For three months we have been routing through Camden, through Charing Cross, through whatever sequence of replacement service the algorithm produces. The journeys have changed who we are on the way to work
By Lowri Griffiths. With editorial input from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Northern Line Bank branch has been, since February, closed for what Transport for London described as, in its initial announcement, a, quote, “scheduled programme of essential maintenance” expected to last six weeks. We are now in week fourteen. The maintenance is, by all accounts, more essential than originally projected. The reopening date has been revised three times. The current target is, depending on which TfL communication you trust, sometime in late summer.
I am writing this from the Camden branch, which is the branch we are all using now. We are not, on the whole, happy about it. The unhappiness is not really about the journey time, although the journey times have measurably increased. The unhappiness is about a more diffuse change to the daily texture of London life that I have been trying, since approximately week seven, to put my finger on.
What The Closure Has Done
The Northern Line Bank branch carried, in normal operations, approximately 187,000 passenger journeys per day. The closure has redistributed these journeys across, principally, the Charing Cross branch of the same line, the Victoria Line, the Elizabeth Line, the various replacement bus services, and a substantial increase in walking and cycling journeys for the inner-zone portion of the affected catchment.
The redistribution has produced, in operational terms, exactly the consequences that conventional transport analysis would predict. The Charing Cross branch is, in peak hours, substantially over capacity. The Victoria Line is moderately over capacity. The replacement buses are, by every measure I can identify, actively chaotic. The Elizabeth Line is fine, because the Elizabeth Line is always fine. The Elizabeth Line is, in some sense, the one piece of evidence that London is still capable of building good infrastructure.
The increased walking and cycling has been, on the available evidence, the most surprising consequence. People who have not walked from Old Street to the City in twenty years are walking from Old Street to the City. They are arriving slightly sweaty, slightly disoriented, and substantially more aware of the geography of their own commute than they were before.
For ongoing coverage of TfL operations, see The London Standard.
The Texture Of The Change
What I want to write about, however, is not the operational redistribution. The operational redistribution has been covered well by other writers. What I want to write about is the texture of the change, which I think is genuinely different from what the conventional transport coverage has captured.
I commute, normally, from Crouch End to a co-working space near London Bridge. The normal commute, on the Bank branch, is approximately 47 minutes door to door. It involves a particular sequence of micro-rituals: the coffee from the bagel place at Crouch End, the standing position on the platform at Highgate, the specific carriage I prefer to ride in, the specific exit at London Bridge that gets me to the co-working space three minutes faster than the others.
The current commute, routing through Camden and Charing Cross, is approximately 71 minutes door to door. It does not, by definition, support the same micro-rituals. The coffee place is the same. The platform standing position is, on the Camden branch, different. The preferred carriage is, on the new sequence, irrelevant. The exit at London Bridge is, after the longer journey, slightly less precisely calibrated. The whole sequence has been, in operational terms, randomised.
What This Has Done To Strangers
The randomisation has had, on the available evidence, specific effects on how Londoners interact with one another in transit. The Bank branch, in normal operations, contains a relatively stable community of regular commuters who have, over years, developed implicit recognition patterns. We did not speak to one another. We did, however, recognise one another. The recognition was, in some real sense, a form of community. It was the community of people who were, on the same day, taking the same train at the same time, and had been doing so for years.
The current routing, by mixing this community with the equivalent communities of other lines, has produced an environment of substantially increased strangerhood. The other passengers on my new commute are not, in any meaningful sense, my regular fellow-passengers. They are people who would, in normal operations, be commuting on different lines. They are, accordingly, strangers in a way the Bank branch passengers had stopped being.
The increased strangerhood has produced, in operational terms, a small but noticeable increase in the friction of public transport. People who are uncertain of their fellow-passengers are slightly less patient with bag-on-seat behaviours. People who are uncertain of their stop are slightly more anxious. People who are uncertain of the schedule are slightly more confrontational with the staff. None of these effects is large. All of them are real.
What The Drivers Have Said
I spoke last week with a driver who has worked the Northern Line for eighteen years. He was, at the time of our conversation, on a temporary assignment to one of the replacement bus routes. He said, with the slightly weary affect of a public-sector veteran, “It is not the closure. It is the lack of clear information about the closure. People can handle a closure. People struggle with a closure that keeps not ending.”
This is, I think, the central operational truth of the past fourteen weeks. TfL has not been, by every honest assessment, dishonest about the closure. They have, however, been substantially more optimistic in each successive communication than the actual pace of the maintenance has supported. The optimism has been, on the available evidence, well-intentioned. It has also been, in cumulative effect, more demoralising than honest pessimism would have been.
The Broader Pattern
The broader pattern, on careful reflection, is that London’s transport infrastructure has been, for at least a decade, in a state of continuous partial maintenance. There is always, somewhere on the network, a closure. There is always, somewhere, a replacement service. There is always, somewhere, a TfL communication describing the closure as essential and time-limited. The closures are, in cumulative terms, the new operating reality of the network.
What the Bank branch closure has done, in some sense, is concentrate this diffuse reality into a specific experience for a specific population of commuters. We are now, all of us, learning what regular users of, say, the District Line have known for years: that the network is, in operational practice, substantially less reliable than the public communications suggest, and that the unreliability is now sustained rather than episodic.
An ongoing analysis at City A.M. has covered the funding gap underlying the maintenance pattern. The picture is, by every honest reading, structural. TfL is being asked to maintain a network that requires, in absolute terms, more capital than the funding model currently delivers. The closures are the visible manifestation of the structural underfunding.
What I Miss
What I miss, more than the journey time, is the specific community of regular Bank branch commuters whom I had stopped being a stranger to. We did not speak. We recognised. The recognition was, in some sense I am only now able to articulate, one of the ways London actually worked.
The reopening will, presumably, restore most of these patterns. The recognition will return. The micro-rituals will resume. The strangers will become, gradually, familiar. The intervening period will, by then, have been, in operational terms, a parenthesis. It will, however, have lasted long enough that I will remember it.
I will remember the slightly anxious passengers on the Camden branch. I will remember the chaotic replacement buses. I will remember the slightly sweaty walkers from Old Street to the City. I will remember the eighteen-year-veteran driver on the temporary bus assignment. I will remember the texture, in particular, of being a stranger again on lines I had stopped being a stranger on.
The texture has been, on balance, useful. London has reminded me, against my preference, that the recognition I had built up was conditional. The conditions can be removed. The strangerhood can return. The reminder has been instructive. Read more from Lowri Griffiths.
Related at The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/northern-line-bank-strangers-of-us-all/
