This week The Star is featuring a series on commuting. Yesterday’s was particularly interesting, looking at what was alternately termed “London’s underground commuting hell” and “London’s unforgiving underground.” It should provide some solace to those riders “crush loaded” on to the Queen Streetcar — the transit grass isn’t always greener even in a celebrated transit city like London. Read the rest here:
Darkness is the recurring theme of James Darley’s odyssey to and from his office in the British capital, a journey that begins and ends without daylight for much of the year in the tiny village of Radnage, Buckinghamshire.
Darley, 59, a public relations executive, must time things precisely to prevent the 60-kilometre commute from eating even more deeply into his life. He’s out the door by 7 a.m. for the first leg, a winding drive through the glorious Chiltern Hills to the town of Princes Risborough, where he stashes the car a five-minute walk from the train station to avoid parking fees.
Most days the 7:19 regional rail service to London Marylebone departs on the dot, and a lumbering 50 minutes later he has another five-minute walk to the nearby Baker St. Tube station.
There, he descends into a particular hell that was invented in London: the subway in rush-hour. Darley endures the 20-minute sardine squeeze on the Jubilee Line for five stops beneath the heart of the city by erecting “a self-protective mental envelope. I refuse to allow it to bother me.”
Unfazed by luggage digging into his leg or “the exhalations of last night’s curry,” Darley emerges at London Bridge, where his final leg — a 12-minute walk — awaits. Most days, there is time to pick up a toasted sandwich at the corner shop before he steps into the offices of Chelgate Public Relations at the crack of 9 a.m.
Other pieces in the series:
- Saturday: Washington
- Today: Beijing
- Tuesday: Jerusalem
- Wednesday:
- Thursday: GTA
- Friday: Commuting = end of the world?
Photo by Randy Quan for the Toronto Star
2 comments
These stories do soothe my frayed nerves a little–but only because they make me realize that Toronto could be worse. The report about Washington commuters is absolutely nuts.
The past year having lived in Manhattan, London and briefly Hong Kong, I would rank Toronto only behind Hong Kong.
In a perfect world there would be more subways in Toronto, but as it is you can get to most of the highly trafficked parts of the city via subway/streetcar with great ease and comfort.
And the number of malfunctions/delays in Toronto is microscopic compared to London and New York City where the slightest rain can shut down entire lines.