Coming soon: a break in the London Underground’s Circle Line

For New Yorkers accustomed to our snaking subway system, the concept of a feeder-style circle line is a foreign one. Our trains run from borough to borough, from the eastern-most reaches of Queens to the northern parts of Manhattan, from Coney Island to the Norwood, and the closest route we have to a circle are the short Shuttle routes in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

In London, though, the Circle Line is a way of life. This yellow line makes a loop around Zone 1 of the London Underground and offers passengers connection to every other Tube line. With no way out of the loop, this line is subject to frequent delays and is among the least reliable in London.

Yet, Londoners have a love-hate relationship with it. Apocryphal tales are told of drunk Londoners who ride around the line in circles until the Tubes shut down while tourists often board trains heading the wrong way around the loop. The Circle Line has even spawned an annual pub crawl requiring participants to down 28 drinks — one at a pub near each station and one on the train — in 12 hours.

But starting December 13, the Circle Line will be a circle no more. As The Times of London reports, Transport for London is cutting the loop with the aim of improving reliability along this delay-plagued line, and although riders will no longer be able to ride in a circle, the line will retain its iconic name. Fiona Hamilton writes:

In an upgrade to one of the capital’s oldest Tube lines, whose trains have previously travelled in loops, it is being extended to Hammersmith, in West London, with a tail added to the existing track. There will no longer be a through service between the west and north sides of the current Circle: accidental snoozers will be woken up to change trains at Edgware Road.

Transport for London (TfL) said that the changes would bring vast improvements. The Circle Line passes many of the capital’s landmarks, including the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament, yet has been unreliable.

TfL said that during disruptions the line’s continuous nature had resulted in particularly severe delays: the lack of a start and a terminus meant that trains “backed up” along the track. As the District Line and Hammersmith and City Line share parts of its track, disruptions on those services also result in delays on the Circle Line. Under the new system, defective trains would be more easily removed from the line, resulting in less disruption as well as a more frequent service.

I’ve been to London a few times, and I’m always struck by the Circle Line stations. Many of them resemble the Notting Hill Gate station and feature open-air trenches with some beautifully built arches along the walls. I never had the chance to ride the complete circle and now never will.

Over at Human Transit, Jarrett Walker offers up his views on the end of the circle. There is a reason why none of New York’s subways run on a loop. It is an inefficient way to construct a reliable subway station and results in what Walker calls “awkward” provisions for layovers, recovery times and unexpected train problems.

In a way, then, the opening of the Circle Line reminds me of the Second Ave. Subway‘s long-gone third track. With nowhere to go, stalled trains along Second Ave. will snare the entire route. It won’t be nearly as easy to fix as Transport for London’s Circle Line extension is.

Would you pay the fare to ride the subways if you didn’t have to? Would you pay it if the MTA relied upon the honor system and some rare patrols by New York County sheriffs?

In Los Angeles, the LACMTA has grappled with just this very question since its founding. Nearly two years ago, I reported on plans in Los Angeles to end this practice. In late 2007, Los Angeles’ own Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board voted to install turnstiles throughout Los Angeles’ subway system. After losing over $5 million a year to delinquent fare-evaders, the board had decided that enough was enough.

Today, we learn that the LACMTA has finally started installing those turnstiles. The 21-month turnaround may seem downright speedy when we compare it to our East Coast MTA’s construction and innovation efforts, but in the meantime, LA’s MTA has lost nearly $10 million in potential revenue. In the grand tradition of transit agencies, though, this program is still just in the pilot stages.

Dan Weikel of the Los Angeles Times reports:

For decades, the MTA has used a gate-free honor system in which passengers walk unimpeded to train platforms without verifying that they have a ticket. To catch fare cheaters, the agency has relied on random checks by civilian inspectors and sheriff’s deputies. But the fine for lacking a ticket — up to $250 — still hasn’t deterred some riders from taking their chances. Cheaters cost the system at least $5 million a year in lost revenue.

Now, eight turnstiles are in use on a trial basis at the Alameda Street portal for the Red Line stop in Union Station, and five are operating at the Wilshire-Normandie station. By the end of the month, 12 turnstiles are scheduled to be installed at the Pershing Square station and 10 at Westlake-MacArthur Park.

MTA officials want to determine whether the gates improve security and clamp down on cheaters while moving thousands of daily riders quickly to and from trains. If the system works well — a progress report is due by the end of September — the MTA will proceed with a $46-million plan to install 387 turnstiles and related security fences by early 2010 at all subway and Green Line light-rail stations and at selected stops for the Blue Line and Gold Line light-rail trains.

With that $46 million price tag, this program will take around nine years to pay for itself, but LACMTA officials claim the turnstiles are needed for more than just monetary reasons. Riders and officials alike cited terrorism and general public safety concerns as driving factors in the push to install turnstiles as well.

In the L.A. Times article, Weikel notes that the Los Angeles’ subway system handles 163,000 fares per day. New York’s system handles around 7.4 million more than that on a typical weekday. My, how the biggest cities on each coast have developed different approaches to transit.

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?