on Monday evening when 2,300 maintenance workers walked off the job in what they said would be a three-day strike over pensions and security.

Transportation officials then closed nine subway lines, the bulk of the system. They said it was too dangerous to keep the network going without the workers, who are responsible for maintaining and repairing tracks, signals, trains and the like. Just three lines — the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, which are maintained by workers who belong to another union — were operating Monday night.

While New Yorkers may simply say that Londoners are going through what we went through two years ago, matters are first worse in London. First, these transit workers are threatening to strike for another 72 hours starting next Monday if their demands are not met and fears are not assuaged by Friday morning. Additionally, in a move sure to embolden the anti-congestion fee lobby in New York, London mayor Ken Livingston has rankled many would-be drivers when he announced that London’s eight-pound congestion charge would stand during the strike.

The problems in London, as The New York Times explains and The Times of London outlines in this article, stems from problems surrounding Metronet. When the Tubes fell under the auspices of this public-private partnership, Livingston foresaw financial problems such as this one.

In July, Metronet entered administration, the British equivalent of the American concept of receivership. The workers are worried that pensions and job security will not be guaranteed if and when Transport for London completes its bid to take over the Tube lines currently run by Metronet.

Meanwhile, London economists are predicting losses of up to £50 million, and 3.2 million potential London straphangers are left struggling to find alternate routes home. Plus, they could get to do it all over again next week.

Sounds like a blast, no?

The McGill Metro stop in Montreal was literally falling down this weekend (Photo by flickr user blork)

Subways all over the globe had issues this weekend, and after yesterday’s post noting the problems in China and Washington, DC, my readers were more than happy to share their experiences in subway systems that just can’t measure up to New York’s.

The best tip came from Greg who e-mailed me about the problems in Montreal. On Friday, officials shut down the McGill Metro stop in Montreal when two large cracks were discovered in the tunnels linking the subway station to a nearby mall. That sounds like fun. CBC News had more:

Police emptied buildings and sealed off a large section of Montreal’s downtown core for the weekend, and service was cancelled on part of one subway line after two fissures in a tunnel linking the McGill station to malls were discovered Friday…

Fearing that roads could collapse, Montreal police cleared several city blocks of people in an area bordered by Sherbrooke, St. Catherine and Bleury streets and University Avenue, and shut the streets to traffic.

With a major university laying claim to this subway stop, New Yorkers can imagine this infrastructure issue happening right here in the playground that is the West Village. Imagine if deep fissures appeared in the ceiling at the West 4th St. stop (which is not hard to picture if you’ve looked closely at that station lately). Not only would the city be collectively flipping out, but service on up to 8 subway lines would be messed up.

So as the week rolls on and the State Comptroller tells us that the MTA doesn’t really need that fare hike, we can yet again be grateful that the tracks aren’t catching fire as they are in Washington, D.C., and that the sky — or ceiling — isn’t falling like it is in Montreal. Yet.