The Rules of Moving around London

Categories: circumnavigation, buildings-and-cities

Date: 12 October 2011 16:51:01

Regular readers (all both of them) will notice that this is a repost of something I first posted over two years ago at: The 09:59 to Waterloo

This is partly because that was tagged-on to the end of a rantlet about something else and I feel like separating it out, but also is prompted by some fun blog posts by Brendan Nelson at The Geneva Convention of Public Transport and a couple of earlier posts linked to it. Read them as well as this!

How to Move Around in London

Let me tell you the truth about commuting. You have a DUTY to your fellow human beings when you are walking in a big commuter crowd in a place where acts of public transport are committed. It is to get out of the way of the people behind you as quickly as possible . And that usually involves getting to wherever you are going as quickly as possible. So the right thing to do is to move as fast as is compatible with health and safety. To move opportunistically, to fill gaps, to pass slower people, and to keep on going... this is not selfishness, that is being public spirited. It gets you out of the way. It gets you out of MY way for a start.

There are RULES about this. Let me share a few with you. And we don't wan to hear any more of this "nobody told me the rules before I came to London..." Big Boy's games - Big Boy's Rules. (*) These are the rules. You HAVE been warned!

Universal rules

Buy your ticket or pass before you get on the bus or train. Don't offer the driver money. That's so twentieth century.

Don't try to talk. Everyone will think you are mad.

It is always open season for hunters of luggage on a stick

Let passengers off the bus or train before you try to get on. If you don't we probably won't kill you - but I have seen a busdriver refuse to move until someone who pushed on got off the bus.

There are nice maps on every bus stop and at station that show you exactly how to get where you are going. Use them.

Yes, you do get up off your seat for someone who is pregnant, aged, carrying small children, or visibly more crippled than you are. Even in London. Even on a delayed Northern Line train creakingly approaching Bank from London Bridge at 0850 on a wet Monday in a recession. Yes, this means YOU!

The Rules of the Train

(and the Platform)

Drop not your paper cup on the seat when you get off the train. That IS littering.

Drop your newspaper on the seat when you get off the train. This is NOT littering.

If you ask people which train to get from Embankment to Charing Cross you deserve to get laughed at.

Mind the Gap!

Move to the back of the train

No eye-contact

Read your own book

Stand clear of the doors please!

When the machine at the barrier rejects your ticket or pass you do NOT stand there like a drunken Dover sole in a warm puddle wondering what to do. You do NOT try it again and again. You get out of the way as quickly as possible and sort it out with the nice person at the big gate where they let the luggage through.

The Rules of the Bus

(and the Bus Stop)

Be nice to bus drivers. It gets you where you are going quicker. And the driver DOES have a direct radio link to the police. And these days the police come armed. You have been warned.

Do not argue with the driver. Even if you are in the right. You really do not want the karmic burden that is being laid upon you by the eighty-seven angry commuters stuck behind you who want to get a move on.

Do not bang on the door of a bus trying to get in. The driver will think you are a looney.

Do not stand in the folding doorway of a bus pathetically groping around inside your clothing in the hope that you have mysteriously grown a season ticket. Get off, let the bus go. There will be another one. You might even find your ticket once you don't have the stress of fending off delay-maddened passengers

Hold very tight please! And I mean the handrail, not the woman in front of you.

The back seats on the ground floor of a double-decker bus are too hot for human beings.

When you get off the bus look both ways as if you were stepping off a kerb into a road. Because that is what you are doing.

And yes, much as I love cyclists, and much as I know that most cyclists are far safer road-users than most car-drivers, I have seen one or two suicidal idiots try to ride between a bus and the kerb. Just. Don't. Do. That.

The Rules of the Moving Staircase

(and the Corridor)

Stand on the Right, Walk on the Left

The sign that says "walk on the left" does NOT mean that you don't walk on your right if it is quicker or safer to go on the right. Its a corridor, not the bloody motorway. You have a duty to get where you are going for the sake of the other two million people using the system, you have a duty to do so safely, and if walking on the right makes it quicker or safer, do it

The sign that says "walk on the left" does NOT mean that you religiously stick to the left if someone is running the other way on their right, playing a sort of commuter chicken. Get out of their way. Get out of their way on the double if they are riding a bike, whether legally or illegally.

On the other hand the sign telling you to stand on the right walk and on the left of the escalator DOES mean stand on the right. Like everyone else does. Not on the left. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the pie and if you stand on the left - or even sort of lean a little over to the left - or let your bag or your baby or your baby-buggy encroach on the left - then YOU ARE THAT BAD APPLE. There is a special place in the FOURTH CIRCLE OF HELL being prepared for those who stand on the left on the escalator and I can tell you that those escalators go a LONG WAY DOWN!!!!

The sign that says babies must be carried and not seated in their pushchair does NOT mean that you stop the buggy right at the top of the escalator and spend a minute and a half trying to persuade the little one to get out and walk (**)

When you get to the bottom of the escalator you carry on walking. You do not stop to look around. Especially you do not stop to look around if you have luggage on a stick ready to smash the ankles or knees of the fifteen people behind you. Age is no excuse.

(*) That works better in a Gene Hunt accent.

(**) And frankly, I think having a kid strapped in to a pushchair on the escalator is a damn sight safer than trying to go on it with child in one arm, folded buggy in another hand, and all your luggage in your third hand while holding on the rail with a fourth hand. That needs two more hands than most passengers have. I have yet to see Kali dragging her sprogs through the tube system. Of course there are some parts of the lower levels of Victoria that she would do best to avoid.