Showdown

In the final post about the Underground vs Subway Showdown I compare the people when I look at etiquette on both systems.

I probably have written about this before when living in New York. People can be rude on the subway. Well, maybe not rude but self-centered. It’s easy to say that in any densely populated area you get some percentage of clowns. In New York I would constantly have to walk around someone sitting on stairways. Tying their shoes on a busy stairway. Walking against crowds on stairways or hallways. Then there are the people who walk into a relatively empty train and stop right at the door. The door huggers are likely the same people that won’t move into the middle of the car when it’s super crowded and there’s plenty of room in the middle. It feels like mad Max underground sometimes.

In London I was surprised that people do walk the wrong way and a hallway or on the stairwell. I thought that was a big no-no here. Just like cutting the queu is. Some people do it however it’s not terrible. I will say that in all the stations there are signs and barricades to herd the people in a much better way than I’ve seen in New York. Generally people follow the signs. The only exception is the overpass at the station by my house. For some reason people do not read what it says keep left.

In London pregnant women can get buttons so people know to stand up and give them a seat. I have seen strangers tap people sitting down to make room for ladies with the button. That is a stark contrast to New York when my wife was pregnant she would have to rub her belly or just tell people they needed to get up from the handicap seats because otherwise many people wouldn’t get up.

When I go anywhere with the kids even if my wife and the kids get seats people offer to get up for me to. I almost feel awkward to take it but everyone is pretty friendly. When it is just me in New York everyone was generally equally very friendly. Yet if it was a crowded train the kids would typically get seats only. I am generally impressed with the level of effort people goto to help a family out.

After I wrote this post I came back and had to make updates to it. I  taking the escalator down the platform in Canary wharf to catch the Jubilee line. It was rush-hour and it was crowded. And I saw a large amount of people standing on the platform. Always interesting to me was that everyone was standing in a line by where the door for the train would open. This station is relatively new so there were glass doors between the platform and tracks so you know where the doors will open. People line up on either side of those doors and wait in queue for a train to arrive. I remembered I’ve seen that before at rush hour in that station. That visual alone in my opinion gets London the win. I cannot remember ever seeing such an orderly display of waiting in New York.

As you might’ve guessed the winner here London, easily. I still think New York gets a bad reputation for people being not nice. On the subway there is some validity to that.

Winner

If you’ve read this far you can tell that there’s no contest for me here. My unscientific rating system is the London mass transit system (Tube & DLR for me) is just better. There are some aspects of the New York city transit system that I miss. They just aren’t that compelling enough to come anywhere near swaying the decision. For example I irrationally miss a good express train. Even when the Tube trains I take generally feel like (and i have been told they actually do) they move faster than an express or a local in New York.

This is part 3 of my super scientific comparison and contrasting of the NYC Subway and the London Underground. In this part I tak about crowds and why I do not love them so much.

Rush hour in New York can be interesting. When I lived on the upper East side I would have to wait pretty often for five trains before I could even get on one. I lived at the 96th St stop on the Lexington Ave line. at 96th. As Upper East side goes that is pretty north and it was still horrible at rush hour. When I lived in Long Island city if there was any problem with the 7 train I would have to wait. You paid the price for being at the last stop in Queens. One time had to wait about seven trains to get on. Typically 2-3 would be a regular occurrence.

In more recent years when I lived in Forest Hills the crowds in the morning haven’t been as bad since I was at a stop that had 2 Locals & 2 Express trains and I could take any of them to work. Getting home however I would have to pick what line to goto and it could get pretty interesting if it got backed up at all.

In London depending on the time of day there are crowds. Going to work even at the night of rush hour in the 5 months I have been here I only once couldn’t get on a train and had to wait for another one. It can get pretty crowded in some stations though. I had to go to bank during rush hour a few nights. There was a line from getting into the station through until you got onto the platform. Unlike New York the line moved so was a crowd of people actually moving together. Once on the platform I had to wait several trains to get onto one. It seems like that’s normal at rush-hour for that station.

Luckily for me my daily commute is crowded however not ridiculously so. My biggest challenge is the last transfer on the way home. It’s at a major station in the line I take to go home. The line splits before I get off the train. That means I cannot just get on any train for that line. Side story i have only once got on the wrong train and had to turn around and go back. To make matters worse the other side of the line that I do not take has more trains than the one I do take. On the plus side I have gotten into a good commute rhythm and I haven’t had much of a crowd issue in a while.

The winter here is a tough one. It’s probably New York, however I am calling it a draw. My day-to-day experience in London has been pretty good so far. I see how the crowds could be consistently worse here in busy stations. I have heard they have had to close stations to new passingers when it gets really bad. I haven’t experienced it however I cannot recall that every happening in NY.

In the 4th and final segment I will cover etiquette. That one is more a commentary on the people rather than the system. That being said there are a few nifty things that systematically are done here that help etiquette.