TfL Customer Services: 4th Floor, 14 Pier Walk, London SE10 0ES
Phone: 0343 222 1234
Website: www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube or @TfLTravelAlerts
If the Underground had a motto it wouldn’t be “Mind the gap” but “Sorry for any inconvenience caused.” But as we grumble and ponder if anyone is ever actually sorry for squeezing you 30m below the surface, in a sweat-box held together by dust, rust and expensive fares, the magnificence of the ‘Tube’ network should really be appreciated. Across its 250-odd miles of track the Underground will take you to 270 stations spread the length and breadth of London (although with disproportionately few lines reaching into south London). The system is well integrated with the bus and overground train networks which share a common ticketing system with the Oyster card.
When fully functioning, the Underground will get you across town quicker than the bus and without the complicated timetables and schedules of overground trains. When it is struck by signal failures and breakdowns, which is very often, it can be excruciatingly slow and get very overcrowded, very quickly. In conclusion: the Underground won’t necessarily get you anywhere on time, in style or in comfort, but it will (eventually) get you pretty much anywhere.
The vast majority of the network is divided into concentric fare rings or zones (1-6). Zone 1 covers central London, zone 6 covers the outskirts of London. Fares are dependent on how many zones your journey includes and there’s a premium for travelling in zone 1. Peak fares (Monday to Friday from 6.30-9.30 am and 4-7 pm) are from 50p to a few pounds more than off-peak, although journeys limited to zone 1 do not benefit from the off-peak discount. Your best bet is to get an Oyster Card—lowest zone 1 single fare is £2.30 instead of £4.80 if you pay by cash. Oyster cards are available for just £5 from vending machines. It’s a total no-brainer: the total amount that can be deducted from your Oyster card is also capped over a 24-hour period to match the equivalent cost of a one day travel card. So the fare system is complicated, but if you take £2.30 (which will get you a single journey within zone 1 with an Oyster card) as a base rate, and add to this the further out of zone 1 you travel, things become clearer. If you feel the need to marvel at the full intricacy of the fares and ticketing system, give yourself eye-strain at Transport for London’s website.
The vast majority of centrally located stations will have a train at least every three minutes most of the day. At the very beginning and end of the day service frequency tails-off and can get as low as eight minutes between trains. Trains are also much less frequent at the farther reaches of some lines—the Metropolitan line has trains only every 20 minutes from its most north-western stations, even during peak times. Almost all lines have a reduced frequency on Sundays. First trains are 05:00-05:30, last trains are between midnight and 12.30. Last trains are generally safe; expect a slightly raucous mix of pickled after-workers and overly obsequious rough-sleepers rather than any real troublemakers, especially after booze was banned in 2008. The whole network had £5bn thrown at it for the 2012 Olympics, but the only noticeable improvement was increased cleanliness in many of the stations.
Bakerloo: (Brown coloured on maps) Runs from Harrow & Wealdstone in the north west to Elephant & Castle in the south east.
Central: (Red) Runs from West Ruislip in the west to Epping in the far north east. The central section is buried under Oxford Street and has four stops on the street, the quietest usually being Bond Street.
Circle: (Yellow) Notoriously slow, unreliable, and not strictly a circle—even more so now that a tail reaches down to Hammersmith. For this reason Edgware Road is now the end of the line. Shares almost all of its track and stations with other lines so don’t necessarily bother waiting specifically for a dedicated Circle Line train. Look out for the ‘Platform for Art’ as you pass Gloucester Road station.
District: (Green) One of the few lines to serve deepest south London, branches run into Richmond and Wimbledon in the southwest and also to Ealing. The line continues up to Upminster in the northeast. Almost all of the branches of this fragmented line come together at Earls Court station into an infuriating mess, so plan ahead if changing there.
Hammersmith & City: (Pink) Starts at Hammersmith in the west of the city before heading north to Paddington and continuing east to Barking. Take it to Ladbroke Grove if heading to the Portobello market.
Jubilee: (Silver) Silver coloured as it opened in the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, the line serves northwest, central and east London, including the Canary Wharf business district. The section east of Green Park is the most recent addition to the network (it opened in 1999) and has a number of architecturally exemplary stations.
Metropolitan: (Dark Purple) The oldest of all the lines, this granddaddy of metropolitan underground railways strikes far out in the suburbs and countryside northwest of the city from its central root at Aldgate.
Northern: (Black) Presumably given black as its colour to reflect the dark mood of anyone unlucky enough to have to commute on it, the Northern line is the overcrowded spine of London, covering vast swathes of the city centre, the north and the south.
Piccadilly: (Dark Blue) From Cockfosters in the far northeast this line trundles all the way to Heathrow airport, with some of the most popular tourist spots in between. It’s a very cheap way to the airport but is also the slowest. Southgate and Arnos Grove stations are both 1930s modernist brilliance.
Victoria: (Light Blue) Runs from Walthamstow in the north to Brixton in the south. This musty line is currently undergoing refurbishment and will feature new trains and track by 2011. In the meantime, check for early closing and shutdowns, particularly during weekends.
Waterloo & City: (Turquoise) No-one has ever met anyone who has been on this line. Erm, it has two stations, Waterloo and Bank, and is designed for suited and booted commuters coming in by train from Waterloo. No trains on Sundays.
London Overground: (Orange) TfL took over part of the overground rail network, notably the somewhat shabby and North London Line which runs from Richmond to Stratford This has now been merged with what was the East London Line, which connects East, Southeast and Northeast London. Just think of it as an extension to the tube network.
Bicycles are generally only allowed on the tube outside peak hours and only from stations outside central London. They are not permitted on the Victoria or Waterloo and City lines at all. Folding bicycles can be taken on all sections of the Tube free of charge.